Wheels of Steel, Book 1 (2 page)

Besides, she valued her space and solitude. Some people liked being in crowds or partying, Robin liked listening to music and reading a good book. Others might think of it as boring, but to her it was satisfying.

The want ads were a bust; the same jobs that promised great pay but only made the company owners rich. Again she considered college. But no one understood how much she had struggled in school. Math was hard, English was hard, being social was hard; nothing came easy to her except American Lit.

She became the characters in the books. Did she know anything about conjugating verbs? No, she just enjoyed the fantasy of being someone else.

She sat quietly just contemplating how to find an enjoyable career if one didn’t go to college. She supposed that she would have to find something that she enjoyed doing. And what did she like doing? She liked reading; maybe she could become a writer or journalist. She liked art but couldn’t see herself doing anything artistic every day all day. She liked cooking but that didn’t mean she wanted to make a career of it.

Frustrated she came to her feet and tossed the paper into the trash. Hell, a job was a job! There was nothing that she liked doing that would pay her good money. With a sigh she opened her laptop, navigating through YouTube until she got to one of her music playlists. Later she would be working night shift until closing, which meant that she had several hours to kill. So she did the thing that she loved best; chilling out to her music.

She selected a playlist that included a little Jaheim and Sade as well as some other singers that put her in a relaxed mood. There was some Erykah Badu and some old D’Angelo from his Voodoo and Brown Sugar albums. Then she opened up the Kim Harrison novel that she had just began, and curled up in her old comfy armchair that had once belonged to her Dad. And then Robin proceeded to zone out.

When the playlist ended and she dragged herself out of the story of witch’s and vampires, Robin was alarmed to see that she only had about half an hour before work. Cursing, she jumped up and rushed into her small bedroom and quickly stripped out of her jeans and shirt.

She pulled on a clean work shirt and found a semi-clean pair of polyester work pants that had been tossed carelessly onto her bedroom chair. Robin’s hair was already pulled back into a neat ponytail and she checked it in the mirror seeing a dark brown face with slightly rounded cheeks and dark brown hair tamed by hair gel. She wasn’t short, she wasn’t tall; a bit stocky but nothing one less scoop of ice cream at desert wouldn’t solve.

People always took a double look at Robin, not because she was any great beauty, but because of her eyes. Her eyes were a strange mixture of green, brown and grey. And it wasn’t just the color. She had permanently half hooded eyes; bedroom eyes beneath long dark lashes. She either looked mentally retarded, sleepy or horny; depending on who you asked. She knew she was a confusing mixture; a dark brown girl with the last name Mathena and eyes that could almost be Asian. Her hair was not silky and smooth and she wasn’t Hispanic. As far she knew she was just black, despite having eyes that indicated otherwise.

Unfortunately, having bedroom eyes did not equate to the experience that those eyes tended to suggest. She was a virgin but not an unwilling one. Unlike most of her friends she wasn’t in a rush to have sex. It wasn’t that she thought a woman had to save herself for marriage…she didn’t even know if she would ever get married. She certainly enjoyed the explosion that happened between her legs when she touched herself in just the right way, so she was not a prude.

Still, the fact remained that Robin had never had a boyfriend--ever. For a girl who is shy around new people, dating had always been a disaster. She had once had a panic attack because a friend had told a guy that she had a crush on that she liked him. He came over to talk to her and she’d had to hide in the bathroom until he walked away. She referred to these panic attacks as her ‘nervousness’ and they occurred whenever she was placed in awkward situations with people she didn’t know.

If she could be friends with a guy first, then maybe it would happen, but blind dates were a no-no. And therefore, making male friends just never happened.

She hurried to her Volvo and tried not to break any laws getting to work on time. She loved her car. Her parents had bought it for her when she graduated from high school. But then when she had revealed that she wasn’t going on to college, they had taken it back. She’d quickly promised to make the payments herself. And that seemed to mark the period when everything began to go downhill. Her Dad had been diagnosed with cancer about a year later and after he died, living with mama had become intolerable and she’d had to move out.

Despite the financial struggle, the idea of giving up the car had been too much. She remembered when Daddy had been so sick, but still insisted on doing the oil changes himself. He and Robin would sit for hours while he tinkered away under the hood on some non-existent problem. They talked about everything; almost like he was trying to make up for the shortened time that he had on earth. So yes, there were times when it would have been better to just give up the car but it was her connection to the good times with her Daddy and she would keep it at all costs.

Robin saw that it was six o’clock on the dot when she finally pulled into a parking lot at the restaurant. It was five after when she finally got clocked in and still Linda rolled her eyes at her. She mouthed an apology to the older, tired looking woman. Linda couldn’t leave until her replacement showed up.

“I gotta get to my second job,” Linda explained as she counted up her register. “They’re shorthanded and I have to give the old man his medicine before he can go to bed.”

“You’re a nurse?” Robin asked. Linda took a moment to jot down a figure before answering. “No, home health care aid.” There was an order coming through at the drive through window and Robin took it quickly.

“They’re hiring.” Linda spoke absently as she jotted down another figure.

“Oh? Well I don’t know anything about administering medicine or anything.” She quickly put together the order. Linda paused in adding up each figure to look at her.

“You don’t have to know anything. Hell, I go there just to get some sleep. After I give the old man his medicine I put him to bed and I’m getting paid while he sleeps. I give him his medicine once in the middle of the night and then again when he wakes up.” Linda hurried to the back office with her envelope of cash, but before she disappeared she said over her shoulder. “I make way more there then here and I hardly do anything.”

Robin paused. She had never thought about having a second job. She didn’t want to live to work, but if she could read a book and listen to music while she took care of some old person then maybe she should look closely at the idea.

When she saw Linda hurrying out the door she called after her, “I’m interested. Tell me more when you get a chance!” Linda gave her a backward wave and disappeared out the door. Robin turned her attention back to the task at hand and taking a deep breath, dove into her work.

Chapter 2

“Robin, phone.” Robin pulled herself out of the small booth at the back of the restaurant, closing her finger over her place in the book. The first thing she thought of was her mother. Who else would be calling her at work? She hurried to the phone.

“Hello?”

“Robin.” It was Linda.

“Hey, how’s it going? I’m sorry I made you late.”

“No worry, I got here on time. Guess what I’m doing?”

“Um, changing an old man’s diaper?”

Linda laughed. “No! I’m watching this guy’s big screen TV, and eating Chinese food. And guess what else? I’m getting paid to do it.”

Robin raised an eyebrow. “Okay, so I’m interested, tell me more.”

Linda gave her the name and phone number of her supervisor and told her to call him the next morning. The next day Robin did just that. After a brief phone conversation, the supervisor asked Robin to come to the office to put in an application.

She lightly rapped on the door, dressed in a skirt that she had only worn to church and a simple sweater. PINNACLE HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS was stenciled across the glass of the door. She nervously wiped the palms of her hands down her skirt. She had never been comfortable with interviews.

“Come in.” A middle aged man stood and offered her his hand. He was tall, silver haired and had a smile like a television evangelist.

“I’m Ben Kennedy; one of the managers here. And you are Robin Mathena? How old are you?”

Robin nodded, taking his hand. “Oh, I’m twenty-one. Robin was aware that her round face and relatively short stature made her look a lot younger.

Ben spent a few minutes asking her about previous experience, criminal history, her available hours and then had her put in a brief application and disclosure form. He seemed rushed but nice and less than half an hour later she was back in her car. It was just that simple. One minute she was talking to him on the phone, the next she had her application on file waiting for her first assignment. She guessed that she was now an employee of Pinnacle Healthcare Providers.

She drove home confused but excited.

At work that night her cell phone began to ring. She asked one of the women to cover for her while she snuck away to the bathroom to listen to the message.

“Hello, Robin this is Ben at Pinnacle Healthcare Providers. Call me back tonight if you can fill in for someone. I know this is sooner then you had expected and we would normally train you with a coach to walk you through your first time. Unfortunately someone just quit on me and we have a client that needs someone to administer meds, and to do some monitoring. She is a female patient, seventy-eight. Call me back to let me know yes or no.”

She called back. “Hello, Ben. This is Robin, I got your message. But, well, I’m at work right now and I close so I won’t be done until late-”

“Not a problem. Can you get here by one am?”

“Well yeah-”

“I can get the girl on duty now to stay over by a few hours if you can relieve her by one. Plus she will stay long enough to instruct you on what to do.”

“At one-?”

“It will only be for four hours. Your replacement will arrive at five. And it pays you seventy-five dollars. For four hours, that’s pretty good money.”

“Okay.” Robin said. “I’ll be there.”

“Do you have something to write with? Just go directly to this address.” He gave her an address and she keyed it into her phone. “Don’t let me down, Robin.”

“I won’t, Sir.”

“Once you get there, call me to check in.”

“Ok.”

Robin hung up the phone, a nervous wreck. Was she ready for something like this?

After work she needed to rush home in order to change out of her work clothes and to do a mapquest search of the address that Ben had given her. It was in a part of town that she wasn’t familiar with. As she drove through the quiet streets and into Indian Village; an upscale community in Cincinnati, she wondered how she had gotten here in such a short amount of time. But the seventy-five dollars would do her good, that was for sure!

It was five til one when she hurried up the stairs of the nice townhome and rang the doorbell. Immediately a young Hispanic woman, not much older than herself, yanked open the door.

“God, man! Why’d you ring the bell? Do you want to wake her up?”

Robin’s face felt hot. “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

The girl smiled suddenly. “No problem. Come on in.”

The house was really nice, even if it was decorated in florals and there was plastic on the two sofas.

“Look, I need to get going, so let me show you the ropes.” She led her into the kitchen and opened a cabinet. “Be sure to put the medicine back in the exact same spot, okay?”

“Okay.”

“She takes fourteen pills a day.” The woman picked up three bottles. “She needs two of these every four hours. Wake her up at three to give them to her.” The woman picked up another bottle. “She needs one of these with a glass of orange juice. The orange juice has her other medicine in it so only give her half a glass. Give her the insulin injection then-”

“Insulin injection?! I’ve never given anyone an injection!”

The woman gave her a long look. “Are you squeamish?”

“Not really, but-”

“It’s easy.” The woman moved to the fridge. “It’s already pre-measured. Just pinch her flesh and stick. First swab with an alcohol pad which is on her side table, and then toss the needle in the dispenser in the bathroom. Easy, ok?”