"Wait." Tussie swiftly dumped two more letters into the trash. "If you don't open form letters you add three years onto your productive life."
"Is that a fact?" Miranda smiled.
"Solemn," Tussie teased her.
Miranda carried the metal wastebasket around the table to Hank. "Any more?"
"Uh, no." He thumbed through his neatly stacked pile.
"Can't you ever do anything on impulse?" Tussie pulled her mittens from her coat pocket.
"Haste makes waste. If you saw the damaged equipment that I see, all because some jerk can't take the time. Yesterday a gurney was brought down with two wheels jammed. Now that only happens if an orderly doesn't take the time to tap the little foot brake. He pushed, got no response, then pushed with all his might." Hank kept on, filled with the importance of his task. "And there I was in the middle of testing a circuit breaker that kept tripping in the canteen. Too many appliances on that circuit." He took a breath, ready to recount more problems.
Tussie interrupted him. "The hospital does need a few things."
He jumped in again. "Complete and total electrical overhaul. New furnace for the old section but hey, who listens to me? I just run the place. Let a doctor squeal for something and oh, the earth stops in its orbit."
"That's not true. Bruce Buxton has been yelling for a brand new MRI unit and-"
"What's that?" Harry inquired.
"Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Another way to look into the body without invading it," Tussie explained. "Technology is exploding in our field. The new MRI machines cut down the time by half. Well, don't let me go off on technology." She stopped for a moment. "We will all live to see a cure for cancer, for childhood diabetes, for so many of the ills that plague us."
"Don't know how you can work with sick children. I can't look them in the eye." Hank frowned.
"They need me."
"Hear, hear," Miranda said as Harry nodded in agreement.
"Guess we need a lot of things," Hank remarked. "Still, I think the folks in the scrubs will get what they want before I get what I want." He took a breath. "I hate doctors." Hank placed the envelopes in the large inside pocket of his heavy coveralls.
"That's why you spend your life in the basement." Tussie winked. "He's still looking for the Underground Railroad."
"Oh, balls." Hank shook his head. If they had been outside, he would have spat.
"I've heard that story since I was a kid." Miranda leaned over the counter divider. "'Bout how the old stone section of the hospital used to be on the Underground Railroad for getting slaves to freedom."
"Every house and bush in Crozet has historical significance. Pass a street corner and some sign declares, 'Jefferson blew his nose here.' Come on, Tussie. I've got to get back to work."
"What are you doing here with doom and gloom?" Harry winked at Tussie.
Hank suppressed a little smile. He liked being Mr. Negative. People paid attention. He thought so anyway.
"Chuckles' car is in the shop."
"Don't call me that," Hank corrected her. "What if my wife hears you? She'll call me that."
"Oh, here I thought you'd say 'people will talk.'" Tussie expressed much disappointment.
"They do that anyway. Ought to have their tongues cut out."
"Hank, you'd have fit right in during the ninth century A.D. Be in your element." Tussie followed him to the door.
"Yeah, Hank. Why stop with cutting people's tongues out? Go for the throat." Harry winked at Tussie, who joined her.
"Mom's getting bloodthirsty." Mrs. Murphy laughed.
"Let me get Chuckles back to his lair." Tussie waved good-bye.
"Don't call me Chuckles!" He fussed at her as they climbed into the Tracker.
"They're a pair." Miranda observed Hank gesticulating.
"Pair of what?" Harry laughed as she emptied the wastebasket into a large garbage bag.
The day wore on, crawled really. The only other noteworthy event was when Sam Mahanes, director of the hospital, picked up his mail. Miranda, by way of chitchat, mentioned that Bruce Buxton had slid on his back down Main Street.
Sam's face darkened and he replied, "Too bad he didn't break his neck."
2
"Whee!" Harry slid along the iced-over farm road, arms flailing.
The horses watched from the pasture, convinced more than ever that humans were a brick shy of a load. Mrs. Murphy prowled the hayloft. Tucker raced along with Harry, and Pewter, no fool, reposed in the kitchen, snuggled tail over nose in front of the fireplace.
Susan Tucker, Harry's best friend since the cradle, slid along with her, the two friends laughing, tears in their eyes from the stinging cold.
Slowed to a stop, they grabbed hands, spinning each other around until Harry let go and Susan "skated" thirty yards before falling down.
"Good one."
"Your turn." Susan scrambled to her feet. Instead of spinning Harry, she got behind her and pushed her off.
After a half hour of this both women, tired, scooted up to the barn. They filled up water buckets, put out the hay, and called the three horses, Poptart, Tomahawk, and Gin Fizz, to come into their stalls. Then, chores completed, they hurried into the kitchen.
"I'll throw on another log if you make hot chocolate. You do a better job than I do."
"Only because you haven't the patience to warm the milk, Harry. You just pour hot water on the cocoa. Milk always makes it taste better even if you use one of those confections with powdered milk in it."
"I like chocolate." Pewter lifted her head.
"She heard the word 'milk.'" Harry stirred the fire, then placed a split dry log over the rekindled flames. Once that caught she laid another log parallel to that, then placed two on top in the opposite direction.
"I'd like some milk." Mrs. Murphy placed herself squarely on the kitchen table.
"Murph, off." Harry advanced on the beautiful cat, who hopped down onto a chair, her head peering over the top of the table.
"Here." Susan poured milk into a large bowl for the two cats, then reached into the stoneware cookie jar to give Tucker Milk-Bones. As Susan had bred Tee Tucker, she loved the dog. She'd kept one from the litter and thought someday she'd breed again.
"Did I tell you what Sam Mahanes said today? It was about the only interesting thing that happened."
"I threw out junk mail along with the Cracker Jacks in my postbox. That was the big interest in my day," Susan replied.
"I didn't do it."
"Then why didn't you clean it out? You're supposed to run a tight ship at the post office."
"Because whoever put the Cracker Jacks in there wanted you to have them." Harry smiled.
"That reduces the culprits to my esteemed husband, Ned. Not the Cracker Jacks type. Danny, m-m-m, more like his father. Must have been Brooks." She cited her teenaged daughter.
"I'll never tell."
"You won't have to because when I get home she'll wait for me to say something. When I don't she'll say, 'Mom, any mail today?' The longer I keep quiet, the crazier it will make her." Susan laughed. She loved her children and they were maddening as only adolescents can be but they were good people.
"The hard part was keeping Mrs. Murphy and Pewter from playing with the Cracker Jacks."
"What was your solution?"
Mrs. Murphy lifted her head from the milk bowl. "Catnip in the Reverend Jones' box."
Both women laughed as the cat spoke.
"She's got opinions," Susan remarked.
"I put catnip in Herb's mailbox." Harry giggled. "When he gets home and puts his mail on the table his two cats will shred it."
"Remember the time Cazenovia ate the communion wafers?" Susan howled recalling the time when Herb's sauciest cat got into the church closet, which was unwisely left open. "And I hear his younger kitty, Elocution, is learning from Cazenovia. Imagine kneeling at the communion rail being handed a wafer with fang marks in it."
Harry giggled. "The best church service I ever attended. But I hand it to Herb, he tore up bread crusts and communion continued."