Friends, Read Free Fortnight ends Thursday, so click on the button to buy 4Ever and Ever access to both this and The Diary of a Nobody for only $2.99. You’ll also be entered in a drawing for an extremely rare, first edition, hardback, autographed copy of Backstairs at the Monte Carlo. Hurry! The offer ends Thursday.
September 22
The first aid classes Jeffrey and I were trained to teach are in progress. Each class is eight hours, split over two nights and held Tuesday through Friday before our shift. It is making for some long, 12-13 hour days, which go against everything I stand for, but it’s only for this week.
There was a funny incident Tuesday. OMP was manning the employee parking lot – the first time he’s been anything but Henry 1 in the memory of man – and I was heading out to relieve him for 482. Some outside units had been trying to reach him but OMP wasn’t answering his radio. I was passing Eddie – 2 and Rich was out there enjoying a smoke.
“Let’s see if Pilcher is actually in full REM sleep or just nodding off,” I said.
Rich laughed.
“He’s probably been through two packs of smokes already and hasn’t had time to sleep. He’s probably dead.”
September 23
Here was your Henry lineup for tonight:
Henry 1 – moi
Henry 2 – X-Ray
Henry 3 – Lee
Relief Henry 1 for final hour while I wrote a report: Eric the Twerp
I got to the hotel late because I had paperwork and clean up after the first aid class. I got there about 2320 and was immediately met with a guest assist, right after which X-Ray and I were sent to 15-116 for a potential nosebleed. I get there and we’re met by a couple. The husband wanted paramedics not because of his wife’s nosebleed, but because there is blood whenever she sneezes, which evidently is fairly often, judging by all the red Kleenex lying around.
I wanted to tell her well, stop sneezing then, but instead, I ask some questions and find out she’s diabetic with high blood pressure though she otherwise feels (and looks) strong. She seems content with my diagnosis, especially when we factored in the dry desert air, but the husband wants paramedics called, and, if you’re a guest at Monte Carlo and want paramedics called we are going to call paramedics for you, no charge, either, unless they transport you to the hospital, in which case you get the broom handle. So the next thing you know we’re four-nine-nine and the whole thing takes a half hour and the medics do basically the same thing I do, assess the situation and ask some questions, although they do this with a bunch of high-tech instruments while all I have is a clipboard and a flashlight and they end up not transporting her anywhere.
Here is your Henry lineup for tonight:
Henry 1 – X-Ray
Henry 2 – moi
Henry 3 – Jose
Henry 4 – Fred
Note the shocker in the leadoff spot. OMP is on vacation and while I am the usual relief Henry 1 – weekends, vacations and whatnot – you will remember I am teaching first aid classes this week and while that didn’t seem to matter on Wednesday and Thursday, the weekend is different and this is a great opportunity for an up-and-comer who enjoys the hotel – like X-Ray – to make his Henry 1 debut. X-Ray is going places in the hotel racket, there’s no doubt about it, and it will be an honor to be his Henry 2.
Not that there is a whole lot of difference between being Henry 1 and being Henry 2, 3 or 4. Sure, there is the glamour associated with being the lead Henry unit, and there is the Henry 1 lifestyle – 10-10’s, the 0100 482, hanging out in the high rent district – but the only real difference is that Henry 1 is obliged to test the alarms on the three doors leading to the hotel roof. When they are done is left completely up to Henry 1, however. I like to do them during the hour from the time I clear my first 10-10 till I start 482, but others are different. Henry 1’s on other shifts tend to do them as soon as they hit the hotel, while OMP does them whenever OMP feels like it, usually between smokes in the stairwell.
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