Chapter 39

We checked in immediately, discovered that there was a projected general delay of twenty minutes, and joined the line to endure the attentions of the TSA.

I’m way out of line here professionally – I should never be judgmental about lifestyle choices – but as I watched the TSA officers at work, I had to grin to myself about turning down Mom’s offer of some fresh zucchini to take home. I was sure some of these people wouldn’t know a zucchini from an eggplant. My informed guess was that maybe half of them were not following a healthy diet – which I knew might not be their fault; the relatively poor pay makes cheap convenience foods a preferred choice – but there were one or two I’d have laid a bet probably believed you could satisfy the recommended daily intake of ‘vegetables’ with the gherkins on a burger, fried onion rings or potato chips. Zucchini? Nope.

The lady who waved me forward to the metal detector and scanner was not one of the slimmer ones. I’d say five-six and maybe one-eighty pounds. The TSA uniform blue button-up shirt, belt and black pants are not flattering; if the waist size is above XL, it shows.

But she was totally professional.

She did query the sandwiches and asked me to open the bag; I pulled out the ziploc package and explained that my mom had insisted on making them for us.

She grinned, and proved she was human. “Worried about you starving to death on the journey? My mom’s exactly the same. I’ve been married twenty years, brought up four kids, and when I make my weekly call, it’s still me that’s being checked up on!”

I smiled back and agreed that moms would never change.

“Okay, Sir, you’re free to proceed. Thank you for your cooperation.”

I thanked her, zipped up my carry-on bag and ‘proceeded’.

Mel was waiting for me, a huge grin on her beautiful face. “I thought for one moment she was gonna make you eat a sandwich in front of her to prove it wasn’t dangerous. I guess the scanner got all excited over the savory relish?”

I’d heard that some part of the TSA scanner complemented the X-ray image by analyzing any minute traces of organic compounds it could detect. Foodstuffs apparently sometimes give a false positive for incendiaries and explosives. Mom would laugh if her recipe had confused such expensive and sophisticated equipment.

“Could well be that. Did the DVDs come through okay?”

A chuckle. “She didn’t even ask me to open the bag. I guess I have a more honest face than you!”

“I’m not gonna argue that one. You are also a whole lot more beautiful than me.”

I took her hand and led her towards the boarding lounge.

Now we were through security, I did remember to buy us a couple of bottles of water. The price gouging at the airport is a little less than on the airplane – but it still seemed like I was paying for ‘designer’ or imported water, rather than something that had flowed at almost zero cost from a borehole within thirty miles of where I was standing at the till. Oh, I was aware that if we would have taken empty bottles, we could have filled them for free at the water fountain, so I couldn’t whine too much at the price.

We found a couple of chairs in an empty alcove and sat holding hands.

“Okay, honey? Happy with how our trip went?”

She grinned. “More than happy. I love ALL of them. You have NO idea how welcome I felt!”

“So you’d be okay to come visit again?”

“Absolutely!”

“You do realize that if Mom could only keep one of us, it would be me in the discard pile?”

She smiled tenderly. “Not gonna happen, Mister. You are mine, and I’m keeping you. If she invites me, you’re coming along too.”

“For the bachelorette weekend?”

“Well, yeah, but you’ll be babysitting with James, okay? I want to get Cassie to dish the dirt on you, so I don’t want you around interrupting a great story.”

I put on my most pious expression and claimed there was no dirt at all.

Mel’s face showed me she wasn’t buying any protestation of innocence from me.

What with just sitting talking quietly with my beloved, exchanging typical ‘courting couple’ remarks, speculating on how our dogs were getting on without us, it seemed no time at all until we were boarding the airplane.

My hubris about the size of some of the TSA officers received its nemesis as we found our seats; the guy in the seat behind us was even larger than any of them – no way were we going to be able to put our seats back into the reclining position – heck, I was a little surprised he’d made it so far down the aisle without getting stuck. He was SO big they hadn’t put anyone in the seat beside him. Damn, he HAD to weigh several baggage allowances more than the average passenger – I hoped they’d included him in the payload when they were doing the Take-Off Weight calculations.

Trusting that the airplane was going to get safely off the ground, I looked out the window during and after takeoff, marveling yet again how much Atlanta was still growing.

Dad has a joke that places that were rural villages when he was a kid are now downtown – he isn’t really that old, but it might well have applied to his grandfather – but, like all decent jokes, there is a grain of truth.

Sometimes I wonder if Greater Atlanta will ever stop expanding.

I’ve read science fiction set in mega-cities of forty or fifty million people; Atlanta Metropolitan area has a population estimated at just over six million at present, with ‘Greater Atlanta’ forecast to reach ten million before the end of the decade. Hate to say so, but I can see it hitting fifteen million in my lifetime, easy. And the traffic is already close to apocalyptic levels in some places, which is why it’s so vital that MARTA does a thorough job in providing public transit.

I just hope they plan the expansion so everyone has good access to parks and green space. The area around the airport is dominated by roads and other ugly infrastructure; some of the warehouses and factories seem so big you could see them from space – I’d hate to have to live with that as the view from my back yard.

The good thing is that the Georgia climate means trees and greenery just thrive. I’ve flown over places like Phoenix and Albuquerque, and my, some of those desert suburban landscapes are so depressing to the eye. If it wasn’t for people making the effort with their yards, there would hardly be a speck of greenery.

To me, a landscape MUST have variety. Not just vegetation: topography is vital too.

A couple of years back, I flew from Chicago to Los Angeles on a day when you could see what seemed like hundreds of miles – and damn, some of those highways in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, it looks like you could drive fifty miles or more without needing to touch the steering wheel.

I don’t believe I’d ever get used to that almost featureless landscape. Can you imagine how the early settlers felt, crawling across the Great Plains in their ox-powered wagons, maybe making ten or fifteen miles progress a day? You’d wonder if you’d EVER get there.

We ate Mom’s delicious chicken sandwiches about twenty-five-thousand feet above Alabama (Mel raved about the flavor and texture), then dozed most of the way back to LAX.

In my experience, there’s always too much going on around you on an airplane to actually sleep. My brain is normally on at me to wake before everyone else so to get an early slot in the restroom line, though in this case our inability to recline our seats was a major factor. Oh, and when the huge guy behind got up to use the restroom about a half-hour out of LAX, hauling himself up with the backs of our seats, we were shaken awake big time.

So we were on our feet and ready to hightail it out of the aircraft just as soon as the door was opened. I think we were the far end of the aisle before the big guy even got to his feet.

We had no checked baggage to wait for; we found the car in the parking garage exactly where we first looked, the traffic on the ‘San Diego Freeway’ was light – and you can’t say THAT very often.

But it was still a couple of hours after midnight before we finally got to bed.

The reason for the delay?

Because we’d napped on the airplane, we weren’t especially sleepy.

I had an idea and asked Mel if I could show her something cool. She gave me a curious look but said ‘okay’.

Turning off I-405 at Skirball, we took the Mulholland Bridge and Mulholland Drive to the Groves Overlook. By day it’s quite the panoramic view, at night it can be almost magical. The actual park closes for the night, so we couldn’t get the full experience among the eucalyptus trees, but it was still well worth the slight detour. I pulled into the small parking area, and we walked back forty or fifty yards nearer the bend, to where you can see over Encino and Balboa towards Van Nuys Airport. It’s not the most glamorous part of LA, but that’s part of its charm – it’s not totally dominated by any one landmark.

She totally adored the way the lights made a recognizable pattern but hid the detail.

I guess it hit a sweet spot in her photography technique interest, because she started talking aloud about what could be done with a soft-focus camera.

The journey home was punctuated with her thoughts on how those panoramic views could add some class and uniqueness to locally produced movies. I could envisage Judy’s next few movies containing some artistic pans across the more attractive parts of Los Angeles as the background to the title credits...

Not having been out driving at night for quite a while, the harsh glare of Mel’s security floodlights surprised me as I pulled into her driveway. I suspected they were deliberately positioned for maximum dazzle, and it was good to press the remote and drive out of the brightness and into her garage. As usual, I let the door close fully behind us before unlocking the car.

First priority after checking the house was to take a quick shower to wash off the travel, Mel first.

While she was under the spray, I made up the bed with fresh linen to celebrate our return, and brought through a couple of glasses of fresh water for our nightstands.

When I exited the bathroom after doing my bedtime routine, there was a beautiful naked willowy blonde lying in the middle of her bed with a huge smile on her face, her arms lifted for my embrace.

We took our time making love before falling asleep entwined, my beloved with her head on my shoulder and one long leg hooked over mine to keep her close.

It would be nice to be able to say that, without kids or dogs demanding attention, we enjoyed a loving and leisurely start to Monday.

But not so. For me, it was a workday.

It took several mugs of coffee to get me started.

I CAN manage on three hours sleep, but the alarm had woken me from deep unconsciousness, and it took a moment for me to work out where I was.

Mel was lucky / sensible enough not to be working that day, though I had no choice. Once I was headed for the office, she went back to bed for a few hours before picking up the dogs.

First job was to catch Helga up with the success of the weekend back home, bragging about how much my folks had loved my choice of bride, and how close she’d gotten to Abby and Ben. I proudly showed the photos of Mel reading to them Sunday morning, and she giggled like a teenager at the video of Mel with a chocolate mustache.

And then it was down to business.

Yep, it was THAT day of the month. Back to Earth with a big bump.

The monthly Board meeting.

There’d been no way I could change the date; the calendar was set in stone, given all the other commitments of our illustrious and hard-working Board Members.

Also set in stone was the pre-meeting conference between my boss, the Chief Administrator / CEO, me as his Assistant, the CFO, and the Department Heads, as we ran through the Board papers to check everyone was up to date.

To be brutally honest, my first couple of times at these pre-meeting meetings, I’d thought it was a total waste of time for the individual Department Heads. I’d soon changed my mind, concluding it was actually time VERY well spent.

The paradox?

Only the two of us actually needed to be on top of every subject to answer the Board’s questions, but when we ran through the papers with the whole management team, we often gained some totally new insights as the other Heads offered their opinions, information that wasn’t in the actual papers the Board members had – hopefully – taken the time to read before the meeting.

Today was no exception.

One of the Board papers was the review of the current – and rather aged – ‘bringing the hospital into disrepute’ policy that Helga had suggested I ask HR to undertake – mainly to protect my own position if the Board ever found out I was marrying a former porn star.

Under the old definition, I could have been fired for cause if a Board member took offense at Mel’s career choice – though I’d more than likely win an unfair dismissal case, it wouldn’t do my career prospects any good. My predecessor, who’d been justifiably (and correctly, in my opinion) fired for ‘coercive fraternization’ for fishing off the company pier with a junior staff member, was no longer working in the industry – any major prospective employer would seek references, discover the nature of his offence, immediately think ‘lawsuit’ and back off right away. While my situation was nowhere near his deliberate offence, I wanted to ensure I wasn’t vulnerable to the denunciations of some stuffed shirt on a moral crusade.

In brief, we were now recommending to the Board that the new definition of ‘disrepute’ be restricted to the kind of behavior that directly reflected on the ethics and integrity of the hospital, and in circumstances which clearly connected the hospital with the misbehavior. What people did in their own private time was no longer an issue unless there was an obvious link with the hospital which would make our insurers unhappy. For example, being found DUI when off duty at the weekend would no longer be automatic cause for termination – though HR would keep tabs in case there was an addiction problem – whereas being caught intoxicated on the hospital site would inevitably result in a disciplinary hearing. Intoxication from drink or drugs while at work would continue to mean instant dismissal for cause and, if relevant, a report to the relevant professional body for placing others at risk. The random drug testing of employees would continue; too many people were making potentially life-or-death decisions to accept the risk of someone being off their head.

The Head of HR admitted that the review was long overdue, and there was unexpected support from the Head of Purchasing, who gave us a couple of case studies where she’d now be able to use some local suppliers – one who employed ex-cons and parolees, and another who worked with homeless addicts – who had been excluded from serious consideration by the previous policy.

I didn’t quite understand why they’d been off-limits and asked; her answer that the blanket ban on employing drug users had made Legal extra-cautious brought no denial from our General Counsel, who agreed there had been some unfair collateral damage. The Head of Marketing was equally positive, enthusing on the opportunities to enhance our reputation in the local community by diversifying our procurement of goods and services.

I have to admit that I got a huge buzz from the enthusiastic response from my colleagues. I’d done something to cover my own ass, and accidentally done some real good. I even received an attaboy from the boss for initiating the review. Not that any of them knew why I’d made the suggestion.

Next up was the monthly Billing update. The Head of Billing pointed out a few concerning trends, and my boss turned to the CFO and General Counsel for their opinion. The most worrying issue was an increase in payments by banknotes or pre-paid debit cards. Some of these transactions exceeded the IRS limit of $10,000, and IRS Form 8300 had duly been submitted for each one. Ethically we were okay with accepting these payments; legally we were covered because we’d complied with the law and informed the IRS, but it was a ‘gray area’ – and we administrators, like lawyers and accountants, have a real phobia of ‘gray areas’. But the CFO assured us she was ensuring we didn’t fall foul of the IRS, so we took her word.

The final paper was the quarterly review and projection. Everything seemed to be on the green, but, as always, there was no room for complacency. Especially with the Fourth July holiday and vacation season coming up. That always meant an increase in emergency admissions, from drunken idiots with firework burns, to tourists who got themselves in harm’s way. And emergency admissions, by their unpredictability, mess up schedules, projections and revenue.

The meeting ended with a reminder that we had a ‘meet and greet’ session Friday. My boss then embarrassed me by stating that I’d just gotten engaged, and he hoped I’d be bringing my new fiancée along to be introduced to my colleagues.