Edited by Barney R. Further additions and deletions were made by me. All Errors are mine.

Things were rocky for a while. Would we find a way to fix it?

I met Marylyn Sinke when I was hired as a troubleshooter for ABC Corporation. We manufacture and service specialty medical equipment for labs and hospitals. We also service the equipment for the first year after completed installation. My job was to find and correct any installation or operational problems.

I am Frank Harvey, I was 26 When I met Marylyn Sinke, she was 22, I had just graduated from college and been licensed as a professional Biomedical Engineer. I was also taught and versed in proper customer relations.

I was starting my professional life later than most people because I went into the army before I went to college. I was trained there as a Medical Equipment Repair Technician. I loved the job, but did not like military life. There was way too much BS and work dodging going on. I was taking ‘the king’s coin’ so I tried to deliver value for the price. I did not reenlist.

I took my savings, (almost all of my military pay), my G. I. Bill benefits, and a couple of major scholarships, and got my degree in Biomedical Engineering. My emphasis was in computer controls of medical diagnostic equipment design with a business minor. Along the way, I came into a great deal of money from my family trust. I bought a three bedroom condo in a downtown high rise.

I was called into a city hospital to fix a customer relations and computer interface problem. I went to the maintenance department as was the normal reporting procedure. The Maintenance Director told me what the problem appeared to be and sent me to the room where our company had installed a computer controlled conveyor and sterilization system.

When I arrived at the department office, I met the director. Mrs. Anne Castor, she was a no nonsense, prune faced lady of indeterminate age but definitely on the backside of 40. She was pleasant enough, and took me back to the new system. I asked the operator what she saw as the problem. It turned out the machine wouldn’t come out of the test protocol. I knew right away that someone in the factory forgot to take a jumper off the buss-bar.

I shut the system down, and went to the control panel and removed the jumper. After making sure that that was the only obvious problem, I closed the panel, turned the power back on and ran a complete working cycle. It appeared that the problem was gone.

With the problem fixed, I asked Mrs. Castor if she minded if I stuck around for a couple of hours to make sure the problems were all taken care of. She thought that was a good idea, as the hospital wanted the system to go live the next week and it was already Thursday.

While I watched the people in the department work and set up more dummy runs on the new equipment, I started talking to the people that knew where ‘the rubber met the road’. I had learned that the operator was the first and best tool to use to diagnose a problem. Even if they didn’t know what was causing the problem, they could generally point you to the section of the system or machine that was messing up. A lot of the times they could also do a work around while you were correcting the fault.

I was talking to the lady that was in charge of the floor operators doing the mock runs on the new system. She introduced herself as Marylyn, not Marilyn Sinke, and she told me she already knew who I was.

I was surprised at that and I guess it showed. She laughed and said Mark Warner was her stepbrother. Mark and I had formed a ‘mutual admiration society’ while in the military. Mark was a Lt. and the army equivalent of a R.N. While we were in the same hospital unit he had an equipment problem while critically treating the commanding General’s 6 year old daughter.

Like most repair guys who had been around for a while, I had a large supply of ‘duct tape and bailing wire’ and was able to fix the problem before the little girl had any problems. Mark and I both got commendations for that. Mark stayed in the army, and was now a Lt. Col. in Washington D.C.

Marylyn told me that Mark warned her that I was a notorious skirt chaser and that she needed to straighten me out. When she saw the look of confusion on my face she started laughing. The laugh was musical, and I was thunderstruck.

I asked if she would have dinner with me the coming Friday, and she said yes. We went to a nice mid scale restaurant and talked a lot more. I found out that Lyn, as she asked me to call her was the only child of a widowed Father who remarried to Mark’s mother. Mark was the oldest of three kids, and they were all older than Lyn.

She even went so far as to explain that she had dated a guy steadily and exclusively up until four months before we met. She claimed she broke up with him because she caught him dating a former friend of hers from high school.

I told her my sorry tale of growing up in a wealthy family as the oldest of two children. “My sister Sara is two years younger than me and a confirmed and nearly militant lesbian in a strong relationship. She is currently on the outs with my parents because they do not accept her lifestyle. I send her half of the money my trust fund sends me because my parents got the court to lock up Sara’s trust until she turns 35, or marries a man. I also explained that I did not take any of the family money offered to me for schooling. I had part time and summer jobs from the time I was a sophomore in high school. My parents thought I was a stubborn young fool for not taking the easy way. They just about disowned my when I joined the army.”

I told Lyn that I had dated a few girls and women, but only one at a time. I explained that I was a strictly a one woman man and would not accept cheating of any kind. Even a date with someone else would end my relationship with them. I said my last relationship ended when I left college because the woman I was dating thought that being involved with a man who gets grease or body fluids on his hands wasn’t for her.

Lyn laughed and said that that woman wouldn’t have liked working in a hospital surgical cleaning room then. She added that anyone who doesn’t respect people who work for a living deserve all of the grief their life will give them.

We dated for most of a year, and I assumed we were exclusive. She never turned down dates, and we were together every weekend unless I was out of town for a customer service problem.

One evening while we were enjoying a rare mid week dinner Lyn told me she couldn’t keep our date for the coming Friday. I looked at her for a couple of seconds waiting for her to give me a reason.

She didn’t so I asked; “Ok, no problem but would you give me the respect I deserve and tell me what has taking preference over me?”

“An old boyfriend is coming into town and I am going out with him.” She smugly answered.

I was astounded, and angry. “OK, consider this our last date. Finish your dinner and I will take you back to your apartment. Do you remember our first talk when I told you I did not accept any cheating? Do you also remember telling me you broke up with a previous boyfriend because he was dating or screwing others?”

She looked at me as if I slapped her. “Why are you being such a hard ass, we have never said we were exclusive, I haven’t just been dating you.” She whined.

“Well let me understand what you are saying, we had a date, and you are cancelling me to go with someone else. Do I have that right?”

“Yes.” She whispered. “I didn’t think you would act like this, and I have known Jack for several years.”

“OK, let me ask you this then, if I had asked for us to be exclusive, as in dating only me would you have said yes?

“No, I would not have. Jack and I have had a relationship for years, and he has filled in for you when you were out of town and couldn’t take me out. He was also filling in with the guy before you.”

“Well, I see I was the fool. Look, I have not dated anyone but you since I was discharged. We have gone out every weekend but the three I had to work. Let me ask one more question before I give you money for a cab and leave. Did you ever double stack a date. Did you go out with ASSHOLE after I took you home?”

Well she was angry now, “No, I didn’t have to, when I was going to him after I was with you he just let himself in as he has a key to my apartment.”

I never said another word, I just dropped a large bill on the table got up and on the way out I made a big production of dropping my cell phone in the trash, paid the restaurant bill and left.

On the way home, I bought a new pay as you go phone.