Chapter 14

John looked at Pixy and said “I need to get off my feet for a few minutes, my calf is killing me.”

She replied, “It’s time for the dressing to be changed anyway. Let’s go to the trailer.”

While they walked Pixy said “Petra did in fact have the gall to ask me if I agreed with you. We need to be careful of that one, she has a deep-rooted spiteful side to her. I wouldn’t put it past her to attempt salting the earth between you and Henrik.”

Getting to the living space, John got out of his boots, and pants then laid down on his stomach while Pixy went to work on his dressing. She hadn’t finished when John’s phone rang. He looked at the number and said “Raul.”

She nodded and said “Speaker please.”

John answered on speaker “Buenos Dias Señor Rodriguez.”

“Good afternoon, John. I understand from Petra there was some friction earlier.”

John replied “Alex is on the line with me, and yes, unfortunately there was. We didn’t appreciate being put on the spot with Henrik as his company is also a client of ours, one that I personally value.”

Raul replied “Yes, that was an unfortunate way for it to have been handled. She shouldn’t have had Henrik in the room for that.”

“While you are on the line, did you speak to the shareholders about pulling the riser up?”

Raul replied “Yes, it’s scheduled to start in the morning.”

John replied “I have another suggestion for you then. Contract Bureau Veritas or American Bureau of Shipping to record the process of pulling the riser. Both have offices in Houston and both are part of IACS, International Association of Classification Societies as well as being recognized by insurers as third-party observers. Liability being what it is, you could save yourselves a lot of trouble down the road doing this.”

Raul was silent for a moment then asked “What specifically does this do for us?”

John replied “In order to have gotten permission from the government to drill, you had to have procedures submitted to government regulators for pulling the riser if necessary. Having a recognized third party witnessing the procedure would remove any room for later incriminations should something go south in the process. The government in particular will be looking for someone to hang out to dry if something goes wrong. Without a recognized independent witness, it becomes your word against the government’s word. I don’t think I have to say who would lose that battle.”

Raul replied “I see, that makes sense. I’ll make the arrangements after this call.”

John spoke up again after that. “We still haven’t arranged how exactly we are getting to the rig?”

Raul replied “There is a heliport five miles from your current location.”

“Works for us. Does that heliport have a safe place to store a semi rig?”

“I can arrange for it to stay in our hanger while you’re on the rig if that’s acceptable” Raul replied.

John followed up with “We won’t have time to retest the NDE personnel before we have to leave, how do you want to handle that?”

“Do you think Al would be amicable to flying out here for that? Or is there someone in the area you trust for it?”

John replied “Al would likely be willing at his normal rates assuming he’s available. I’ll call him and give him your contact information if that works for you? He may even know someone in the area that can handle it.” After a few more minutes of inane back and forth, Raul finally hung up.

After the call ended, Pixy commented “If by friction he meant she was being a total bitch, then I agree.”

John snorted out a short laugh at that then said “Consider the circumstances. She’s only been out of college less than two years. There is much she never learned about the business as it’s impossible to experience it from behind the desk. You’ve learned from the opposite end of that spectrum. It’s been all work for you. There are aspects of the business she will never learn from on high. I believe that’s why Raul put her in my path. He knows I won’t let her or anyone else run over me, or any of you. Sometimes touching the fire is the only way to learn it’s hot. So don’t let it get next to you. The person that matters is Raul. In a couple of more years, she will have earned her stripes. Unfortunately, we are on the forefront of her break into the real world. I’m fairly certain she is a very insecure person deep down. Think back to how you felt on that first outage.”

Pixy looked at him, “Yeah that sucked. The old hands kept asking me for pipe stretchers, left-handed rulers, and right-handed crescent wrenches. They cut me zero slack, sending me on snipe hunts from day one. I get what you’re saying.”

John laughed and said “I never had that problem with welding, but I caught my share of shit when I was learning NDE. Al was my level II when I started. He threw me in the deep end and left me to swim ... or not in some cases. My first X-ray job I was told to load film. I’d never done that before. In those days the boxes of Kodak film had cardboard inserts between the film sheets. Well not only did I load it, and it got shot, but I put it on hangers and tried to develop it. I was panicking thinking I’d fucked something up in the developing. Two of the ‘films’ came out white, so while it sat in fixer, I go get Al and bring him into the dark room. When he saw it, he says to me ‘Dumbfuck you ran the inserts’. So after some impromptu instructions, he sat there watching me until I reloaded all the cassettes. He then took his lead number box and spelled ‘Dumbfuck’ on a new piece of film, and after the film box was secured, he flashed the white light in the darkroom, then turned the light off. He had me process that piece of film. After it was in the dryer, he went and re-shot the two missing films. When the job was done, he handed me that piece of film saying I should always keep it with me to remember the moment by.”

Pixy started laughing when John pulled that film out of his briefcase.

John then said “If you haven’t fucked up at least once, then you haven’t been working. We can only hope when it comes our turn, it’s something we can readily fix. On other hand, always try to avoid letting anyone you don’t trust fully know your mistakes, because they will damn sure use that information the moment they think it will benefit them.”