Two Minutes For Holding
Things had just quieted down in the east wing when the welcome silence was pierced by another bellowing shout from Room 11. “Loo-eeeeze!!”
“Good heavens,” sighed Kaylee from behind the nursing station. She brushed a lock of hair from her eyes and replaced the phone in its cradle. “Doesn’t that man ever stop?”
“I can tell you’re new here,” drawled Janice as she checked items off of her clipboard. “I don’t even notice it anymore. It’s like the racket them geese make out on the patio. Drives you crazy at first, but then you get used to it.”
“I don’t know if I can ever get used to that. It makes me want to jump out of my skin every time he does it. Imagine having a man shout at you like that! Then again, I suppose poor Louise probably got so used to hearing it that she just tuned him out like you do.”
“Poor Louise?”
“Well, I’d say she was poor, having to put up with Mr. Francis until the day she died.”
Janice gave a hoarse laugh that died out in a series of coughs. “Ah, honey, you know what they say when you assume! Far as we know, nobody was putting up with Mr. Francis but himself.”
“What about Louise?”
“There’s never been any Louise that we know of. Old Mr. Francis was a bachelor, didn’t have no kids, lived alone and never said boo to the neighbors about any Louise until they started hearing him shouting the name over and over like he does here now.”
Kaylee furrowed her brow. “Well, that’s…odd.”
“And that ain’t the half of it! Wait ‘til you see him with his hockey players.”
Dynadormophis Up
What if people could bank, sell, and buy their sleep?
It doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with a sleeper or a dynamo, every service call on a Dynadorm unit leads to an angry or incoherent customer. That’s why there’s such a high turnover rate for us service techs, never mind the money. I don’t care what kind of debt you have hanging over your head, the first time you get assaulted by one of these people, no amount of compensation seems worth it. It’s not the physical trauma of it, it’s the terror of dealing with the unhinged. There’s nothing more dangerous than some sleep-deprived zombie who’s counting on you to get up and running again.
I’ve had all sorts of weapons pulled on me, dodged my share of thrown objects, and more than once I’ve been forced to threaten a client. Dynadormophis tells us not to in the handbook and every training session, but they know what goes on at the front line, and you do what you have to do. They’ll never admit it – that’s what keeps the lawyers off our backs – but every rookie soon learns that corporate doesn’t care what we do so long as the green keeps flowing. And they expect the green to keep flowing.
After all, it’s the service contracts that keep us in business. You can rent a Dynadorm fairly cheaply these days, relatively speaking, and outright buying one is within reach of some, but you’d be a fool to think that’s the extent of your investment if you expect the thing to keep working. I see the same scene over and over again. That first call usually comes sometime in the first or second year of operation, by which time the unit is well out of warranty and its owner has become financially, emotionally, and/or physically dependent on it. They can’t believe that the call is going to cost so much, swear up and down that nobody in sales ever made the cost/benefit ratio of a service contract clear to them, then finally stop stamping their feet and cursing long enough to accept our generous offer of applying seventy-five percent of their bill toward a long-term contract. After that, they’re pretty much hooked.