This was Ali's first day.
Here he was at ground zero, standing beside his Victory motorcycle, parked in his parking spot. It was astonishingly close to the front entrance of the Riverview Clinic. There was the small neat sign: "No. 5 - Director", with "A. al-Amat" printed below. The January wind sighing over the curve of his helmet was bitterly cold.
There was the hospital's brick-and-mortar facade, peaceful at this hour. The building had to be a hundred years old at the very least. The seven am sunlight struggled through the chill and lowering clouds down to earth; when it reached the long narrow windows it seemed hardly to have the strength to reflect there, and it puddled listlessly on the sidewalk. There were only small signs of life: two nurses in white walking to the front entrance, their faces burned vividly pink by the cold air. One cut her eyes at him, whispered behind her hand at the other. The breeze carried their giggling from fifty feet away.
The Chief is going to have my head by the end of the day, he thought in resignation. Doctor Kieran Dorst, the chief resident, had already threatened him once for agitating her flock of nurses.
He was stalling, he knew it. But he'd meant to be here precisely at eight o'clock, he really had; only he'd found himself at five-thirty with the sheets in a tangle, staring at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head, brain clicking away at a furious rate. Making plans. Turning over ideas. There was no sleep left in him. And so here he was standing out in the parking lot, an hour early.
Well, this is the moment of truth...please, Bast, let there be coffee, he thought. Then he took a deep breath and walked into the building.
—-
"Mr. al-Amat!"
The receptionist waved him over as soon as he pulled his helmet off inside the lobby's blessed warmth. "Doctor Valkonan said you'd be in. Here, these are for you. Also this, and Mr. Milken—he's our accountant—he wants to meet with you today. He'll talk to you about the requisitions. And this is for you, too, and these are for your health insurance, you'll want to look those over. This is a map, just in case you need help finding your way around the first few days. Doctor Dorst left you a reminder that you promised her lunch. Doctor Valkonan said she'd like to check in with you this afternoon. Also, I would just like to point out that you need an assistant, because there is no way I'm doing this for you every day."
Her grin was surprisingly cheeky after the rapid-fire delivery, and she seemed utterly immune to his good looks. With the helmet and the load of paperwork and forms and notes and brochures she'd given him, his arms were entirely full. He very, very briefly considered giving it back to her, turning around, and walking back out again. He'd never been responsible for more than a hundred people at a time in his entire life, barring the Killarney evacuation. How was he going to do this"
Then the five-thirty excitement, the awareness of possibility, rose up in him once more. He took another deep breath and returned her smile. "Thank you. Where is my office, please?"
She pointed. "Administration is down that hall, you'll see the doors. You're third door on the right. Doctor Star is in today, so if you see a dolphin floating around, don't freak out or anything, okay?"
Ali thanked her again, noting the nametag—Lorelei Ashcroft—and her appearance—slight build, blonde braids, impressively pointed ears—hefted the small mountain of paperwork, and limped off down the directed hallway. Behind him there was a sudden bout of giggling as more nurses walked in.
—-
There was coffee.
On a set of cabinets built into one wall was the coffee maker—already loaded and filled with water; he pressed the button and it gurgled happily at him—and a spider plant he resolved to name "Droopy."
His desk was a giant slab of cherrywood, polished to a satiny semi-gloss finish, with about a thousand drawers and shelves and cubbyholes tucked in underneath. To his delight, it was big enough that he could stretch out his legs without feeling the least bit cramped. It fit him so well that it smacked of pre-planning—he found himself wondering whether it had always been in this office, or whether it had been ordered the day he was first being considered as a candidate. He sat in his chair (buttery-soft brown leather, exceedingly ergonomic, also a perfect fit) and wondered whether he should even ask about it. The offer of L'Esprit de Courvoisier from Maranya's boyfriend Antonio still had him stunned.
Upon the desk was a telephone with too many buttons, and a computer: small, sleek, asleep save for a small green replica of the hospital's logo in one corner of the screen. When he tapped a key to wake it, fifteen notes pasted to the virtual work surface sprang to life. The topmost was a reminder that he needed to key the computer to his voice; the second was a message that he needed to meet with the head of the hospital's information technology department; and so on, each one flashing an urgent, seizure-inducing orange at him.
He flipped through the messages to kill the painful flashing, then poured himself a cup of coffee and drank it while looking out his very own tall, narrow window onto the grounds. They were manicured and quite dead; the skeletons of trees bridged the gap between the lightening sky and buff-colored slopes of grass. In the distance a profusion of bare branches announced the presence of the river for which the clinic was named, but he could see no hint of the water itself. No one dared the cold to walk along the paths. He didn't blame them.
His watch beeped eight o'clock. At that precise moment his phone began to ring, and a fresh cascade of messages poured onto his computer screen. Ali sucked in another deep breath and began his day.
Here he was at ground zero, standing beside his Victory motorcycle, parked in his parking spot. It was astonishingly close to the front entrance of the Riverview Clinic. There was the small neat sign: "No. 5 - Director", with "A. al-Amat" printed below. The January wind sighing over the curve of his helmet was bitterly cold.
There was the hospital's brick-and-mortar facade, peaceful at this hour. The building had to be a hundred years old at the very least. The seven am sunlight struggled through the chill and lowering clouds down to earth; when it reached the long narrow windows it seemed hardly to have the strength to reflect there, and it puddled listlessly on the sidewalk. There were only small signs of life: two nurses in white walking to the front entrance, their faces burned vividly pink by the cold air. One cut her eyes at him, whispered behind her hand at the other. The breeze carried their giggling from fifty feet away.
The Chief is going to have my head by the end of the day, he thought in resignation. Doctor Kieran Dorst, the chief resident, had already threatened him once for agitating her flock of nurses.
He was stalling, he knew it. But he'd meant to be here precisely at eight o'clock, he really had; only he'd found himself at five-thirty with the sheets in a tangle, staring at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head, brain clicking away at a furious rate. Making plans. Turning over ideas. There was no sleep left in him. And so here he was standing out in the parking lot, an hour early.
Well, this is the moment of truth...please, Bast, let there be coffee, he thought. Then he took a deep breath and walked into the building.
—-
"Mr. al-Amat!"
The receptionist waved him over as soon as he pulled his helmet off inside the lobby's blessed warmth. "Doctor Valkonan said you'd be in. Here, these are for you. Also this, and Mr. Milken—he's our accountant—he wants to meet with you today. He'll talk to you about the requisitions. And this is for you, too, and these are for your health insurance, you'll want to look those over. This is a map, just in case you need help finding your way around the first few days. Doctor Dorst left you a reminder that you promised her lunch. Doctor Valkonan said she'd like to check in with you this afternoon. Also, I would just like to point out that you need an assistant, because there is no way I'm doing this for you every day."
Her grin was surprisingly cheeky after the rapid-fire delivery, and she seemed utterly immune to his good looks. With the helmet and the load of paperwork and forms and notes and brochures she'd given him, his arms were entirely full. He very, very briefly considered giving it back to her, turning around, and walking back out again. He'd never been responsible for more than a hundred people at a time in his entire life, barring the Killarney evacuation. How was he going to do this"
Then the five-thirty excitement, the awareness of possibility, rose up in him once more. He took another deep breath and returned her smile. "Thank you. Where is my office, please?"
She pointed. "Administration is down that hall, you'll see the doors. You're third door on the right. Doctor Star is in today, so if you see a dolphin floating around, don't freak out or anything, okay?"
Ali thanked her again, noting the nametag—Lorelei Ashcroft—and her appearance—slight build, blonde braids, impressively pointed ears—hefted the small mountain of paperwork, and limped off down the directed hallway. Behind him there was a sudden bout of giggling as more nurses walked in.
—-
There was coffee.
On a set of cabinets built into one wall was the coffee maker—already loaded and filled with water; he pressed the button and it gurgled happily at him—and a spider plant he resolved to name "Droopy."
His desk was a giant slab of cherrywood, polished to a satiny semi-gloss finish, with about a thousand drawers and shelves and cubbyholes tucked in underneath. To his delight, it was big enough that he could stretch out his legs without feeling the least bit cramped. It fit him so well that it smacked of pre-planning—he found himself wondering whether it had always been in this office, or whether it had been ordered the day he was first being considered as a candidate. He sat in his chair (buttery-soft brown leather, exceedingly ergonomic, also a perfect fit) and wondered whether he should even ask about it. The offer of L'Esprit de Courvoisier from Maranya's boyfriend Antonio still had him stunned.
Upon the desk was a telephone with too many buttons, and a computer: small, sleek, asleep save for a small green replica of the hospital's logo in one corner of the screen. When he tapped a key to wake it, fifteen notes pasted to the virtual work surface sprang to life. The topmost was a reminder that he needed to key the computer to his voice; the second was a message that he needed to meet with the head of the hospital's information technology department; and so on, each one flashing an urgent, seizure-inducing orange at him.
He flipped through the messages to kill the painful flashing, then poured himself a cup of coffee and drank it while looking out his very own tall, narrow window onto the grounds. They were manicured and quite dead; the skeletons of trees bridged the gap between the lightening sky and buff-colored slopes of grass. In the distance a profusion of bare branches announced the presence of the river for which the clinic was named, but he could see no hint of the water itself. No one dared the cold to walk along the paths. He didn't blame them.
His watch beeped eight o'clock. At that precise moment his phone began to ring, and a fresh cascade of messages poured onto his computer screen. Ali sucked in another deep breath and began his day.