CHAPTER 1
In the hotel lobby, two of the other applicants he met the night before were waiting. One was a fat Indian girl named Belinda, and the other a scrawny kid with premature balding and over-sized glasses whose name he had forgotten. Both of them were enjoying the generous continental breakfast provided by the hotel.
“Howdy,” the kid with the forgotten name said.
“Hey,” Belinda said.
Gunn nodded at them. “When’s the shuttle coming?”
“He here now,” Belinda said, jamming more biscuits and gravy into her mouth. “Rye oww-side…”
He looked up at the entrance where a middle-age man in a Comfort Inn Suits polo was standing next to a hotel shuttle. Forgoing the breakfast, Gunn trekked his way out of the lobby and through the automatic doors. Passing the threshold, a cold wind rippled loudly through his suit jacket with a bite that surprised him.
“Didn’t know Phoenix got this damn cold,” he muttered.
“Oh it does,” the man said in a thick southern accent that was distinctly non-Arizonean. Texan perhaps? The tag on his polo shirt named him as Troy. “You goin’ to the hospital?”
For reasons which were entirely instinctual and automatic, Gunn’s eyes made a quick note of an unnatural ruffling in Troy’s clothing. On the right-hip, the subtle outline of a firearm bulged through his polo shirt.
“Interviewing at the Department of Internal Medicine.”
Troy nodded, pointing a finger through the window. “Waitin’ on Shamu in there.”
Gunn did a double-take, looking back through the glass where his two colleagues were still seated. Belinda seemed to be going to town on a fresh stack of waffles, while the other kid was nowhere to be seen. Thinking he had misheard through the thick accent, he said, “Huh?”
“Waitin’ on those two in there.”
Gunn smiled. “Yeah.”
After about a minute of silence, in which the cold wind continually assaulted him, Gunn excused himself and went back inside. At the reception desk, a middle-aged woman in a scarf and North Face was drinking from a thermos, preoccupied with something on her cell phone.
“I guess there are winters in Arizona,” Gunn said.
“Huh?”
“You’re dressed for the seasons,” Gunn said. “I thought it was ninety degrees down here year around.”
The woman smiled tersely. “Can I help you?”
Pleasant one this is, he thought. “I need to check-out.”
She walked up to the terminal and started typing on the keyboard. She seemed to stay at it for an inordinate amount of time before Gunn tried passive-aggressively speeding up the process by handing over the key card to his room.
“It’ll be ten dollars for incidentals,” the woman said.
Gunn frowned. “For what? The hospital should be paying for everything.”
“It’s for the valet service sir.”
Gunn handed over his debit card. She slid it through the slot on the side of the computer monitor then frowned.
“Something wrong?”
She slid the card again, and then another time.
“It says it’s declined. Do you have another method of payment?”
“No way it’s declined,” Gunn said. “My wife didn’t spend all my money that quickly.”
The woman didn’t smile. Tough crowd.
Gunn handed over a ten dollar bill and she handed him a itemized receipt.
Stuffing it into the garbage can, he pulled out his smartphone. Using the back of his apparently invalid debit card, he dialed the toll-free number for customer service.
When the call didn’t go through, he looked at his phone. There was a message in the upper-right hand corner: “Out of Service Range.”
“What the ****?”
He stepped outside and re-dialed a second time. The same response. Gunn looked around the parking lot and then above the top of the palm trees as he stepped further out. He gazed across the canopy as though the answer to his troubles lay somewhere in the heavens. Instead of finding an answer, however, his nose picked-up a unmistakable scent.
Burning?
He turned back to the hotel. A flag pole in the front near where Troy was helping his two colleagues load onto the van was rippling gently in the wind.
“You coming?” Troy asked.
“One second,” he said, walking back in the lobby. The receptionist was sitting behind the desk, her head cast down. But this time, he noticed she was asleep.
“Excuse me?” he said.
She wavered.
“Excuse me?”
She stirred suddenly, and then shook herself awake, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
“Long night?”
The corners of her mouth twitched upward again in the same tightwad smile.
“My colleague was supposed to be here at five AM to relieve me.”
Gunn looked at the time on his non-functioning cell phone. It was nine o’clock. “He’s pretty late.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a phone I can borrow?”
She shook her head.
Gunn reached into his wallet and extracted a five dollar bill. “Do you have a phone I can borrow?”
“No sir,” she said. “The phone line is down.”
Gunn stared at her for a moment. “Kind of a problem for a reservation business?”
“Ya’ll got any food?” a voice said from behind.
Gunn turned to see a heavy-set white woman in a dirty pink robe standing in the doorway. She wore dark makeup that was poorly applied and had purple and orange highlights streaked throughout her disheveled blonde hair. Behind her was a group of fifteen people of varying age, gender, and race. Each was dressed more or less in their pajamas, or similarly unflattering jeans that seemed to hang closer to the ground than the waist.
The receptionist had a look of alarm on her face. “I’m sorry, our buffet is only for our paid guests.”
“How you know we ain’t guests?” a man said, stepping into the forefront. He was big, about Gunn’s size only twenty pounds or so heavier in the gut. “We’re your neighbors. Ain’t you gunna be hospitable?”
Gunn’s heart rate inched up a notch. Neighbors?
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. Her voice was shaking slightly. “I have to ask you to leave.”
The crowd didn’t budge.
“You coming?” another voice said. Thickly southern.
Gunn looked beyond the mass to the front drive, where Troy was poking his head inside. “Gunna be late.”
He looked between the receptionist and the band of poorly dressed people. He noticed that two of their rank — a white man and a much younger black boy, had already inched their way into the small cafeteria and were helping themselves to the spread.
“Sorry,” Gunn managed, before walking out.
“You got any money?” a black woman with a lazy eye asked him, stepping right in front of his path. He nearly ran straight into her.
“No,” he said, then side-stepped her. As he walked through the doors, he was distinctly aware of the several unfriendly eyes upon him.
Troy was loading their bags into the trunk when Gunn climbed into his own row, behind scrawny and in front of Belinda, who seemed to need to sprawl herself out on three seats.
“Sorry, I forgot your name, friend?” Scrawny said.
“Marcus.”
They shook hands for the second time, and for the second time, scrawny gave him a very limp-wristed shake.
“Yeah sorry I just forgot,” scrawny said.
Gunn raised an eyebrow. “What’s yours again?”
“Oh you forgot mine too, huh?”
Gunn’s internal cringe-o-meter started ticking upward.
“Kayden,” he said. “But most people call me Kay.”
The sound of the door opening as Troy hopped into the front seat. “Sorry bout that,” he said.
“Who are those people up front?” Gunn asked.
Troy turned the ignition, and the large van roared to life. “Buncha sad lottery-ticket mentality folks.”
“They’re live in public housing up the street,” Belinda said.
“Why are they all over here?” Kayden asked.
“The EBT is offline,” Troy said, pulling the car out of the hotel lot and onto Van Buren Street. Through the wind shield, Gunn could make out the rising towers of the APC and the Sheraton. Hospital could’ve put us up in there, he thought. Not in that dumpy ghetto outhouse.
“What’s the EBT?” Kayden asked.
“Food stamps,” Belinda said. “Welfare for groceries.”
Kayden’s eyes bugged up real big. “Oh, are you sure that’s what it’s called?”
Belinda stared at him.
“Well I was taught that it was called supplemental nutrition insurance,” Kayden said. “When you say, ‘food stamps’, that can be offensive to some poor people.”
Gunn felt the heat rising under his collar. “How far to the hospital?”
Troy took a moment to respond, caught-up in staring at something outside the vehicle. Gunn followed his gaze to the side of the car, and did a double-take. At a Walmart about two blocks from the hotel, there was a line outside the door stretching from the parking lot to the edge of the street, past three adjacent storefronts.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Food stamps been down for two days now,” Troy said.
“Two days?” Gunn guffawed. He remembered reading something one time about the food supply in the United States, how it was very tenuous and that any interruption in the supplemental nutrition to the welfare-dependent could trigger riots within a matter of days.
Troy looked up at him in rearview mirror. “Where you been?”
Suddenly, Gunn was hit with the realization that in his twelve hour drive the night before, listening to nothing but his podcasts.
“Down all over the country?”
“As of this morning, yes,” Troy said. “But our state went down two nights ago.”
“I blame president Crump,” Kayden said, referring to the newly elected president of the United States. “He broke everything.”
Troy chuckled, though for some reason, Gunn didn’t think it an amused one. “It ain’t broken. There just isn’t any money left.”
“Oh sure there’s money,” Kayden said, waving his hand. Gunn looked outside at the various commercial buildings they were passing. “The problem is that these corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes.”
“Do you pay taxes?” Belinda asked.
Kayden gave her a sideways glance. “No, honey, I don’t pay taxes. I’m a debt-ridden student doctor, just like you.”
Gunn kept trying to get his cell phone to work, but the signal was still down. “Do any of your guys cell phones work?”
Belinda shook her head. “Nope.”
Kayden shook his head. “I left mine back the hotel. I don’t want Lady Gaga going off in the middle of my interview.” Perhaps to clarify the problem, Kayden began humming an obnoxious pop song.
Despite his growing anxiety, Gunn felt a small desire to throw Kayden’s head through the window.
The remainder of the drive to the hospital was more or less uneventful, save for the two other displays of crowds gathered outside supermarkets. At the one nearest the hospital, the crowd was almost double the size of the Walmart they initially passed, and somehow Gunn sensed the patrons were a little more desperate. Loud shouts and blaring music could be heard from the parking lots, with people littered about in the middle of the lot where customers were having a difficult time exiting. They were on the grass and in the middle of the street. Down a sidestreet, a BMW was accosted by five dubious-looking black teens who stepped in front of the car. The driver somehow managed to go in reverse quickly and retreat in the opposite direction.
“What the **** is going on,” Gunn murmured to himself.
##
The hospital lobby was more or less serene. The front desk was completely vacant, as was the valet booth outside. Troy parked the van in a handicap spot right next to the front entrance and got out with the three-man crew.
“I’ll wait right here for you,” Troy said.
They got out.
“It’s too bad the other people couldn’t make it,” Kayden said.
“Other people?” Gunn said.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “We were supposed to have eight people for this interview, but only three of us showed up.”
Gunn felt his anxiety really starting to peak. He looked back down at his cell phone which was still showing out of service. He felt a strong need to contact his wife.
The relatively sparse population of the lobby was somewhat comforting, leaving him to believe that whatever unrest was happening was isolated to the supermarkets. When a relatively attractive arab-looking woman in scrubs walked into the lobby, he felt himself ease further. At least there were still employees here.
“Hello guys,” she said.
Gunn noticed the large mug of coffee in her hand. She had dark cicles under her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Chandra couldn’t make it today,” she said. “I’m Mina Siddiqui, I’m a first-year resident. If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to the program coordinator.”
They walked down a narrow hall, where the lights were dimmed. A yellow Caution sign warned people in three languages not to slip on the wet surface. Past a kiosk, there was also a person missing.
“Seems quiet,” Belinda said.
“Oh it’s not,” Dr. Mina said. “I’ve been here for twenty-eight straight hours. It’s a mad house up there.”
Gunn started piecing the pieces together.
The elevator took a long time to come, and when it did, six men in winter coats holding cell phones and chatting loudly stepped off. They ignored their crowd and walked off.
They took the elevator to the fifth floor. On the fourth floor, the door opened and Mina pressed the close door button repeatedly.
The door opened briefly anyway, and what Gunn saw surprised him.
There were dozens of people standing outside the elevator shouting at each other. Children running around back and forth. Gurneys with patients in blue gowns or in street clothes were pushed-up everywhere, though from his quick survey, not a single one seemed sick or injured. The sound of incessant bitching was strong in the air. Inside the throng, Gunn spied a nurse or two in green scrubs and a big red R.N. badge moving amongst them, but accosted every two steps by the maddening crowd.
“See, told you it’s crazy,” Mina said as the doors closed.
On the fifth floor, they moved off into a series of offices. There was a large office room with a group of cubicles. A sign on the door read, 'University of Arizona Graduate Medical Education." A man in a short clipped tie and khakis awaited them inside.
"Hello everyone, my name is Jim Callahan, I'm the program coordinator. I know we’re missing some people today and it’s the end of the interview season anyway, so we have shortened today's activities."
A beeper went off in the background. Mina tugged a black rectangular object off a clip on her scrub pants.
"****," she said warily and excused herself.
Callahan seemed somewhat embarrassed. "Can I ask you to have a seat while I call the interviewers to let them know you’re here?"
Outside, the unmistakable sound of glass shattering rang out, followed by a car alarm.
"Is everything ok?" Belinda asked.
"Everything is fine," Callahan said. "Everything is fine."
Gunn stared at him. The man seemed to waiver there in the doorway, hands clasped together as though he was in some kind of trance.
Gunn opened his cell phone again and it was still out of service.
"Everything is fine," Callahan said.
##
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