April Isn't Just A Month

The night sounds and smells traveling on the air told April that it was truly summer in Mississippi. The traffic, just off the clinic grounds, told her it was highway 90 running there. It was the same as everything else at the clinic. The highway was the old version of highway 90. The one that wound it's way through town, not the new one that by passed, the bypass. The heat and humidity were worse than any April remembered, but then it seemed to be like that every year.

April was 48 years old and for over half of her life, she was either a nurse, or learning how to be a better nurse. First she became an LPN because it was the only school she could afford. Then the US Army offered her a scholarship, if she agreed to serve three years after she graduated.

After her RN, and two tours in Afghanistan she saved some cash. The cash, and the proceeds of the new GI bill, she was able to get a masters degree in nursing. She could have done it in three years, but she went to the longer four year NP specialty. She did that for two reasons, she had the tuition money from the army, a part time job with a local urgent care clinic, and finally she had a cop boyfriend who was recently divorced.

It worked out really well until someone shot her cop. No it didn't kill him, but it probably would have been better for her, if the gun thug had been better at his job. instead of killing him, it made him reassess his life's direction. Of course when he did that his wife and child seemed more important that a piece of ass.

So here I am ten years later, and ten pounds heavier, she thought. She found herself still working for the clinic just outside Biloxi Mississippi. It was the clinic where she worked part time while she pursued her NP degree. She had worked at that clinic until the day she received her medical license in the mail.

She had more practical experience than any doctor in the area, which the clinic owners loved. They got someone who was trauma triage trained, for the salary of a Nurse practitioner. She had always planned to got to work somewhere else, but she just couldn't seem to leave her boyfriend Brad. She had started on the night shift, and just stayed with it after Brad had gone home to his wife.

April dated several men, most of them were on the fringes of the Clinic's orbit. Some were cops, some firemen, some military men, mostly they were men who weren't likely to ask for a commitment. It just seemed to work best that way.

"I need some help here," a black male about thirty said pushing his way through the line. April looked up and saw him almost dragging another black main into the clinic.

"Someone call an ambulance I will try to help him till they get here," April said as one of the RNs on duty helped the man onto a gurney. They quickly rolled him into a cubicle and pulled the curtain.

"Don't you call no one," the man who brought his friend in said. "Anybody shows up and she dies. He said pointing the gun at April. He followed his friend and the two nurses into the curtained off treatment area.

"You can't be in here," April said to the man.

"I ain't leaving my boy," he said pulling a pistol from behind his back.

"You need to put that away right now, it makes me nervous, and I have work to do," April said.

"If you don't fix Bobo, this piece is gonna make you dead. Bobo dies, you die. You understand that bitch?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'll do what I can," April said as she began to work on the young black man. To the RN she said, "Go get me a GSW tray stat." She really hoped the gunman would let her out and then tjhat she would run like hell and take everyone else with her.

"If you are not back in two minutes, I kill the doc," the man with the gun said.

The RN left the room. "You know if you kill me, he is for sure going to die," April said that as she began exploring the wound and clamping off the worst bleeders. "He needs a surgeon. I have got him stable enough, so that he has a chance, if you let me call an ambulance. If you don't he is going to die for sure."

"Save him. He is a tough kid. He can walk out of here if you stop the bleeding," the young man with the gun said.

"No he won't. He needs a resection of his damaged artery. He is going to die, if not from the blood loss, it will be a blood clot to his brain. Only chance he has is a real hospital." she repeated.

"If he goes to a hospital, we both are going to die," the kid said. "You sure without a hospital he will die?"

"In about ten more minutes all kinds of bad shit is going to start happening. Why don't you take to the woods out back, and we will get him to the hospital. Don't go home, or to anyone you think is your friend. You can make it, if you run now." She said all that as she hung a bag of universal O type plasma. She continued to soak up the blood making it look even worse than it was. She just threw the used swabs on the floor to heighten his sense of horror.

The RN came in with more instruments and took a look around at the carnage. The floor of the examining room looked worse than Saturday night in a West Virginia red neck bar, she thought.

April waited for the RN to say something stupid, but she kept her head down and pushed the fluids. April continued to clean up blood and make moves like she was doing more, but there was nothing more she could do without lots of blood. The kid needed surgery that she didn't dare do on her own.

"He is crashing," April said to the RN. She knew it was a lie, but her RN managed to look terrified. "You know the ambulance and the cops are on the way. You need to run, if you are going to have any chance at all."

Without saying a word, it must have all finally struck him because the gun thug turned and ran out the door. April had half expected him to stop and shoot them all on the way out. "Call the paramedics and the police. Tell them we are going to transport a GSW to the ER in Biloxi. He is going to have some tissue damage due to a clamped artery, but that the second choice had been exsanguination," April said to the RN.

After the patient headed for the Biloxi Regional Medical Center, April walked into the shower stall and washed the blood of her body. She wondered about the blood on her soul.

"You got a kid with a runny nose waiting to see you," the RN said from the doorway.

"Okay break out the Benedryl," April said before she followed the RN back into the clinic's treatment room. The shift ended with a sprained ankle on a seriously drunk teenaged boy. April turned in her paperwork and walked out the clinic door.

She pushed her magic button and the car's horn beeped and the lights flashed. Since the sun had been up for over an hour, she walked to the beep. She got into the ten year old car, then found the two year old mp3 player button. She started the car and player at the same time.

She exited the parking lot with the music playing at a mind numbing volume. Louis Armstrong was grinding out the soulful, 'I went down to Saint James Infirmary'.

April 2

When April left the parking lot, after her latest near death experience, she drove straight to breakfast at a local mom and pop diner. She spent an hour over breakfast and a quick review of her present life. It was not at all what she had expected at her high school graduation.

After she graduated from Loyola in New Orleans with her Masters degree in nursing, she purchased a 1960 style concrete block people warehouse. She was familiar with the building, since she lived there while working at the clinic and attending classes ninety miles away. People called the ugly tourist trap a motel, until it was by passed by the new highway. When that happened, they called it a crime problem. Shortly after that designation became all too common, it went up for sale. Since she had recently made the commitment to stay with the Urgent Care Clinic, she bought it as an investment.

Her original intentions had been to move out and buy a house. Like a lot of things in here life, for one reason or another, it just never happened. She hated her time living in the warehouse, as a motel, so when she bought it, she turned two of the rooms into a small apartment for herself. One of the other things she did was to closed the leaky swimming pool, which lowered her insurance rates immediately.

Her people warehouse was located just far enough inland not to flood, when the average run of the mill tropical storm surges came along. It was still close enough to the Gulf to get the breeze and the smell of life that came from the Gulf. It was a great location for her, but not so much for tourist.

Since she and the manager had a falling out after a few months, April took a sudden change in direction. She began guiding the people warehouse toward an efficiency apartments concept. The move would allow her to employ a clerical type worker to act as manager. The first thing she had to do was clear all the short term room tenants. She had to do that before she could convert their rooms to longer term apartments.

After the changes had been underway for couple of months, the place was bringing in enough money to cover most of the cost of its operation and renovations. She had seen the shortfall in income drop to less than zero, even though it was under constant renovations. Even at the beginning of the changes, when there had been a couple of shortfall months, they had never been more than a thousand dollars. All in all, it had quickly become a pretty good investment. She was living rent free and accumulating equity.

She made the move to short term lease apartments one at a time, as the even shorter term residents left. She got rid of most of the former single room residents by just waiting for them to leave. The length of a motel room rental usually was a very short period of time. It was limited to the amount of time that an oil rig worker's family could spend away from home.

After a breakfast at Eddie's Breakfast house on old hwy90, it was only a short drive to her motel and home. When she entered the parking lot of her building. she saw that the kid's playground was empty, so she wanted to get into bed quickly, before they started to show up. As she drove deeper into the parking lot. she noticed that Viv's car wasn't in the space where she normally parked it. April knew that she had to check on her, before she went to bed. If Viv didn't show for work, the prospective tenant calls would be forwarded to her phone. Those calls about seeing the apartments would come all day on Saturdays. They would surely interfere with her sleep. April wasn't all that worried since Viv had proved to be reliable. She was more curious than anything else.

April parked her car in front of the office while picturing Viv in her mind. Viv was an attractive woman, not more than five years younger than April's forty eight years. She was attractive in an almost punk way. That in itself was strange for a woman her age, April thought. Even though she had tattoos and terrible taste in clothes, the worst thing had to be her barn red. The color was made popular by bad science fiction movies. April was also pretty sure Viv moonlighted as a hooker. She also thought that it was none of her business.

Night shift at an Urgent Care didn't exactly bring one into contact with the country club types. April first met Viv at the clinic. She treated Viv for a mild skin infection created by a tattoo needle. Fortunately it responded to a topical antibiotic so she never came for the follow up appointment.

Two weeksafter that meeting, Viv applied for the apartment manager's job. It took her several minutes to recognize April, but eventually did. It was the only thing she had going for her. She had hardly any references, but since there was no money for her to embezzle, it wasn't much of a problem.

April said, "Viv, I would say this to anyone applying for an apartment here, and I hope you will as well. We don't allow any illegal activities in the apartments. That includes things like drugs and prostitution. Do we understand each other?"

"I date a lot. Is that going to be a problem?" Viv asked after spending a moment thinking it over.

"If you date more than one guy at a time, or more than one a night. Then yeah, we will have a problem," April explained. "If we agree, I will pay you minimum wage and deduct the rent on the apartment. You will get the manager's apartment and it comes with a 50% discount." Mostly Viv seemed to want a place to live, so the small pay wasn't a problem.

"So, do I have to sit in the office all day?" Viv asked.

"You have to be in the office to take care of the place, so yes," April stated.

"So, if I'm working weekends, because you do, when do I get time off?" Viv asked.

"I need you to work at least Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The rest of the time I can handle," April said.

"Are you going to run a background check on me," Viv asked.

"I am," April replied.

"I don't have any work history. Most of the job I've done were for cash," Viv said.

"Anything criminal?" April asked again.

"One prostitution charge, years ago," Viv said.

In fact there were three Prostitution and one domestic assault charge. In Mississippi it was hard to find people who would work part time jobs for the minimum wagesi. At least damn few who didn't have at least some minor police record. In the end she was the best of a bad lot.

Viv arrived just as April prepared to go knock on her door. "Sorry boss lady but my boyfriend wanted one more bang before he left. It is Saturday you know."

April turned to see the pickup leave the parking lot. Oil rig workers usually made up most of the Johns in the Gulf Coast area. Viv had proved to be a reliable employee, so April was hesitant to mention that Viv's boyfriend had access to a hell of a lot of different cars. He also wore a lot of disguises. April had a feeling that Viv used the term boyfriend in the place of customer. Still she was inclined to ignore it. Yeah she knew Viv was a ticking time bomb, but she was also a lot of fun to have around. The tenants all loved her. April just hoped that they didn't love her in the physical sense.

"You know there is a note in computer every time you log on and off," April suggested.

"Yes Boss lady, you can dock my pay," she said.

"Don't worry I plan to do just that," April said. Actually the office computer did keep track of Viv's sign in and out times. Those were her official work hours for pay purposes. If she signed in late by mistake, she never complained. April knew that Viv had a good deal, and wasn't planning to fuck it up over ten bucks.

"Be sure to turn on your white noise today. The contractor is working on unit eight," Viv explained.

"I will, but they are supposed to be painting and laying new carpet. Michael promised me the real work was complete," April said.

"If I hear so much as one bang of a hammer or one second of a compressor noise, I will be down there in a flash raising hell. I know my job," Viv said.

"Okay, then I'm off to bed," April replied.

April had showered at the clinic, so she fell right into bed, after barely taking time to remove her jeans and bra. She did that woman maneuver to remove her bra while leaving the cut off sweat shirt in place. Then fell into bed.

She never wore scrubs while traveling to or from the clinic, too many things could happen. If she were recognized as a nurse, no good could come from it. Nurses never had the kind of luck that normal people have. They were like cops in that respect, if a stranger spoke to her, it almost always meant trouble. She could always count on that, so she changed at work.

She was in a deep asleep when she heard the knock on the door. She struggled to remember if she was decent before she opened the door. She finally decided that she was decent, but only barely, since she had worn her panties and sweat shirt to bed.

"We got shit falling from the sky," Viv said in a rush as April opened the door.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" April asked.

"The woman living in apartment three is dead," Viv said.

"Are you sure she's dead? What the hell happened?" April asked hurriedly.

"You are the big shot nurse. You want to go look and then tell me," Viv replied.

"How do you know she is dead?" April asked sorry she had questioned Viv's opinion.

"I looked in the door and there is a big ass puddle of blood. Trust me I know dead when I see it."

"Did you call 911?" April asked.

"Yes the cops are on the way," Viv said.

"Well there goes my sleep today," April said. "Why did I ever buy this place?"

"Don't ask me, I just work here," Viv said.

"Well go back to the office and pull up her file. Have it ready when the cops ask for it. I'm exhausted I'm going to try to get some sleep, at least an hour or so while they do their CSI shit," April suggested. When she her head hit the pillow she was almost asleep. It was a trick, sleeping under pressure, one she had learned in Kabul.

April 3

April had been able to put everything else out of her mind to sleep hard until the persistent knocking on the apartment door woke her. She staggered out of bed and to the door. She didn't care that she was almost naked in her short sweatshirt and bikini panties. By the age of forty eight, she had pretty much lost all her false modesty.

"What?" she asked the two police officers almost angrily.

"Sorry to bother you miss, but the manager said you owned the apartment where she found the body?" the young black policeman asked.

"Yes, I own the whole building. Did she also tell you I worked a twelve hour shift last night and wasn't here till almost 10am. I heard and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Now can I go back to sleep?" April asked.

"Have you ever met the lady," the woman asked.

"Had," April said. "It is had, if she is deceased, which I assume she is. And I only knew her as a tenant. I told Vivian, the weekend manager, to get the records for you. Those records are all I know about her. Now I'm going to close the door and return to bed. That is unless you plan to arrest me for sleeping."

The two of them didn't move so April closed the door in their faces. She walked though the archway which connected the two motel rooms. One room was her large bedroom and average sized bath. The second room had been converted to a small living room with kitchen and dining area.

The Bedroom had required minimal renovation while the living room required slightly more. Turning the bathroom into a galley kitchen, and the dressing area of the old bedroom, into a small dining area had been only slightly more work. All the apartments were going to be more or less the same.

April walked to her small refrigerator for a glass of chemical orange juice. The chemicals in the fake orange juice were probably less toxic than the orange juice grown with fertilizer and pesticides. She drank the fake juice as she swallowed four generic Ibuprofen tablets. Rather than heating coffee, she staggered back to bed.

In the summer most folks ran their air conditions wide open. April chose instead to open all the fancy new windows she had installed. Below each of the front thermal pane windows was a high efficiency heat pump. Fitted inside each of her smaller rear windows was a reversible fan. It was possible to create a wind tunnel effect in each room separately from the other. It was a good cooling system most days.

Since she was on the second floor with no fire escapes on the rear, the windows back there were fairly secure with just a good lock. At least in the winter months a lock was all that was needed, in the summer a cut off broom handle in each of their tracks secured them.

The windows on the front had light weight aluminum decorative faux iron shutters installed. It was possible to open the window, without opening the shutters. All of those features taken together made for a secure, effective ventilation system. Each of the units were going to have the faux iron shutters installed as they were converted to apartments.