I is for Ian

“Don’t you have access to all that information?” I asked.

“I do,” he said. “I just didn’t need to look through it, I thought, since this floor is on its own power structure. It doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the hospital’s wiring. It’s all new.”

“Really? Why?”

Ben shrugged.

“It’s what they paid for,” he said. “They wanted to make sure that this floor was wired so it would have power that didn’t drain the rest of the resources of the hospital. They were very adamant that Dr. Sutton’s things needed to be wired that way.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Tell him what you told me,” Carl said, nudging Ben. “About the generator.”

“What about the generator?”

“Well,” he said, seeming slightly uncomfortable. “We are going to need to draw a lot of power to get this done, right? And since we don’t have the grid up for this floor separately yet, that means we would have to use the hospital’s power. But we don’t want to use too much and overload the system because this is a working hospital with people who need the power to survive. With the storm coming, we thought we should double our output and try to get it done quickly, and the board suggested using the generator to get things moving faster.”

“Oh. Did they?” I asked.

“They did,” Ben said, nodding. “There are multiple generators underground and on the roof. We brought a couple ourselves and I know you have some. I think if we used one of the hospital’s, we could take ourselves entirely off the hospital’s power, use as much as we need to get done, and at least be in a good place to leave it for your interior crews to finish before the big part of the storm hits.”

“I see,” I said.

It was risky. Using our generators that much meant that if the storm hit while we were here, we wouldn’t be able to depend on them. On the other hand, I had seen the forecasts too. I certainly didn’t want our boys stuck here in the hospital in a blizzard, which was what it was increasingly looking like.

“It’s your site,” Ben said. “Your call.”

“Have you done that before?” I asked.

“Running a hospital generator into a collection of my own? No, not exactly. I did it with a grocery store once though.”

“And you can do it safely? You’re confident?”

“I am,” he said.

“Alright then,” I said. “Do it. Let’s get this over with. But I want you to check and double-check with me before you do anything. We can’t risk anything going wrong.”

Both men nodded and then walked away, going back to what they had been up to before they stopped to talk. I went back to the office I had been in and sat by the window. We were going to be taking a calculated risk. But since it was just one generator off the hospital rig, I figured it would be okay. The electrician seemed like he was pretty positive he knew what he was doing, and I had to trust the guys at some point to be professionals.

As I sat in the big chair, overlooking the town as people scrambled to prepare for a massive storm, I shot off an email to my boss, explaining what was happening. I only hoped that we could get most of the guys out of there in time before the snow hit. The last thing I needed was to babysit a couple dozen bored, cold construction guys who all would rather be at home with their families.

9

MINA

I was coming out of the restroom, heading toward the nurses’ desk, when the lights flickered. Stopping in my tracks, I instinctively looked up, just in time for them to flicker again. Then, slowly, they faded, almost down to darkness, then came back up again. One more flicker and they returned to normal.

The floor became pandemonium after that.

Young and expectant mothers started calling for nurses, worried about their babies being born in darkness in the middle of a storm. No number of assurances that even if there was darkness and a storm around them, they were in a hospital, as safe as could be, would assuage them. Not even when they realized we had backup generators for just such an occasion.

I made it to the nurses’ desk after being called away to several of the rooms to help keep an upset and frightened family calm. Daisy was there, sitting in the chair and on the phone. I waited for her to get off before she looked at me, as if she hadn’t seen me standing there.

“Oh, Mina, hey,” she said. “Do you know what happened?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve been on the floor with you guys.”

“Right, right,” she said. “Everyone is so upset because of the storm coming.”

“I know.”

“I just wish there was something we could do.”