Destiny's Revenge (Destiny Series - Book 2) by Straight, Nancy (management books to read .TXT) 📕

small talk. He must have something on his mind; he couldn’t really have called me over for this.

I looked at my watch now with fourteen minutes before my shift. Keeping this up with Randy would be the equivalent to piercing my eyelids – useless and painful. “Alright, well it was good talking to you, I’m going to head in and see about a quick turnover so maybe we can spring the off-going fellas a couple minutes early.”

I turned away and was two steps into my escape when Randy asked, “So, do you hear much from Lauren? You were quite an item for a while, right?”

That was odd? But I guess Lauren was a bit of a celebrity for a time. She stopped a robbery by stepping in front of a little kid just as the guy pulled the trigger. She saved that kid’s life that day and had been all over the news for it. Randy actually introduced himself to Lauren and me shortly after the incident. “I just saw her before I came to work. I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

I saw that he seemed pleased, and I turned back toward the door. When I reached for the handle, another paramedic opened it into me. I was startled but so was he. We introduced ourselves. He was one of the off-going guys, Robert. “It sure is great to meet you. Your timing is great by the way. Dale’s partner quit, and I was going to have to cover half of last night’s shift until you appeared out of nowhere.”

“Well then, I guess I picked the opportune time to go job hunting. If I’d have known, I might have held out for more money.”

Robert gave me a quick rundown of their calls for the day; looks like it had been pretty slow. They had spent most of their day moving patients from emergency rooms to other hospitals. Dale and I weren’t so lucky. Within thirty minutes we were racing up I-26 to a multi-car accident near North Charleston. Three ambulances were on the scene, and it was gory enough that I had a quick flashback to a roadside bomb that had exploded in Afghanistan. I quickly filed the images from Afghanistan away in the back of my mind and helped the people in front of me.

We stayed pretty engaged most of the night, and it wasn’t until nearly three a.m. that we had time for a bite to eat. Eating out of vending machines is never my favorite, but that time of night is too late for Taco Bell and too early for Dunkin’ Donuts.

Thoughts of Lauren consumed me now that I had idle time. I tried to think back to my conversation with Samael. He could put images in my head but he really couldn’t control any part of me. I didn’t think he could override my will. That’s the problem, I didn’t think he could…but I just didn’t know that he couldn’t. Dale and I were sitting silently in the ambulance. It was a little awkward, but not uncomfortable enough to break the silence. I found a piece of today’s, or I guess technically yesterday’s, newspaper on the floor. I picked it up and leafed through the Business section. Nothing particularly caught my attention, but it gave me a good reason not to start up a conversation with Dale. He reached into a book bag and pulled out a thick textbook and began to read.

After I had flipped through the newspaper twice, I put it back on the floor, “I’m going to check supplies in the back and restock.” Nothing worse than going to an accident and being out of some simple piece of first aid gear. Dale nodded but didn’t look up from his book.

I did a full inventory of all drawers and shelves and the two bags. I went into the office and pulled all the material to be fully stocked. I flipped through an end-of-shift check off sheet; it looks like we’re supposed to sign this off every day. This wasn’t something we had the last time I was a paramedic. I meticulously went through the entire sheet and did all the things I was supposed to do. It was six fifteen, less than an hour until our relief would show up. My mind began to wander, and it made its way to Lauren, again. Trying to snap myself out of it, I asked, “So Dale, are you taking some classes or something?”

“Yeah, nothing exciting though. My degree is in computer science. I can’t stand taking all these worthless classes.”

“What, like English?”

“I wish, at least I’d have some hope of passing that. No, I’m taking Eastern Religions, and I’ve read this one passage like ten times. I have no idea what I’ve even read.”

I had to endure the same thing when I was in college. I offered Dale a little advice, “Sometimes it helps to cement it if you talk through the subject. What was the main idea of what you read?”

“I don’t know, something about the Islamic demons called Jinns. I have no idea what value this could possibly have to a computer programmer. Like maybe we’re going to come across Ilbis when we’re coding or something?”

I could feel Samael listening; it was the strangest feeling. It was as if he were somehow heightening my listening or something. “What the heck is a Jinn?”

Dale answered, “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but it is some kind of low level demon that works for the head demon, Ilbis.”

Samael was quick to comment this time, “There is no such thing as a low level demon. There are only servants to Ilbis.”

The last thing I wanted to do was screw up and start talking to myself in front of Dale, so I thought hard, “Samael, keep your thoughts to yourself.”

I couldn’t offer Dale anything other than my sympathy because I really didn’t know how knowledge of demons would help someone be a better computer programmer. Heck,