Bishop — John

THE NEIGHBORHOOD — CARL

Hod and I parked the LV and SUV — a bit North of Oroville on a dirt pullout about a mile beyond a fire station. At this point in the road it looked like almost no one came up this far, but we moved up here late Saturday night after the last dialysis shift, so we couldn’t see what traffic was normally like. It was also hard to see the road, although I could see lots of fauna around it in the bushes. We were definitely in some nice woods, but our goal was to hide and blend in… at the same time. To “look casual”.

We unhooked the 450, leveled the RV, and simply laid back for the next 48 or so hours reminiscing about glory days.

We had gone to college together: — I started a year after Hod, but somehow managed to finish before him. I was not a genius (or cutthroat as we called them), there were just some tough things about that school and Hod got bitten by them. The torture made us life-long friends.

Hod visited me in Stanford shortly after I was admitted. This was pre-Covid, so visitors were not a problem.

Hod recruited intensely — with the local DaVita dialysis clinics: he posed as a short-term visiting patient, and shift-by-shift he convinced both the vampire (easily recognized when you know what to look for) and patients to try out a new ‘free clinic’. Within two weeks we had a total of eight vampires including me, sixty patients, and could run every shift.

DaVita has so many clinics in the area that they shouldn’t have any service-delivery issues: they can just get other vampires to

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double-up and substitute a day a week for the missing vampire. It would take a lot of vampires if they each only took a single shift, but DaVita had a lot of vampires in the area.

The loss of sixty dialysis patients might be a bit of a shock: that equals about $3M per year.

They found the LV — stationed well-north of the dam. Hiding in plain sight might have been better, but cells are independent and this was their choice for that week.

A camouflaged golf cart pulled up and blocked the 450 (gutsy, given the size differential) while the escort SUV was picking up patients. Two guys armed with AR-15s jumped out and simply rang the doorbell. Vampires don’t scare easily, but they can be startled, and if Carl could fly he would have hit the ceiling.

Carl goes to the door and peaks through. Not wanting to be discourteous, he opens the door (also gutsy but not literally)…

The taller of the two start out: “Hi neighbor, this is Butthead & I am Beavis [not their real names]… and you are?”

“Standing here. This is a free country right?”

“Less than we want, but let me try again. We are here to welcome you into the neighborhood.”

“You brought me a cake? Or a fruit basket?”

Butthead chimes in with “Can people on dialysis eat cake?”

“I can eat all the cake I want. Why do you bring up dialysis?”

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“We, as in the town, are pretty sure you are one of the satellite dialysis clinics. So we are here to find out what is up with that”

“Well, again, I thought this was a free country. So I am not sure why you care.”

“Welllll… we think there is a good chance ‘the man’ knows where you are. And they might come visiting”

“That might be unpleasant. I would very much like ‘the man’ not to visit me and my friends. I am Carl by the way.”

“Thanks Carl. We would like ‘the man’ not to visit you either. At least not while you are in our territory.”

“You want us to leave?”

“No, you are free to stay as long as you like. Especially if you are doing free dialysis for some of our residents. In that case, we actually invite you to stay. With us. ”

“I need to stay with this RV. It is a bit large to move into someone’s driveway”

“You should see our driveway!”

So the Oroville cave “moved in” — with Beavis and Butthead — who are actually not at all like the characters — in a secluded compound a bit closer to the dam. Getting the LV up the dirt driveway going fairly vertically into the hills was a notable undertaking, but they offloaded most of the provisions and transported them with the trucks after getting the LV in place. It ultimately had a very scenic view overlooking the valley, which the patients may have enjoyed in spite of having very little idea where

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they were.

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