THE SECOND CONVOY It is 7 a.m. on Monday and a rush of calls to the 6 a.m. crew is coming in. The vampires again hedge and get told to come in by 2 p.m.. But this time we immediately get calls to the 10 a.m. crew asking if they can come in. Basically all of the vampires scheduled for today are getting called in. All of them refuse. When my call from Fane (my RN) comes in, I answer: “Sorry, no, I can’t come in today. I should be fine though, I did dialysis through another clinic yesterday, so I should be good until Wednesday”. Fane seems a bit perturbed, but just grumbles a “Fine, see you Wednesday”. “Have a Happy Independence Day!” I finish with. The second exodus of trucks left our staging facility at 2 a.m. on Saturday. The group of Ford F-450 Duallies was paired with another team of 12, and with the SUV escorts, the 24 Duallies scattered as far as Redding to the north, Tahoe to the east, Bakersfield to the southeast, and Santa Barbara on the southern coastline. This was the main reason we were doing everything so early on Saturday night: we needed to get all the satellites in place so I can return to Boardwalk with some reasonable chance of getting through the gates before the storm. I am not an escort for any of the satellite Duallies: instead, I run the complete perimeter from Eureka through Bishop and back. This is just to confirm that all the satellites are up and working, and to note their approximate location. I am (and will always be) the only person that knows where they are. At least where they were initially: they are supposed to move every week to a new location within a 30-mile area of their starting position. Upon my departure, the satellites are completely disconnected cells. They know their patients and will fetch and return them. Although we have ulterior motives, from the patients’ perspectives we are going a step-beyond by providing door-to-door limo service. Visiting all the satellites took more than a day — the reports of what happened in the main compound on Saturday were second hand for me — and I returned to the compound 40 hours and 2000 miles later at 6 p.m. Sunday night. The activation of the satellites was the major difference between today (Monday) and the vampire-calls from Saturday. With two dozen - 83 -
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