Sunnyvale » Ms. Ramirez

personalities. One is his historically affable and sometimes loquacious demeanor, and the other is terse to the edge of being rude. The timing of the change seems near to the senate bill project, but it doesn’t match that exactly. And that went so well: the committee was very pleased.

“Is there anything else you would like to talk about? Working for Google would be exciting wouldn’t it?”

“I have other projects I would rather be working on: you know about my ending-homeless endeavors. If I could work on them full time, that would be great. Any chance Amasa is willing to buy or give away some land to let homeless people live in freedom? It would be nicely located if it was anywhere near the campus.”

“I don’t think Amasa’s charter includes that goal, sorry. And Amasa has to protect its assets for future needs.”

“Amasa has a project that needs thirty billion dollars? Is it about to provide a college education and degree to everyone in the United States for free?”

“Above my pay grade, sorry.”

SUNNYVALE » MS. RAMIREZ

We have run out of chairs for dialysis in the Bay Area. There is a huge increase in patients needing dialysis in the Sunnyvale area, and I hear the nurses and technicians discussing it almost every day. New technicians are being trained out of Menlo Park because there is no capacity to train them in Sunnyvale. The hiring and training activities are intense, but somehow they don’t seem to be sufficient to keep up with demand. We are literally out of chairs.

Remigius makes the dialysis machines we use, and we have not had a machine in ages. We tend to get them in bulk of eight or more at a

time. But we have had no deliveries in months in spite of having enough staff (and patients) to use them.

I am a patient at Sunnyvale, but I also work for Medicare: I know we can pay for more dialysis patients, dialysis is profitable for clinics even with our negotiated rates, and there are patients that need the procedure every week. But Voyager and Remigius are not growing quickly enough to meet that demand. I have no idea what the holdup is.

Mark transferred to Sunnyvale temporarily at the same time Jennifer went to Menlo Park, so neither clinic ran out of chairs. Amasa and Voyager orchestrated that lucky coincidence, given the limited chairs in both facilities. His scheduled start time matches mine and we both take the train to the Lawrence station so we walk to dialysis together before each of our session.

“Good morning Mark! How do you always beat me?”

“I am coming from the north, and the train arrives a few minutes before yours. You are coming up from Gilroy right?”

“Yes, housing down there is more reasonable, but I have an hour commute on the train. Fortunately the schedule works out, otherwise I would be unable to get home. I am not allowed to drive after the treatment.”

“I like Gilroy: you put garlic in everything.” Mark says with a smile and wink. He always looks me straight in the eye, even while we are walking together. Or at least always whenever I look his way. I wonder if he ever trips?

“Funny. How is the housing project going?”

“Frustrating. I have asked the state for help, the county for help, various cities for help, and a number of big winners of Silicon Valley for help. And this is just help with material and land: we can find people willing to help build out whole communities for free. Partially they want to do good and partially they want the experience of actually building things. If successful, it would be a massive project crossing the concepts from Habitat for Humanity and Amish barn raising. But I have only managed some amount of financing for materials and equipment. No land.”

“I would love to see this happen too. I am not very good with tools though and don’t have any resources of note. Except garlic.”