Chapter 27 #2
The nurse—or whatever he was—showed up then. “Sorry for the wait. There’s one of me and ten thousand people out there. What’s the problem?”
“My ankle. I twisted it hard.”
“Let’s get your shoe and sock off so I can take a look,” the man said. Daniel saw his nametag—Andy Thompson, RN. Definitely a nurse. That was encouraging.
The way Red’s face went purple and she cursed when he touched her foot was less encouraging. Daniel took her hand, squeezed it. “It’s okay, Red. I’m here with you.” She squeezed back harder, her nails digging into his hand as the nurse managed to get her shoe and sock off.
Her ankle looked swollen, but not horribly.
Daniel had read somewhere that if you broke a bone, there’d be huge swelling you couldn’t mistake.
The nurse felt around, with more cursing from Red, before he announced, “It’s a sprain.
I’ll put some ice on it for ten minutes, then I‘ll wrap it and I think I’ve got a plastic splint in here somewhere.
Keep it wrapped, keep icing it, keep it elevated, and you’ll be back to normal in a couple of weeks. ”
“Weeks?” Daniel didn’t know Red’s voice could go that high. “What am I supposed to do the rest of the conference?”
“I just told you,” the nurse said, with exaggerated patience. “Keep it wrapped, keep icing it, keep it elevated. And obviously don’t put any weight on it.”
“It’s fine, Red. We’ll take care of you. There’s a CVS a block away—remember, we passed it coming back from dinner last night? I’ll send someone over to get everything you need.”
Twenty minutes later, with Red on one leg and Daniel supporting most of her weight, they made their way back to the booth.
It wasn’t until they got there that he properly looked at his hand.
She’d actually drawn blood with her nails.
And in the back of his mind, he heard Nora’s voice: You should claim hazard pay for that.
Nora , late afternoon
She never did get back to Quantum Networking Systems. After lunch, she went to a demo of the Digital Compliance Library. It was run by the National Regulatory Institute—they published all those looseleaf binders of laws and regulations, the kind they mailed you new pages every month to update with.
It was a lot more interesting than she’d expected. They were replacing the binders with CD-ROMs—one disk instead of twenty books on a shelf, instantly searchable.
Livingston had several of their products, and for her first month on the job, it had been Nora’s job to swap out new looseleaf pages for old.
She’d ended up talking to their sales rep for half an hour after the demo was over. She had enough material for two pages in her coverage, and she could probably tie it into the Pentium chips, too.
Then Annette had found her, and they’d debriefed each other.
Nora suggested she check out the Intel booth, and if she could corner Dr. Patel, she could drop Nora’s name to help things along.
In return, Annette told her she’d heard that the CEO of Gateway 2000 was here at the conference, but they were keeping it secret until their big presentation tomorrow.
“Thanks,” Nora said, surprised. “You didn’t have to tell me that. You could have kept it to yourself.”
“I probably should have. Before last night, I think I would have. But you didn’t have to take time for me. Fair is fair.”
Nora knew that was an exaggeration. Last night’s dinner might have been the final straw that turned over a new leaf—she had to laugh at herself for that thought.
Her high school English teachers would’ve had a stroke over that metaphor, and Jack Elliott would probably fire her on the spot if she said it out loud.
But whichever metaphor she wanted to use, Annette must have been stewing over things for a while, and Nora had only given her that last little push she needed to start acting more like a halfway decent human being.
“Okay, in that spirit, if I manage to catch him and I get anything good, I’ll give you a heads-up.”
Annette smiled—a genuine, heartfelt smile.
“Thank you, Nora. I’ve got one more thing for you.
Totally not work-related, but you did say last night you haven’t had any fun in ages.
” That wasn’t what she’d actually said, but there was no point in being pedantic.
“I hear there’s going to be a big crowd from the conference at this karaoke bar—a little place called Second Verse, it’s on Walnut Street, four blocks or so from the hotel.
A room full of tech geeks singing off-key all night—how can you beat that? ”
That did sound like fun. It sounded like the kind of thing she and Daniel would have gone to, back at Albion. They’d have sat at the back of the room, laughing at the terrible singing, and at some point Nora would have gone on stage, dragging him with her kicking and screaming.
Not that Daniel had ever kicked or screamed. He would have pouted, and then surprised everyone by singing better than anyone would have guessed.
She’d never heard him sing, come to think of it. They’d dated for eight months, and that was something that had never come up. What else had they missed out on?
Never mind. That was then.
She shouldn’t dwell on him—no matter how often he crept into her thoughts on this trip. “You sold me. I’ll go. Want to go over together?”
Daniel , the same time
The big demo was over, and it had gone better than Daniel could have hoped.
The room had been full—a hundred people, most of them city and county executives with real authority to make decisions.
He and Thomas made the case for the benefits of contracting with QNS to install fiber optic lines throughout their localities: how it would improve property values, make local businesses more efficient and more profitable and make them personally appear more decisive and forward-looking.
Blue came in at the end with ten minutes about why QNS wouldn’t interfere with any local cable TV and phone contracts they had, not to mention the potential federal subsidies they could qualify for.
Still riding the high, they walked back to the booth—only for Daniel to stop short when he saw Red. She was sitting on a stool, her leg propped up on one of the podiums.
“I thought I told Edward to take you back to the hotel.”
“You did,” Red said. “But as the senior person left at the booth…”
Edward snorted. “By three days!”
“Whatever,” Red said. “I made a command decision. I didn’t want to leave Bryce all alone for twenty minutes.”
She was an adult, and a sprained ankle wasn’t exactly life-threatening. “Well, the floor closes up in five minutes, so let’s get everything shut down for the night, and then Edward and I will both help you back to the hotel.”
It didn’t even take five minutes to close the booth up.
They really were a good team. Daniel was trying to think of something fun for them to do tonight, but Bryce beat him to it.
“I heard from one of the AOL guys, there’s going to be a party at this karaoke bar, a place called Second Verse.
It’s not far from where we ate last night. What do you all think?”
A room full of tech geeks singing off-key? Thomas spoke up, saying pretty much what Daniel would have, “Could be either hilarious or a couple of hours of torture, depending how much you have to drink.”
“Let’s go—I mean, it’s not required or anything, just if you want to. But I think it’ll be fun.” Daniel looked over to Red. “I’ll get a cab for you so you don’t have to walk all that way, and no arguments.”
Karaoke was something he and Nora hadn’t ever done—why did he keep thinking about her? She’d been in his mind this whole trip.
But she would have loved karaoke. He could picture it—she’d be laughing at every butchered song, until she got up the nerve to take the stage herself. And she would have dragged him up there right alongside her.
And he would have loved it.