She's here! She's arrived! Let the pseudo-medical malpractice commence!

Good Monday morning everybody! Hope you had a great weekend. It was a bit of a strange one around here what with: the care and feeding of a partially plaster-encased Cousin Fred following the “Elevator Incident”; the return of the Wife from another of her fabulous vacations; the gathering of a herd of attorneys outside The Compound; and, finally, the show stopper of all show stoppers - the arrival of the Francesca to The Compound.

How’s that for weird? No, you don’t think so? Well, guess you had to be here. Allow me to divulge.

By Friday, I was sweating bullets as Cousin Fred continued to lounge around on the sofa. He certainly wasn’t able to get through the door of Hellkat One’s travel trailer with that half-body cast of his which was keeping his right arm cocked at a weird angle. So it was that by Friday morning, he was laid out on the couch and constantly asking for assistance with something.

In the meantime, I knew the Wife was due back sometime later that day and I also knew she wasn’t going to be happy with having Cousin Fred parked on the sofa all day, every day until the body cast could be removed. I considered for a time moving myself into Hellkat One’s travel trailer just to make certain I was out of the line of fire.

And then to top it all off, there was the great unknown, to wit: The Francesca, who by all accounts was moving this direction from somewhere at light speed. I say somewhere because I don’t know whence she is driving to get here. At one point, I asked Cousin Fred how long it would take her to drive here, figuring that would give me an approximate range with which to work. He just chuckled and swallowed another couple of synthetic opioid tablets and muttered something about, “You’ll see soon enough, cousin.”

The herd of attorneys parked up and down the road outside The Compound is particularly disturbing. I mean, it’s kind of like having a neon sign pointing the way to The Compound. I’ve always taken great pride in the fact that it takes the average Sheriff’s deputy at least 36 hours to figure out where this is. How did these ambulance chasers find us?

All of them, to a body, wanted to sign Cousin Fred as a client in a lawsuit against the Cosmic City for the injuries he sustained in the fall from the grain elevator. So it is that we have a veritable high-end car-park outside the grounds here filled with an assortment of Lexuses (Lexi?), Mercedes, BMW’s, and every other manner of vehicle that isn’t sold locally.

They were all stand out there facing the house and clicking pens in one hand while holding client agreements in the other. So, if you can’t find an attorney in Cosmic City today, they aren’t in court, they’re out here.

I was explaining to the Wife (for the umpteenth time) how it was that Cousin Fred came to be in a half-body cast when suddenly we heard the sound of, well, what I can only describe as the sound of a dog puking. We both glanced at the Mutts (who should have been outside chasing away ambulance chasers) and Cousin Fred (who the wife was about to roll out the door and into the waiting hands of the herd of attorneys). All seemed okay.

Cousin Fred’s phone went ding. He exclaimed, “She’s here! She’s arrived!”

The Wife and I moved out onto the front porch to see the herd of attorneys looking to the north. They began clicking their pens in a frenetic cacophony of cheap ink pens and expectations of exorbitant fees.

Coming down the road was the biggest diesel pusher RV I think I’ve ever seen. Atop the front was an array of emergency red and blue lights that were flashing. From somewhere inside the thing, the sound of a dog puking was blaring…guess that counts as a siren.

Down the 40 foot-plus side of the cruise ship on wheels was the image of a dog with its tongue hanging out and the words, “Mobile Mutt Rescue Unit LLC”. With a hiss of air brakes, the thing slowed to a crawl before turning into The Compound, promptly taking out my mailbox.

The front door of the house opened and Cousin Fred crashed out onto the porch screaming, “She’s here, she’s here, I’m saved!” He tried to run across the lawn, but with the half-body cast and a head full of synthetic opioids, it was hopeless. He kind of stumbled along, weaving a bit before collapsing.

The herd of attorneys at that point surged forward clicking their pens and calling out in unison, “lawsuit, lawsuit, mo’ money, mo’ money!” The Compound Mutts, whipped into a frenzy by all the activity, raced off the porch toward the herd of attorneys who quickly retreated to their vehicles parked along the road.

The Wife looked at me with disgust before disappearing inside the house.

The RV screeched to a halt in front of Cousin Fred’s collapsed, unmoving form.  Two sliding doors on the side opened and a moving ramp slid forward from inside. Standing on the ramp was (I presumed) the Francesca. She was dressed in surgical scrubs with a nameplate over her left breast that read, “Francesca.”

I was marveling at her beauty, not to mention her entrance, when the Wife came back on the porch with a bottle of cheap Fightin’ Cock whisky and an entire carton of filterless Pall-Malls. She parked herself in a chair and began alternately chain-smoking the Pall-Malls and swiggin’ from the bottle. I think I heard her begin to hum, “My Philadelphia Home.”

I say I think I heard that because it was difficult to tell. Coming from the inside of the RV was a sample of the worst 70’s disco music I’ve heard in well…decades.

Once on the ground, the Francesca moved toward Cousin Fred. She helped him to his feet and all but carried him back to the ramp with promises of a “nice sponge bath.”

As the ramp ascended back into the RV, Cousin Fred looked at me, smiled, and winked.

That was my Saturday.
 

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