Post 6

Twelve hours. Two seats. Three feet apart. Curt Behringer catches you in the parking lot before your first shift and tells you the thing he isn't supposed to tell you. Ninety days. That's the number. Four partners in fourteen months, and corporate has a folder on it now, so it isn't him being an asshole, it's documented. You make ninety and Kovach stays on a truck. You bail at day sixty and Kovach goes to the transfer division and quits inside a week, because that's what happens. Then he goes inside, and you walk out to Medic 6. Kovach is already halfway through the check, which is a two-person job, at 1743, alone. Airway bag emptied and repacked. Monitor through its self-test. Drug log filled out in handwriting so small it looks like a joke. Two rules, delivered without turning around: I drive, always, and don't argue. And: on scene you talk to me before you talk to the family. Fourteen months ago Kovach's partner died on the Market Street bridge in freezing rain. Kovach was driving. Nobody has driven that truck since.