Appointment At 10:30 (Anthology)
Pure Slush Books Vol. 22
Print & ePub Feb. 2022
It was 10:15, so he only had
about ten minutes to put together a back-up plan, including a list of potential
support providers in the community that could be finagled into housing his
client in case of an emergency.
It wasn’t a back-up plan,
really, but an emergency fallback disaster plan, outlining what to do when the
plan and the back-up plan failed—as they invariably did. He’d been through
this procedure half a dozen times in his two years since joining the agency,
and every time the plan, the back-up plan, and the fall-back had all failed and
he ended up driving out at some ungodly hour to pick up the client, who
inevitably spent the balance of the weekend alternately sleeping on his couch
and standing out on the back lawn, screaming obscenities.
Despite his complaints about
the impossibility of locating willing support providers, the Supervisors
insisted that he arrive at the staff meeting with the names of at least five
qualified individuals.
He used the last few minutes
before the meeting to their best advantage. In his cubicle, sitting at his
computer, he gathered dozens of names.
Then he printed out his
resignation, attached it to the staff directory, and stepped around the corner
into the conference room.