Trauma Town Dispatch

Sabine, Trummel Hospital’s ambulance dispatcher, was comfortable amidst people who spontaneously burst their spleens or chopped off their toes. People who popped things - who couldn’t remember where they were. She was a natural, having been shaped early on by Dr. Kildare and more recently by Dr. Who.

Juliet, Sabine’s neighbor at the condo, was a Vietnam vet with ties to the Multiverse. Although Trummel was in rural, mid-state New York, Juliet projected Paris. She wore Chanel, smiled about inward murmurings from other universes, and could wear perfume without people around her sneezing. Although her husband was dead, she and he were in touch daily. One day she became dehydrated after having missed Happy Hour, and entered the Trummel Hospital emergency room on a stretcher.

Sabine and Juliet were reverse-engineering the various coping skills they had learned in the 70’s, from Hunter S.Thompson, Deepak Chopra, Swami Muktananda, and of course, Henry Mancini. They wanted to get back to Manhattan, where non-linear felt more like home and the unifying undertow of everyone being completely unglued assured a tight sense of community.