Emergency Medical Dad

LVII: september, present

JORGEN

It took four days to start my plan into action. I had to get back, meet the new guys, figure out what happened over the summer when I was away, check in on everything. The team shifted a little bit, our core got a summer older, and we added Fidan Koskinen, a fiery young Finn, and Hugo Romero, the NHL's only Spaniard with a taste for the extravagant. Fidan has a routinely fussy ankle and Hugo has quite a track record of... extracurricular... groin strain. He didn't strike me as the type but I figure we all have our quirks in there somewhere.

    Then, when I got settled again, the process began.

    I have two spare bedrooms on the second floor of my house with me. One's significantly smaller than the other but I figure we'll change stuff around if they end up moving in with me.

    I change where the second and third beds are in my house, moving my office from the small bedroom into my larger one, then putting the twin I had previously stored in the basement in the room, hanging actual curtains instead of the slats that came with the house, repairing the door hinge that's been bugging me for years.

    I scour through my basement again, looking through the stuff that the people that lived here before me left. The house had come mostly furnished as they were moving the man that lived here beforehand into assisted living and they couldn't take all his stuff with him and none of the family wanted it. I was in and out on the deal for months so they knew me rather well and felt comfortable and happy giving me, a random, rather poor, paramedic a good amount of stuff.

    I moved most of it to the basement, as I didn't think I was ever going to use the other two rooms for anything but office space.

    I found a sturdy thick carpet in the back and take it to my tiny deck, beating out the dust before giving it enough passes with a vacuum that I felt comfortable with putting it in a room my kid might be in, then I roll it out under the little bed.

    Then I move into Jessie's room, which has been almost bare and closed for going on three years. I shift the bed into a better position, find a chair from the basement and set up a desk area, just trying to fill the blank space and make it more approachable. I clean all of it, wipe down the cabinet in there, the shelves in the closet, the floors, the trim, everything I can reach.

    The next task is to make the downstairs slightly less man-cave-ey. I only really need one couch so there's only one couch. I eat most of my meals at the bartop counter so there's not really a usable kitchen table other than another spot where I do homework for my job.

    My aggressive pace lasts until halfway through Saturday when I get interrupted by a short guy with his hat on backward standing in my kitchen and scaring the shit out of me.

    "Zak fucking Hampton," I manage, turning arond from where I was wiping down the baseboards. "Please fucking learn to knock."

    "Um, nah," he shakes his head, grinning. "What the fuck have you been doing? I hear from you like almost not at all for a whole summer and then you get back, you text me you made it home, and then disappear off the face of the earth. Not to mention the fact that this place looks significantly more lived in than I've ever seen it and you're actually putting a ton of effort into cleaning it. What's going on? Did Jess really whip you into shape that well?"

    I glare at him for a joking second before standing up, "for your information, this place was always clean-"

    "You're like... disinfecting everything."

    "Yeah," I shrug. "It was clean but not as clean as I want it right now."

    "What are you preparing for? Is the queen coming over?"