Dexter was pushed out the door of the hospital in a wheelchair to where a taxi was waiting for him. He wasn't too pleased about being alone. At least there wasn't a crowd of reporters waiting for him. The President had said something stupid, again., and the attention of the press had turned from Dexter back to Washington. He was pleased that he was no longer the center of national attention.
He climbed from the wheelchair into the taxi. The driver appeared to be in his late forties to early fifties. The man didn't even bother to look towards Dexter. "Where to?"
Dexter told the taxi driver the address of his apartment. He was looking forward to returning home. He still felt weak, but he figured he would feel a lot better after a day or two around the apartment. Truthfully, he couldn't wait to get undressed and lounge around the house.
Once the taxi had left the hospital, Dexter asked, "Have you been driving a taxi long?"
"Yeah."
"Do you like driving a taxi?" Dexter asked after waiting to see if the driver would add a few more details to his answer.
"I guess."
Wondering if he could get the man to reply with more than two words, Dexter asked, "Did you ever have any unusual passengers?"
"No."
Dexter asked, "What's it like being a taxi driver?"
"It's a job."
Giving up on getting the taxi driver to talk, Dexter stared out the window. There were cars galore on the road and no one on the sidewalks. He wondered why they even bothered to put in sidewalks if there was no one that used them.
He asked, "Why do they have sidewalks if no one uses them?"
The taxi cab driver glanced in his mirror and didn't bother to answer. Dexter looked over at the man wondering why he wouldn't chat at all. Lots of taxi drivers talked almost the whole trip. One or two leading questions and they were off to the races. It was just his luck to get the sullen quiet driver.
Dexter's cell phone rang. He checked the caller id and answered, "Hello, Mark. What's up?"
"Where are you?" Mark asked.
"I'm on my way home," Dexter answered surprised to be asked the question.
Sounding a little exasperated, Mark said, "I'm at the hospital to pick you up."
"I didn't know you were going to do that. I just called a cab and left," Dexter said.
Mark said, "I just assumed..."
"Sorry about that," Dexter said.
The fact was that Mark had never said anything about picking him up at the hospital. It didn't seem reasonable to ask his attorney to start acting like a chauffeur.
"Are we still on for tomorrow?" Dexter asked.
Mark answered, "Sure. We'll hit the bank, and set up the account. I'd like to take you to lunch, afterwards."
"All right," Dexter said.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Mark said.
"Sure thing," Dexter said.
He closed his phone and then looked over at the driver. He wished he had known that Mark intended to take him home. Mark would have been a lot better company than the driver.
When they pulled up to the apartment complex, he wondered about the tip for the driver. The driver wasn't very friendly. On the other hand, Dexter wasn't sure that he was supposed to be friendly although it would have been nice. His job was to drive him from one point to another and he did exactly that in reasonable time. In the end, Dexter tipped the driver the normal fifteen percent.
Dexter entered his apartment and looked around. It was exactly as he had left it the morning he had high tailed it out of town as a result of the threatening e-mail. It didn't look like anyone had broken in. That was a great relief. He had imagined that some less honorable member of the press might have skirted the law a little.
The apartment smelled musty, as all places did after standing unoccupied for a while. The living room was a little messy and dusty, but he had left it that way. He was afraid to face the refrigerator. He couldn't remember what he had left in it, but whatever had been left, was probably worthy of burial in a toxic waste dump. He decided that he'd tackle that the next day.
Although he felt like he should immediately visit the website, he just wanted to relax for a few minutes. He was still feeling weak. It was strange how he felt worse after getting his heart fixed than he had before. Of course, he was still healing.
He stripped out of his clothes and sat in his lounge chair. He was glad to get out of his clothes. Although he had worn nothing but hospital gowns during his stay at the hospital, his clothes from the day of shooting had a slight smell reminiscent of a high school locker room. He assumed that it was from running around while getting shot at. That tended to make one sweat.
His cell phone rang. Out of habit, he checked the caller id.
"Hello, Eric."
"Hey, Dexter! How are you doing?" Eric said.
"I'm doin' fine," Dexter answered.
Eric said, "We just got back in town. Mark told me that you were getting released from the hospital today. Do you need a ride home?"
"I'm already at home," Dexter said.
"Oh. Okay," Eric said.
Dexter asked, "How did the kids like Rat World?"
"They had a good time. We only spent two days there. You got shot the day after we arrived there. I spent that day and the next dealing with the website. Boy, that was a mess," Eric answered.
"You should have stayed another couple of days," Dexter said.
"I wanted to get back to see you, but I had to spend so much time taking care of the website," Eric said apologetically.
He felt that he should have flown back to visit Dexter in the hospital, but circumstances had kept him very busy. The hospital had blocked all calls to Dexter's room.
"How is the website?" Dexter asked.
"The day you got shot, we received over fifty thousand e-mails..."
"What!" Dexter declared.
He was shocked. That was more than the number of hits the website got on Tuesdays when they posted new articles. He could just imagine the amount of traffic to the website necessary to generate that many hits.
"The next day the number climbed to nearly a quarter of a million. Our internet provider went into panic mode when he saw the traffic and threatened to shut down the website. I had to dial in through a backdoor modem to get on the machine to update the webpage asking people not to send an e-mail," Eric said.
"A quarter of a million e-mails! I can't believe it," Dexter said.
Eric said, "The provider and I worked together to set up the automatic vacation reply with updates about your health. I think he's going to want to increase your service rates again."
"I would think so," Dexter said.
"The traffic into the website was monstrous. The server went down a couple of times before he was able to set up a couple of machines to take over some of the load," Eric said.
"That's incredible," Dexter said. "I thought the big internet providers cached high traffic pages."
Eric said, "They do. Because of that, it took nearly six hours for the cached versions at some of the key internet providers to get updated. The traffic to the website finally slowed down the third day."
"My God."
"Once the traffic eased back a bit, I packed the wife and kids in the car and we headed home. I only drove about four hours a day so that I could take care of the website," Eric said.
"I had no idea," Dexter said. "Why didn't you call me?"
"The hospital wouldn't put any calls through to your room. I called Mark a dozen times a day to get updates on your condition. I didn't want to bother you with the website. I know you would have worried about it," Eric said.
"You bet I would have worried."
"It is all under control, now," Eric said.
"I'm glad to hear that," Dexter said. "I'm sorry your vacation got ruined."
"My vacation?" Eric asked. "Don't you remember that I was hiding out there? It wasn't a vacation."
"Well ... still ... you were at Rat World with your kids. You should have had a little time to spend with them," Dexter said.
"It was an usual circumstance," Eric said.
Dexter said, "I'm really kind of disturbed that our machines went down. I need to talk to our provider and see how our website should have been configured to avoid any problems. We should have had contingency plans in place in case anything like this happened."
Eric laughed. "Contingency plans? Let's see, our office got blowed up ... you got shot at on national television ... then you had a heart attack which made the national news. I really don't see how we could have anticipated something like that."
"I guess when you put it that way..." Dexter said.
Eric had a feeling that Dexter wasn't even aware of the kind of impact his website had on the people. Salaried workers, in every industry, were looking at the articles on his website. There were a lot of low-level managers who looked upon Dexter as a kind of corporate 'underdog hero.'
He said, "You managed to attract a lot of attention. Not only in this country, but around the world."
"I just can't picture that," Dexter said.
Eric said, "There's one more thing you might want to know."
"What?"
"The e-mails we got were overwhelmingly supportive of you. A lot of people said that you were brave when facing the gunman, and they hoped that you'd be all right," Eric said.
Dexter, knowing the truth about how he had felt when facing the gunman, said, "That's nice to know."
"Do you want me to stop by the apartment?" Eric asked.
"No. I'm going to rest a little and then check out the website," Dexter said.
The two men talked a minute more and then ended the call. Dexter was left in his chair thinking about all of the emails. He realized that all of the people who were likely to call him had called. The contrast between the number of emails from strangers and the number of calls from friends and family was rather glaring. He didn't know what to make of it.
Outside of the one visit by his wife and the frequent visits by his attorney, Dexter hadn't had any visitors while in the hospital. In his normal honest appraisal of the situation, he couldn't imagine anyone else wanting to visit him with the exception of the kids. He didn't know if their absence was a result of his wife warning them away or their own decision based on not caring. The reasons didn't matter.
He considered the schedule for the next day. He'd go to the bank with Mark and then to lunch. He hoped that it wouldn't be too much activity considering his health. Just the trip home from the hospital had been tiring.
That reminded him to take his pills. The trip to and from the kitchen wore him out. He sat in his easy chair while the room darkened with the setting of the sun. After the hustle and bustle of the hospital, he really and truly felt alone.
He dropped off to sleep.
Edited By TeNderLoin