Lost Time Incident

February 10, 2003

We Make Things Muggy

Wyatt worked at the humidifier factory for twenty-three years before his first lost time incident. He lost the hour between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. while working a third shift for overtime. He also lost his right hand. He got it back, but it required Andy, a 16 year old working for spending money on his summer break, to climb inside the 2-AL engine and jerk it out of the belts it was tangled in.

Andy was good, the foreman had no complaints, and so it was with some regret that Andy left them with a month left of his summer vacation. He didn't mention the incident with Wyatt's hand, but a few people munching on Andy's Going-Away donuts whispered that that was the reason.

By that time, Wyatt had been equipped with prosthetic hand that he could flex and close. It was metallic with leather strips that he tightened on his forearm, but it looked like a hand. The company paid him for his trouble and the guy who worked next to him on the line, Froggy, brought him up to speed on the hour that he missed.

10 p.m. to 11 p.m. A series of bathroom breaks, smoke breaks, conversations about television.

--

Wyatt's house had three humidifiers in it, two on the ground floor and one on the second story, just outside the bedroom. They were fine free-standing units and Wyatt had bought all three because he could a) get them at a deep discount and b) the company had been suffering a few years back from slow sales and he wanted to do his part to help.

The humidifiers were three feet tall and could kick out quite a bit of moisture. A plumber was hired when Wyatt installed them just so that pipes could be run under the floors and behind the walls, special just for the machines.

At one time Wyatt had a nice floral pattern of wallpaper up throughout the house, but the glue had gotten soggy and it had all peeled off. It had taken a few months and a few misteps, but Wyatt had finally trained himself not to lean on any wall in his house. Lost a few good shirts that way. They were still stuck there, too, if you looked.

His house was rather tropical inside, no matter what time of year, and that's why Wyatt didn't think much of it at first, coming home to find his wife and Elliot the Jaw sweating in his living room. Everybody sweated in the living room.

Still, the signs were there. Elliot stopping by three times a week for tutoring in Spanish even though Wyatt's wife didn't tutor anybody else and Elliot's prosthetic jaw rendered his accent incomprehensible. Wyatt's wife spending more money on clothes-- and not because any dresses were stuck to their home's walls.

The fact that Wyatt's wife packed her bags and left with Elliot the Jaw while Wyatt watched from his porch, his metal hand flexing and unflexing in grief. Signs are there if you know where to look.

Wyatt lost more time in the weeks that followed. Hours spent crying on his bed on the second floor, the humidifier clouding the windows so that it looked the windows were crying with him.

The time may be lost, but it's not like he wants it back.

Posted by Michael at February 10, 2003 05:33 PM