Have you heard...?

Le Tomato

"Boy, I tell you." Muttered a pensive Gage wearily. He'd read over the Bit of paper in his hand several times now, but his eyes just kept coming back to those numbers. The minus sign seemed to glow off the page as he watched and his annoyance grew.

The proof was afterall right there in his hands. Without the government's interference; As an intern, Gage would normally have made about $64,000 per year but as with tax, Gage's pay was watered down to $47,000.

Now, Gage wasn't complaining, he wasn't ungrateful. There were people making way less, people making none at all. Besides, he could be very economical, thanks to his mother's discipline—Gage had learned the value of a dollar young to hell. He'd been working since he was fourteen, and he'd worked damn hard to earn his money—just like now.

That's why the $17,000 dollars the government had just nicked from him stung a little. It stung a little less when he thought about all the good it would go on to do; all the food that orphans would get, the better equipment police would have and roads would be repaired too...or would they?

Driving to work that morning, Gage distinctly remembered the potholes on the road, he'd hit every one of them like a goddamn bowling ball. And the streets were rampant with homeless...the more he thought, the more his annoyance grew—because now it was starting to feel like a bully had taken his lunch money and lost it. Yup, his $17,000 was somewhere snug in some politician's pockets by now and he was going to eat cup-o-noodles tonight for dinner.

"This Tax business is really cutting into my fun time. And I mean like bad—rent just went up." Gage was on the second floor, leaning at the staff check-in counter and the receptionist Miss Reba was filling her nails. "You'd think they'd take a little less, I'm not Made of money, you know?"

"And I am? Please, you're crying about your taxes—you should see what they take off me and I make less than you." She blew the whites off her nail beds and started filing another finger. "Besides,  your money and my money is going towards a good cause—aye, we're going to buy some congressman's kid a brand new Porsche. Now don't that give you a warm feeling inside?"

"Butterflies." Gage looked at her with a Chuckle and Reba joined. Walking away some time later, Gage felt much better about the tax business, but that was Reba for you. It was like her super power and he'd known her since he'd arrived at Sinai's; it's in her that he saw the grandmother figure that he lacked in his own.

They were alive though, make no mistake. But His paternal grandmother lived in the Philippines and Gage had never know his maternal grandmother. That falling out between Her and her own daughter about twenty years ago had made that well sure. Not even George knew what she looked like and he'd been born in her native country—not to mention out of wedlock.

But that was heavy business. Irrelevant business. Gage started thinking about the crap that did involve him right there in the moment; he started thinking about his tests and rotations and Nash. Oh he was very focused indeed... then his shoulder smashed into somebody and he lost the train of thought.

A woman in cartoon scrubs walked nearby carrying a child and Gage, his head turned to watch her and shamefully enough, he found his eyes glued to her backside. "Sweet mother of—hey! Katie!"

The woman backtracked from 'round a corridor and looked around for her caller; when she saw him, a smile spread across her pink painted lips like a rainbow, but she remained in place 'til he reached her and when he did, she showed him the sleeping toddler. Gage nodded and lowered his voice.

"Where're you going?" Gage asked quietly- raising a full, single eyebrow at her.

She flushed and smiled a little wider. When he rose an eyebrow for his question, she cleared her throat, grew pinker and said. "Children's ward. Trev here wanted a walk, tired of sitting in his room all day and all that. And you won't believe how many days he had to beg the doctor for this and today we finally go and little bear falls asleep mid-through it."