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This is the story of Tom, a co-driver that I had when I was driving team for a cross country gig. Tom is not his real name, but the events that I'm about to describe are true. Tom was basically a good guy, but he had really poor judgment sometimes and one time it almost cost him his life. Here we go.
I had been trucking cross country for a year when I was assigned to drive with Tom after my other co-driver wanted to drive with a woman that he met and had gotten friendly with. Tom was old enough to be my father, but he was fresh out of trucking school and had no experience driving trucks. We talked for little bit at the trucking terminal before we got to the business of trucking and my first impression of Tom was that he was a nice guy.
When we got out on the road I soon found out that Tom was lacking in a few skills as are most new drivers. He couldn't back up straight to save his life. It would take him twenty minutes to dock a trailer and often he would give up and have me do it. One day we worked on that in an empty parking lot when we had some free time. All he needed was a little guidance because he was soon backing up like a pro. I don't know why the instructors in the school that he went to didn't spend more time with him on backing. I also taught him how to float shift. I had to figure that out on my own and I had been driving for three months before I could do it. My trainer was a double clutcher. Tom was float shifting his first month of driving.
Tom brought a couple of things to the table, though. He supplied the c.b. radio and he brought with him part of his collection of classic rock tapes. There were probably about 50 tapes in all. I'm not really into classic rock, but it beat the hell out of listening to Rush Limbaugh and country and western.
Team driving can be rigorous. We would often do a cross country trip in just two and a half days. We would rotate eight hours on eight hours off. After two such trips in a row we found ourselves in Portland, Oregon and I was feeling pretty wiped out. We were dispatched on a load going from Seattle to L.A. and we had two days to get there. I was feeling very good about that considering how tired I was. I drove up to Seattle and got the load and then turned the reigns over to Tom.
I awoke later to some Allman Brothers being played at near distortion level. I got up and realized that I had been zonked out for sixteen hours. I hopped in the passenger seat and the next thing I realized was that we were in the San Joaquin Valley in California. Tom had driven somewhere around eight hundred miles in those sixteen hours.
I said, "What the hell, man? Why didn't you wake me up?"
"I tried. You wouldn't wake up."
Tom may have been twice my age, but he probably also had twice the stamina that I did. But driving for sixteen hours straight is not cool if you are a trucker. In fact, it is illegal. At the time truckers were only allowed to drive for ten hours before they had to take an eight hour break. We also had time to stop and smell the roses so I didn't understand why Tom felt the urgent need to go driving illegally.
And that sleeping thing is true about me. One time when I was driving solo I had to drive all night to get to my destination in time. When I got there I asked the dock worker if he would wake me up when he was done and then I went to sleep in the truck. Four hours later I woke up and wondered why the guy didn't wake me up. It turns out that they had tried. I fell asleep with the windows open and they stood by the door and yelled into the window and banged on the door, but they could not wake me up. The foreman was getting ready to call an ambulance because he thought that I had a heart attack or a stroke or something.
The eight hundred mile incident made me question Tom's judgment, but I kept it to myself.
I don't know how long it was after that incident, but one day we found ourselves in San Francisco waiting to be loaded. You could see the ocean from where we were and there was a seafood restaurant right on the water. We asked the shipping foreman how long it would be until we were loaded and he said it was going to be a while so we decided to go to the restaurant and have some dinner. I love seafood and so did Tom. So we had a nice, big dinner then went back to the truck. Tom wanted to have some dessert so he opened up a can of peaches in syrup and ate the whole thing and washed it down with a can of pop. Keep all this eating stuff in mind.
We sat there for a while. He listened to music and I read a book. Then Tom started to get sick. He leaned out of the window and puked. I asked him if he was alright and he said that dinner just didn't agree with him. After a few more pukes he got out of the truck and went in search of a bathroom. I noticed that he was kind of wobbly on his feet. A half hour passed with no sight of Tom. Now I needed to go to the bathroom. I found Tom sitting down in the hall outside the bathroom with his back against the wall. He said he needed help getting back to the truck. He could not walk on his own. I got him back to the truck and hauled his ass up in there and decided that it was time to find a hospital. I told Tom that he needed a doctor and then I went inside to get directions to the nearest hospital.
I got him to the hospital pushing the truck on the city streets leading to it and honking my horn at slow drivers so they would get out of the way. Tom went nearly the whole way to the hospital with his head hanging out the window because he could not stop puking. I thought he had food poisoning, but we had the same thing to eat except for the peaches and I was fine. When I got him to the hospital an orderly helped me get Tom out of the truck and he rushed him inside in a wheel chair.
I waited in the emergency room waiting room for a little while. Then a doctor came out and spoke to me. He asked me if I might know what was wrong with Tom and I told him that I thought he might have food poisoning. The doctor was very serious and said, no, the problem was much more dire than that. He said that Tom was, "Very sick."
Later an orderly came out and told me that Tom was going to be in the hospital for a while and that I needed to get a hotel room or something. I called the company that we worked for and told them that my co-driver was in the hospital and that I didn't know what was wrong. They took us off of the load and told me to keep them posted. I got a room for the night and wondered just what the hell had happened.
The next day I went to the hospital and I found Tom in his room. He looked a lot better then and I asked him what had happened. He said that his blood sugar went through the roof and that he was now a diabetic. It seems like I remember him saying that his blood sugar was nine hundred. I don't know what that means, but he almost died so I guess it's pretty high. I asked him if I could get him anything and he said that he was going to be in the hospital for a few days and that he would like to have his shaving kit.
So I went out to the truck and started looking around for his shaving kit. I found it on the ledge over the front seats. Here's the kicker to the whole story. The shaving kit was open. I shit you not. I went to zip it closed and I noticed two things: a needle and an empty vial of insulin. He knew. Now think- the big meal; the canned peaches in syrup; the fructose laden soda.
And that's the story of Tom.
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