That's What Friends Are For ... Right?

My goodness, I think I've gotten myself into a hell of a pickle.

********a, my stripper friend who I helped move last year, needed a ride to the hospital to get staples from a very bad accident removed tomorrow.  Memorial Night she texted me asking for a ride tomorrow (Thursday) at 11.  That is right in the middle of my day, and the penultimate day of my time at the health insurance place, natch.

I tell her all those things, and from the tone of her texts (I know that's impossible to tell) she seems bummed.  So I give her an out: If by, uh, last/Tuesday night she still can't find someone, I'll take her.

That's what friends are for ... right?  Well, I didn't think through all the permutations.  For one thing, since this is my last week there, I still want to get my 32 hours in, so now I have to shuffle my week and extend my hours in order to take time off to take her to the hospital.  I was lucky to do it yesterday/Tuesday because I was doing the mail, and there was so much mail (since, of course, there was no mail delivery on Monday/Memorial Day) that I had enough work for me to stick around an extra 90 minutes.  (And BTW, I still didn't get all the mail done then.)

Meanwhile ********a sent up a message on Facebook asking for drivers.  Look, I really want to help her, but knowing that I have had to make time for her has been stressful enough.  And when no one answered her prayer -- albeit after only two hours -- I texted her saying that I'll just do it.

We then texted back-and-forth about it.  A friend of hers finally answered her on Facebook.  Honestly I was relieved.  But then she said he is drunk and unreliable.  Well then why the fuck would you answer?  Without hearing from anyone else, I was ... well, I shouldn't use this word ... resigned to helping her ... with one condition: A friend of hers was going to get back to her in the morning.

That was this morning, and I didn't hear a peep.  Finally I texted her early this afternoon.  Her texts had not been coming in at all, but then, once I got on the company's wi-fi, I saw the texts she sent hours before.  Texts come through phone lines, don't they?

Anyway, ********a really did not want to burden me with rearranging my schedule, so she said she was going to Uber to the hospital and get her friend (presumably the one she was waiting to hear from this morning) to drive her back.  I volunteered to take her to the hospital so she can save the cab fare.  Deal, she said -- even after some fucking slowpoke volunteered to drive her.

Well, at least it's official.  I'm taking her to the hospital tomorrow.  I'll get up, drive from the north metro to the south metro, work for 90 minutes, get back in my car, drive back up north, pick up ********a, drive her out to the northwest metro, drop her off, hightail it back to the south (actually southeast) metro, work for the rest of the day, then drive back up north.  I just traced the entire path of my day tomorrow on Google Maps -- 116 miles I'll be driving, and that's not counting me going to the storage unit to drop off some of the stuff I have at work and then going to get gas for my car.  That's 127 miles total, the distance from Minneapolis to Brainerd.

God, I hope my engine doesn't overheat from all the fucking driving.