[From the "Scoville Heat, Inc." series of short stories and listed in the "Scoville Heat, Inc." NFT Collections on OpenSea and Curate.]
The Scoville Heat, Inc. operative now known as "Madame Jeanette" was born the illegitimate child of a wealthy businessman from Singapore and his Vietnamese mistress.
She never met her father. And whenever she asked her mother about him, the response was always the same, "Don't ask. That son of a bitch was dead to us long before you were born."
By the time "Jeanette" was 7 y/o, she had stopped asking questions about her father and rarely, if ever, thought about him again.
Jeanette and her mother were poor and constantly struggling to make ends meet.
In the end, her mother literally "worked herself to death."
Grueling, 12 hr. workdays at the fish market, followed by moonlighting as a karaoke bartender, plus any odd job she could manage to grab resulted in her mother's extreme, chronic fatigue, episodes of shortness of breath, coughing fits and persistent flu-like symptoms.
Then one early morning, after closing down the karaoke bar with the manager, her mother boarded the bus home and immediately collapsed in the aisle.
Cursing the bad luck, the bus driver thought, "Sh*t! Why is this happening on my watch!? Only two more stops on my route and I would've been done."
Finding no good Samaritans with medical training among the few remaining passengers, he alerted emergency services and then did...nothing.
Because he'd slept through most of the mandatory health and safety training required to get his mass transit drivers license, he was unprepared to help the unconscious old lady now lying on the deck of his bus.
Dumbfounded, he did the only thing he could do, just wait.
Plopping down into a nearby passenger seat, he nervously gnawed at his fingernails - looking like a ridiculous, human-sized gerbil with a nut, and waited for emergency service personnel to arrive.
He hoped to God that the Calvary (ambulance crew) would arrive soon - NOT "just in the nick of time", but like, VERY soon, rescue that poor lady and save the day...and hopefully, keep his incompetent ass from getting fired!
A few excruciating minutes later, EMTs arrived, quickly placed the patient onto a gurney and slit it into the back of their ambulance; then sped away"full lights and siren" to the nearest available Emergency Room.
Sadly, moments later speed became a non-issue.
While enroute to City General Hospital, Jeanette's mother went into an unrecoverable respiratory arrest, followed by full cardiac failure.
And in spite of all the emergency medical procedures (i.e., O2, IVs, crash meds, and electrical defibrillations, etc), the best efforts of the EMTs were unsuccessful and the patient was DOA.
This all happened while the 11 y/o Jeanette was in the city's red light district selling her little plastic bags of peanuts to rich and lecherous tourists hunting for underage hookers.
A policeman and female WCWD official (Women and Children's Welfare Department, Singapore) were in front of her tenement building when she got home.
The policeman gave her the news about her mother's death and said she was now in custody of WCWD. Then she and the WCWD woman got into the back of a police car.
But instead of going to the WCWD office, the corrupt policeman and fake WCWD official sold her to a Singaporean Human Trafficker.
Lucky for Jeanette, just 9 hours before being shipped out of Singapore in a cargo container, she and another two dozen young girls were rescued by a team from "The Pool".*
With a little nudge from Raymond's good friend and current POTUS, 10 orphans from the 2 dozen+ rescued girls were granted asylum in the U.S. and the rest were reunited with their parents, many of whom thought they'd never see their daughters again.
Jeanette was one of those orphans.
She eventually gained U.S. citizenship and joined the U.S. Marine Corps.
Over the years, Raymond kept tabs on the rescued girls', especially the ones not repatriated to Singapore and built new lives in the U.S.
When it was time for Jeanette to either reenlist or accept an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, Raymond and POTUS had just founded Scoville Heat, Inc.**
Raymond introduced himself to Jeanette and presented her with an offer of employment with Scoville Heat, Inc.
When Jeanette found out that Raymond was the man responsible for her childhood rescue and subsequent asylum, she quickly accepted the job offer, left active duty and has never regretted her choices ever since...
[Submitted for your entertainment.]
May you and yours be well and loving life today.
In Lak'ech, JaiChai
*Billionaire Raymond Kohl's Personal Security Detail - known as "The Pool" to its members and insiders, is an elite group of highly trained and fiercely loyal bodyguards, combat survival instructors and covert operatives - all under the guise of an ordinary Executive Secretary's appearance.
See:
https://blurt.blog/fiction/@thejaichai/jaichai-codename-ms-uno
**For more about Scoville Heat, Inc., see:
https://steemit.com/hive-161155/@jaichai/jaichai-scoville-heat-inc-the-beginning-center
[Submitted for your entertainment. Enjoy the Original Art.]
May you and yours be well and loving life today.
In Lak'ech, JaiChai
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