1977 Ford LTD II–Breaking news from the beat up car that angel Jonathan Smith and his ex-cop best friend and driving partner indicate that the dynamic duo continues to ignore emergency situations they encounter in favor of getting to a kid to make sure he gets to the mall to sit in Santa’s lap.
“This recent assignment really is a beaut,” Mark exclaims. “Boy, you know, when I was a kid there was nothing better than going to the mall to sit in Santa’s lap. It was just the greatest, you know? Sitting in this guy’s lap and telling him about all the toys you wanted to get. And then the suspense in seeing if you’d get them or not. It was just so great.”
Mark takes a left turn and narrowly escapes a driver who ran the stop sign and t-bones another driver.
“We can’t stop for that,” Jonathan says. “If we were supposed to stop there, that would be our assignment, but the fact of the matter is that it is not.”
“Talk about a Christmas miracle, huh?” Mark continues.
The old car continues along a rural highway and passes a building on fire with people screaming and running out of it.
“Gee, I wonder if anyone’s called the fire department yet,” Mark muses. “Well, no matter, we’re in the middle of an assignment here.”
When pressed for more insight into why they wouldn’t stop to attend to these emergencies or at least make sure someone else was, Jonathan shares that this is just how it works.
“I get the assignments, and then I need to do that assignment and that assignment only,” Jonathan insists. “Plus, I’ve already bended the rules by taking on Mark here as my co-worker of sorts–I’m not going to keep pushing the envelope by helping people in emergencies when I’ve already been assigned something else. I’ve been told that Billy’s cat died last year and he’s never sat in the mall Santa’s lap, so this definitely takes priority over a bad car accident or a burning building.”
Mark turns onto the on ramp to the interstate just as a semi went up in flames.
“Boy, this is really turning into the highway to hell, isn’t it?” Mark quips as Jonathan gives him the side eye and sighs.
At press time, Mark and Jonathan arrived at Billy’s home just as Billy decided he didn’t want to meet Santa anymore since the other kids in his ninth grade class told him it wouldn’t be cool.
