A Turn of the Wheel

Lost in a strange town, looking for the hotel where he is due to make a conference speech, Charlie’s SNS seems to be a hindrance more than a help. Meanwhile across town four criminals are parked outside a bank they are about to rob; three of them armed and masked. They enter the bank. The driver remains. Moments later a young scatterbrain girl, returning home from lunch, inadvertently walks into the three making their exit, catching sight of the driver’s face. She flees and they pursue her Meanwhile Charlie has finally found his way toward town. Approaching a junction his SNS tells him to turn right but then immediately contradicts itself. Dutifully Charlie swings the wheel back the other way only to impact with the fleeing girl. During the next few hours Charlie is arrested; interrogated by two stupid, comically malevolent detectives; gets released but misses the conference; becomes the butt of a joke by his less successful colleagues and gets lost in the city, finally ending up in the hospital where the witness, Adeona, is under protective custody for the one night by the same two policemen who interrogated him. Teasing him she is seriously injured, they allow him access to see her. Tentatively approaching the sleeping girl he is immediately attracted to her. She wakes and smiles at him despite not knowing who he is. He confesses it was he that ran her over and then discovers that she has lost her voice through shock. She communicates by writing and slowly Charlie begins to fall in love with her. Outside the hospital the villains send in a contract killer disguised as a nurse who infiltrates the ward and drugs the two detectives. Charlie intercepts him as he is about to kill Adeona but is shot in the arm. Desperate to move her before another attempt is made they attempt to negotiate their way to a back stairwell but take the wrong door and end up in a toilet and are confronted by the gang leader. They are saved by the timely intervention of a good doctor but Charlie is wounded again, this time in the other arm. Outside the rest of the gang are captured leaving the car park in the wrong direction, hitting an incoming ambulance. Charlie spurns Adeona as bad luck. Weeks later still recovering Charlie’s boss gives him use of his cottage in the countryside for recuperation. At a service station he meets the two detectives now demoted to motorway/highway patrol. They tell him how Adeona had asked for him after the events at the hospital. Charlie remains disinterested. Two hours later, however, the SatNav on his new car also contradicts itself, provoking a near head-on crash with an old VW Beetle and the subsequent dust cloud thrown up by both braking vehicles obscures the scene. Charlie hears a voice asking him if he was okay. He stares dumbfounded at the SatNav. As the cloud clears he sees Adeona standing next to the Beetle. He points at the SatNav. It’s her voice on the machine as it was the first time. Accepting the persistence of Fate he invites her to lunch in his car happy to let her, via the SatNav, take them wherever.