Authors: A. Meredith Walters
I was the kind of woman who made it a point to be thirty minutes early for everything. Doctors’ appointments. Dinner dates. Root canals.
Not that morning.
The universe seemed to be working against me. Everything that could have gone wrong, did. My alarm didn’t go off. I ran out of shampoo. My car wouldn’t start.
Bad days began with bad mornings and it seemed this one was no exception.
“Im! There you are!” Bright red dye job. Too much lipstick. A smile that stretched and strained uncomfortably. Tess Finley click clacked down the hallway, hands flapping and shirt slipping dangerously low on her chest.
I wiped at the brand new coffee stain on the front of my shirt, feeling self-conscious. “Hey there, Tess. You’re looking decidedly frantic this morning,” I said, pulling my purse up on my shoulder and heading towards my office.
“Jason wants those reports that you promised him last week. He’s been hounding me already,” my co-worker huffed, her short legs struggling to keep up with my longer strides.
I fumbled through my purse, trying to find my keys. Breath mints. Check. Band-aids. Check. Two-week-old power bar. Check. I found my keys buried under a mountain of gum wrappers and napkins from the hospital cafeteria.
I unlocked my office door and stepped inside, turning on the light and taking off my jacket. It was cluttered yet mostly organized, just as I had left it. I stepped over the piles of old files and dropped my purse on my desk next to my collection of cartoon character paperweights and ceramic farm animals.
I felt better surrounded by lots and lots of
things.
The more useless junk the better. My ex-husband, Chris, called me a hoarder. It was one of the nicer names he used to describe me towards the end of our marriage.
“I have them. I was working on them before I left last night,” I told her.
I smoothed out my shoulder-length brown hair wishing I had time for a cut. I knew my split ends were reaching a critical point.
I shuffled through the papers, knowing exactly where I had left them. To anyone else the haphazard piles would have seemed like disorder. But everything had its place and had been put there with care.
“How you can find anything on this desk, is beyond me,” Tess paused, squinting her overly large blue eyes at my blouse. “Did you know you have big stain on your shirt?” Tess asked, pointing at the noticeable wet spot.
I sighed, handing her the reports she asked for and picking up my coffee cup, a giant purple monstrosity with a chip on the rim. I grimaced at the cold liquid still inside. I must have forgotten to wash it out before leaving yesterday. Gross.
“I need coffee, you coming?” I asked, quickly walking out into the hallway, knowing chatty Tess would be hot on my heels. The woman had never met a conversation she couldn’t dominate.
“The coffee machine in the breakroom is broken. I had to go up to ICU and raid their supply,” Tess warned and I bit down on my frustrated groan.
Tess stared pointedly at my ruined shirt. “But seriously, Imogen, I have another blouse in my office if you want to change. It’s my spare in case I decide my day requires a wardrobe change.”
“What sort of day requires a wardrobe change?” I chuckled, amused. Tess, even though she was a bit overbearing, could be counted on to make me laugh.
Tess flipped her hair of her shoulder in an exaggerated gesture. “Oh you know, if the sun comes out, or I decide to eat with the doctors at lunch. Or if I need a quick pick me up.”
“Makes total sense,” I conceded.
“And you, my friend, need a day changer, stat.” Tess raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips.
I walked with Tess down the narrow corridor. The hospital was buzzing with its usual cacophony of emergency and chaos. It was draining. It was exhilarating.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I had been working as a social worker at Lupton Memorial Hospital for almost seven years. I had been hired just out of college and had been there ever since.
I was a firm believer in roots. In establishing them. In maintaining them. It was the same with my collections of knickknacks. I needed the scheduled, the familiar, in order to feel settled.
My ex-husband said I was stuck. That I was so deeply entrenched in my routine that I refused to live in the
now
. He had complained that I lacked spontaneity.
I hadn’t been hurt by his dismal assessment. I had embraced it.
My ex-husband had no idea what it was like to live a life of never-ending spontaneous moments, whether you wanted them or not.
In my experience, impulsivity had never been a good thing. Not for me anyway.
“I’m thinking of trying to pass it off as a new fashion trend. Think I can pull it off?” I asked, smoothing out my still damp shirt.
Tess smirked. “That is a definite
no.”
I snorted and we both laughed. We got into the elevator, smiling greetings to hospital staff as we shared the tight, claustrophobic space on our way up to find caffeine.
“The ladies in the ER told me it was crazy in here last night,” Tess said as we got off on the fifth floor and headed towards the ICU staff’s breakroom. I pulled out my ID and swiped it through the card reader on the door before going inside.
A couple of nurses were eating while a doctor, still in scrubs, was sleeping, sitting upright in a chair in the corner.
“Oh yeah?” I was barely listening. My thoughts were on coffee. And the donuts piled on a plate in the middle of the table. The one with pink icing and sprinkles was calling my name.
“Apparently the police brought in some homeless guy they found downtown around four this morning. He had been beaten within an inch of his life. No ID or anything. Guess one of us will be the lucky one with that case today,” Tess griped, picking up the pretty pink donut I had been eyeballing and shoved it into her mouth.
I rinsed out my mug and quickly poured my coffee, annoyed that I was now donutless.
“Then there was the lady who came in because she accidentally super glued her hand to her boyfriend’s ball sack.”
“What?” I sputtered. I had been drinking my coffee and then I wasn’t. Another stain joined the first on the front of my shirt.
“You’re definitely going to need my extra blouse,” Tess observed, handing me a wad of napkins.
“Hang on a minute, you need to explain the super glue. And the ball sack. And the hand super glued to the ball sack.” I wiped the excess coffee from my shirt, but gave up in the end.
I balled up the napkins and tossed them in the trash. Tess grabbed another donut and took a giant bite.
“Amy from the ER said that the guy was trying to hold up his pants with one hand and hold a coat over his crotch with the other. Apparently the lady thought the glue was lube. Though I’m not sure how you could confuse the two.” Tess spoke with her mouth full, so the words were muffled.
“Sounds like pure Darwinism to me,” I snickered. “Nature was ensuring those winners didn’t breed and further pollute the gene pool.”
“We miss all the good stuff! I wish someone had taken pictures,” Tess whined.
I reached across the table for a packet of sugar and succeeded in knocking over the rest of my coffee.
“I think you need to stay away from all liquids today. You’re potentially destructive.” Tess handed me another wad of napkins to clean up my mess.
“Maybe I should just go back to bed,” I complained, half irritated, half mildly pathetic.
“You could snuggle up with Mikey over there,” Tess suggested, looking across the room to the doctor, snoring like a chainsaw with drool coating his chin.
“I’ll pass,” I chuckled.
We made our way back to the elevator after I cleaned up the spilled coffee as much as I was able to. I wasn’t in a rush to start my day so I dawdled with Tess, letting her tell me about her latest eyebrow wax gone wrong.
“And look, Im, they are half the size they used to be!” Tess pointed to her forehead and I pretended to consider what she said.
“You could always draw them in with a pencil or something.” I shrugged. What did I know about makeup? Foundation and lip-gloss were the extent of my primping.
Tess looked at me as though I had started spouting German. “What?” she gasped as though I had suggested something horrible like Botox or implants.
I let her prattle on about perfect eyebrow curvature and for once I didn’t mind. I was in a mood.
A surly, crappy mood.
And I wanted to put off going back to my office for as long as possible.
It was unusual to not want to rush into my job. Work was my life. It was all I really had. I compressed my entire existence between the hours of nine and five. Those were minutes I’d smile and have actual conversation with real life people. I would deal with people’s problems and find them solutions.
It was the best part. The
only
part worth living.
Now anyway.
At one time, I thought things could be different.
I used to be a wife. Not anymore.
I thought I would be a mother. My body had other ideas.
I was one of those women that had had notions about where my life would take me. Once I was in a position to make plans, I made them. Lots of them. I had made a promise to figure my life out and I had made it my mission to do just that. When I was younger, I was headstrong and overly complicated. A bit on the emotional side with a flair for the dramatic.
Years had dulled me. They had left me a shell of the girl I had been. I thought I was happy to see her go. I couldn’t afford to be the Imogen Conner I used to be. She had been all too easy to destroy.
Most lives can be narrowed down to significant moments. Mine was no different.
I knew the event that had changed me.
“Uh-oh, there’s Jason. I’m going to try to make a break for it before he sees me,” Tess whispered, shoving the reports I had given her earlier in my hand.
“I think you’re safe. He has the
I’m-hunting-Imogen
look on his face,” I assured her with a smile.
Tess patted my arm. “If you need me, bang against the wall three times. I’ll start a fire or something,” she said, slipping into her office.
“Why three times?”
“In case I don’t hear the first two, of course!” Tess said quickly as she darted into her office.
Of course.
“Imogen, there you are. I’ve been waiting here for over ten minutes,” my boss, Jason Valerio called out. He was wearing a new hairpiece and I didn’t have the heart to tell him it still didn’t hide his receding hairline. The fifty-five-year-old man was going through a very obvious mid-life crisis. Between the toupee and the new shiny sports car in the parking garage, all he needed was a girlfriend named Bambie and he’d have every stereotype covered.
I knew he was the focus of a lot of behind the hand snickering around the hospital. I had heard the hateful comments about his pectoral implants and Tinder account, but I felt nothing but sympathy for my try-too-hard director.
His wife had left him over a year ago for his best friend’s twenty-something son. His pride, his ego, and his heart had taken a hammering. I understood his need to reinvent himself, even if I would never follow in his overly flamboyant footsteps.
“Sorry, Jason, the coffee machine on our floor is broken again. I had to hike up to ICU if I wanted to be semi-human,” I told him, ushering him into my office.
He discreetly rearranged the chunky strands of fake hair on his forehead and I pretended not to notice. He handed me a thin folder. I took it and watched as his thumb ran over the thin, gold band that he still wore. I wondered when he’d finally remove his wedding ring.
I absently rubbed the naked skin of my finger where my own metal brand used to sit, thankful that the weight was gone.
“I heard you were asking about these.” I passed him the reports and he barely glanced at them, tucking them under his arm.
“Thanks. That’s great. So, got a new one for you. And it’s a bit of a doozy.”
I sat down behind my desk and opened the folder, sipping on my now cold coffee. “Is this the homeless guy the police brought in?” I asked.
Jason blinked in surprise. “You know about him already?”
I nodded. “Tess told me.”
Jason pursed his lips. “I should have known. Sometimes I think she should have my job. She hears things much sooner than I do.”
I looked down at the patient’s ER admission paperwork. No name, just basic information.
Caucasian male in his late twenties-early thirties.
Severe swelling of the left orbital socket.
Twenty-three hairline fractures along the right cheekbone.
Facial contusions and significant bruising.
Some mild brain trauma resulting in temporary loss of consciousness.
Currently in ICU.
“But then who would bring me muffins every Friday?” I asked and he grinned.
“It’s only because I know how cranky you can get without the necessary intake of sugar,” he argued good-naturedly.