Before work, Sarah Bremer bathed and dressed her father, who was old and grim and wheelchair bound. Her husband, Joe, a trucker, was gone this week, on a run.<\/p>\n
\u201cDaddy, you call me if you need anything, okay?\u201d Sarah, dressed in her pink and white waitress uniform, said to him, before she set him in front of the TV where he would sleep and drool and watch cable. His whole life was 1980s reruns. Sarah tried to ignore the piles of dusty Reader\u2019s Digests<\/em> everywhere. On her day off, she would clean.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll be fine. You go on,\u201d he said, already in his TV trance.<\/p>\n Sarah gave him a quick peck on the cheek that he didn\u2019t acknowledge. But she was used to this. She told herself he kept his feelings inside.<\/p>\n It was 5:20 a.m. and still dark. As Sarah drove to work on streets free of morning rush hour traffic, she passed by quiet houses, a not-yet-open Burger King, a 24-hour laundromat that looked deserted, a gas station with one or two cars and then the sign for the diner where she worked. In pink neon letters, it said EAT. But the E was burned out, so it said AT.\u00a0 In thirty minutes, it would open.<\/p>\n Ten minutes before she had to be there, Sarah punched in. She arrived some days before her boss, Lou, a man with big bulging muscles, colorful tattoos, long gray hair and a hillbilly beard. He looked intimidating, fierce and scary like he was a bouncer at some sketchy club where people smoked pot in the back, but, as long as you did your work and didn\u2019t try to sneak extra smoke breaks, he was a pussycat.\u00a0In fact, sometimes, he was fun and good to talk to. He was kind of like a father, just not her father. With a twinkle in his eye, he\u2019d sometimes tease, \u201cStop working so hard, honey. You\u2019re making everybody else look bad.\u201d But he always gave her extra hours when she needed them and let her off early if she needed to take her father to the doctor\u2019s.<\/p>\n Today, Sue Ellen, a bottle-blond waitress who wore gold hoop earrings and had a way with men, had beaten Sarah in. At 44, Sue Ellen was twice Sarah\u2019s age. Sue Ellen had gotten a ride to work with Bill, her boyfriend of the hour. She started to tell Sarah about their hot last night using words like sweat, breathing, erection, orgasm. Sarah\u2019s face turned red with embarrassment. Her encounters with Joe were more often fumbling and awkward than pleasurable, but then, sometimes, there were rare moments when she could forget herself.<\/p>\n In a few minutes, the first customers, including the regulars, and Flora, the waitress who was always late, would trickle in. One of the daily customers was Ted Ames, a retired high school gym teacher and former football coach who still wore his Westboro High t-shirt each day and greeted Sarah each morning with the words \u201cGood morning, Sunshine.\u201d He said this as she plunked his black coffee down on the counter. He always ate a piece of rye toast with grape jelly, no butter, and egg whites. He winked at her and said, \u201cI have to stay in shape for Mabel.\u201d Mabel, his wife of 47 years, was 65 and didn\u2019t like to leave the house.<\/p>\n Some days, everything went smoothly. People got what they ordered and liked it. Other days, well, it wasn\u2019t so smooth.<\/p>\n Yesterday, for example, Sarah had waited on an old man with fishing pole-thin arms and a hearing aid who\u2019d screamed I\u2019m not deaf, even though he was. She\u2019d only yelled at him after she\u2019d asked him four times if she could get him anything else and he hadn\u2019t heard her. Yesterday, they\u2019d also been visited by Ethel, the greasy woman with baggy clothes who appeared from time to time and asked Sarah if she could see spiders crawling on the tables.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, ma\u2019am, I\u2019m afraid I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat, are you blind?\u201d Ethel asked.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe,\u201d Sarah replied because reasoning with Ethel seemed pointless.<\/p>\n As Sarah checked tables to see if the silverware was rolled in napkins and if the salt and sugar shakers were filled, she thought of Joe and the stories he liked to tell her. Last week, sitting on the couch, flicking ashes from his Camel cigarette, never quite hitting the ashtray but instead getting them on the carpet and the couch cover and every other surface in the room, Joe said, \u201cYou should\u2019ve seen that Mack truck flipped over on its side. The state police were there. They closed off four lanes. It took two wreckers to try to lift it up again, and it backed up traffic on I-70 for miles.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat so?\u201d her father said looking away from the TV for once. Her father didn\u2019t seem to find his daughter\u2019s stories so interesting.<\/p>\n Once, when Sarah first started working at McDonald’s as a teenager, she had tried to tell her father what it was really like, how bad, and her father, who was white-haired and bitter even then, after her mother, sick of his misery, had left him, had said, \u201cYou think you got it hard? You just look at me. When you got my problems, then you can complain, understand?\u201d Sarah had nodded, bit her lip and looked away. And, after that day when she was sixteen and baffled by the ridiculousness of impatient customers who said things like, Can I have coffee but in a Coke cup with a straw and three scoops of ice or can I have the cheeseburger without the cheese or a kid\u2019s meal with two toys and no burger, Sarah didn\u2019t complain to anyone. She just marveled over the way people could behave, so difficult and mean.<\/p>\n Sarah walked to the door, unlocked it, turned the sign from closed to open and the customers started coming, slowly at first, like raindrops, and then, a half a hour later, the rain turned into a downpour as the breakfast rush began.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Because Sarah was so good at hiding things from everyone, because she thought it was expected of her, no one knew when she was sick. She kept her oversized purse stocked with Menthol cough drops and Tylenol Cold and Sinus in case of emergency and Imodium AD or Pepto Bismol for emergencies of the other kind. But this day, a Friday, Sarah\u2019s sickness felt different. It had started when her leg had begun hurting a few weeks ago, when Sarah had banged her leg on a table, an injury that Sarah thought would heal itself, so she ignored it. Now, everything seemed foggy. She tried not to mess up orders. Her chest hurt. Her breath had a hard time coming. Sarah was dizzy but determined not to stop. Most illnesses would pass, just like people\u2019s rudeness tended to, if she kept on working. Sarah\u2019s method of dealing with most conflicts was to ignore them until they went away. So she continued robotlike, half-smiling, not listening to anything anyone said unless it was an order: Eggs over easy with sausage, no bacon, and a side of home fries; an omelet with American cheese and ham, a piece of rye toast on the side and can you bring some jelly with that; oatmeal hold the raisins; just tea for me; decaf, please, and one of them cinnamon pastries that are so good.<\/p>\n Sarah filled breakfast orders for three hours, concentrating as hard as she could, trying not to let anyone down, trying so hard not forget what anyone wanted, and as she did it, she thought, my busy time is nearly over, I\u2019ve almost made it. She fell forward, dropping the breakfast plates. She would have banged her head on the floor if Sue Ellen hadn\u2019t seen Sarah stumbling to her table as if asleep and said real loud, \u201cSarah, are you alright?\u201d This caused the man at the counter, the one in a dress shirt and tie who had been coming to the diner every day for five years \u2013since before Sarah had begun working there\u2014 to turn, and seeing her about to fall, as if it were in slow motion, he jumped off his stool and caught her. Otherwise, her black hair, pulled back in a ponytail so it would look neat and not get in the food, would have fallen into the plates and might have ended up immersed in runny yolk from the sunny side up eggs. The dishes, white and ceramic, crashed to the floor and everything in the restaurant stopped. It was Sue Ellen who finally got things moving again when she said to the man trained as a medic, \u201cWell, go on, Donnie, and see if she\u2019s alright.\u201d<\/p>\n For five minutes, while Donnie checked her pulse and Lou himself called the ambulance, screaming into the phone, his face red as the American flag that hung outside, right now, young woman, emergency, get here as fast as you can, not one order was filled, and no one really cared. Afterwards, after they had hauled her off on a stretcher and orders started coming out again, Sue Ellen finally said what everyone was thinking, \u201cI wonder what\u2019s the matter with Sarah. I hope she\u2019s gonna be okay.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Later that day, when Sarah woke up in a thin white gown on an elevated bed in a hospital\u00a0 room with an IV in her left arm, Lou stood by her bed wearing a black Guns N\u2019 Roses T-shirt and a look of worry.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened?\u201d Sarah asked.<\/p>\n \u201cYou passed out, hon.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI guess they don\u2019t know what\u2019s wrong then?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, not yet. But they should get some test results back soon.\u201d<\/p>\n Out of habit, Sarah didn\u2019t react with concern. Since no news seemed to be good news, it was just a matter of how bad. \u201cWell, this happens sometimes, right? I\u2019m sure it\u2019s nothing to worry about. They\u2019ll probably tell me I\u2019m fine and send me on home.\u201d\u00a0 She didn\u2019t realize she was shaking.<\/p>\n \u201cHey,\u201d he said and held out his hand. With relief and surprise, she grabbed his big fingers with her smaller ones and squeezed. Next to his bulky well-worn grease-under-the-fingernail hands, hers looked doll-like.<\/p>\n A young doctor who wore Ralph Lauren clothing and too strong cologne and acted like he was auditioning for a role on one of those nighttime medical dramas that her father liked to watch came in and asked her with a big smile on his face how she was feeling.<\/p>\n Using a chest X-ray, a blurry shiny piece of black and white film paper that didn\u2019t look to Sarah anything like her body, he pointed to things. He talked too slowly using words like blood clot, thrombosis, respiration.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look here,\u201d he said pointing to a part of the slide as if he were a weather man showing a TV audience where the next cold front was going to come in, \u201cyou can see…\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah just had one question. \u201cWell, when can I leave?\u201d<\/p>\n He said that she\u2019d need to stay there a few days. But all she could think about when they said a few days was her father. He couldn\u2019t be home alone. And what would she say to Joe?<\/p>\n \u201cLook, I need to get home,\u201d Sarah said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d the doctor said growing less smiley. \u201cBut this is going to take some time.\u201d He went on to tell her about the tests they had run and would run, the medications she was taking and would continue to take after he left. How if they didn\u2019t take care of this right now the blood clot in her lungs might kill her.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t understand how this happened,\u201d Sarah finally said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn nine out of ten cases, a pulmonary embolism begins in the deep veins of the legs, breaks free and travels through the bloodstream,\u201d the doctor said confidently as if he was talking about a lab rat or a microscope slide instead of Sarah\u2019s body. \u201cWhen it gets lodged in the lungs, it can become life-threatening. Sarah,\u201d the doctor said more gently, in a George Clooney voice, \u201cthis condition can cause death.\u201d<\/p>\n She thought about how her leg had hurt, wondered if that had anything to do with it. She didn\u2019t ask. The word death rang in her head like an echo in a cave. It wasn\u2019t a concept that Sarah could reasonably apply to herself. All the time she imagined something going wrong, something happening to her father when she wasn\u2019t home, but Sarah couldn\u2019t picture her own passing. She couldn\u2019t even imagine the possibility of it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be fine,\u201d said Lou gently, hanging in the background like a comforting shadow.<\/p>\n \u201cI need to see about my father,\u201d Sarah said.<\/p>\n Lou volunteered to go.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019m not asking you,\u201d Sarah said.<\/p>\n \u201cI know you not.. But I\u2019m offering. You can always make it up to me later. Is it a deal?\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah nodded and agreed to let Lou go. She would have to call her father at home first to explain, downplay her illness so her father wouldn\u2019t worry.<\/p>\n As soon as Lou left, Sarah reached for the phone and began to dial. She was too tired to think things through clearly, but she noticed that when she told her father she was in the hospital, he asked how she was but in a conversational way that didn\u2019t inspire revelation, so she said more to the air than anyone, \u201cI\u2019m fine. I\u2019m just fine.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Sarah woke the next morning, Lou was gone, though he had left an imprint on the chair by the bed. Sarah didn\u2019t know until Sue Ellen told her later that Lou had stayed with her the night.<\/p>\n \u201cHow are you feeling?\u201d Sue Ellen asked Sarah while pacing the floor. Sarah noticed Sue Ellen\u2019s candy apple lipstick bright against the neutral colors of the room. Sue Ellen was one of those people who didn\u2019t like to stand still. She was like a bouncing ball that never rested. Sue Ellen was wearing a low-cut white cotton blouse and too tight stonewashed jeans. The lights of the hospital room made her look like a cartoon version of herself.<\/p>\n Sarah said she was okay though she still felt tired, knew from seeing the mirror when they\u2019d helped her to the bathroom that her face, normally light but filled with color, was pasty.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if Lou comes by here today after the diner closes,\u201d Sue Ellen said as she fiddled with her curly, wound-tight hair. \u201cHe worries about you, girl.\u201d<\/p>\n There was an awkward silence between them. Sarah wasn\u2019t much good at small talk, so she finally asked to break the silence, \u201cDo you know if\u2014did my husband call me back?\u201d Sarah explained that she\u2019d tried him on his cell but had gotten no answer.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, I meant to tell you,\u201d Sue Ellen said. \u201cHe called before, but you were fast asleep. He said to say hey, but he won\u2019t be able to make it back for a few days. I think he might be out West somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Joe had probably said he couldn\u2019t come home early because he wanted to finish his run. This is exactly what Sarah would have told him to do, but somehow the fact that he was doing so without even talking to her about it, without even asking if it was okay, felt disappointing.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d said Sarah, not looking at Sue Ellen. \u201cI think he mentioned something about being out in California.\u201d Joe was probably in Oklahoma, Sarah thought, one day\u2019s drive.<\/p>\n The mood in the room was gloomy, but Sue Ellen was someone who liked to look on the bright side of things. Sarah knew this because of the way Sue Ellen talked about her come-and-go boyfriends. Sue Ellen liked to say, \u201cThis one\u2019s gonna be the one;\u00a0 I can feel it.\u201d Even though Sue Ellen\u2019s feet hurt from waitressing, in her off hours, she still didn\u2019t like to sit. \u201cI can sit when I\u2019m dead,\u201d she would say.<\/p>\n \u201cSarah, I\u2019m awfully sorry that this had to happen to you,\u201d Sue Ellen said. She went on, muttering her sympathies. This kind of conversation embarrassed Sarah, who did her work and kept to herself. She knew what some of the other girls said about her, how they felt she was stuck up, too good for them.<\/p>\n \u201cLook, I just,\u201d Sarah began. She wondered if Lou had said anything to Sue Ellen about her father. She didn\u2019t like to talk about him with her co-workers. \u201cI just have a lot going on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t need to apologize to me, honey,\u201d Sue Ellen said. She started to tell her a story about some ex-boyfriend of hers who had died in unexpected and tragic circumstances involving a toaster and a tub of water.<\/p>\n \u201cUm, Sue Ellen,\u201d Sarah said, \u201cwhen I\u2019m better, maybe we could,\u201d Sarah was about to say go out sometime but she didn\u2019t even know, what\u00a0 did the other waitresses do after work?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After Sue Ellen left, Joe called.<\/p>\n \u201cHow you doing, hon?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, I\u2019ll be fine.\u201d Sarah said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not what I heard from your friend there,\u201d he said. Sarah thought she could hear the sound of engines in the background. He was likely at a truck stop on the interstate. She wondered but didn\u2019t ask which highway, which state, how far away he was. She wanted to ask him to come home. But instead what she said was, \u201cOh, well, you know, hospitals make people nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t worry about missing work, babe. You know I\u2019ve got you covered. I\u2019ll pick up some extra runs if I need to. Whatever it takes. Don\u2019t worry about a thing, baby. Love ya. Look, I gotta get back on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSure,\u201d Sarah said. She felt like she was spinning.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Sarah woke again, it was later and Lou was there. He was wearing an Orange County Chopper T-shirt and bad-ass blue jeans that he looked like he\u2019d owned since prehistoric times.<\/p>\n \u201cHey,\u201d said Sarah. \u201cThanks for checking on my dad.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat was nothing. Don\u2019t worry about it. How\u2019s my best waitress?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow\u2019s the diner?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou know. Same old, same old. We\u2019re somehow managing without you. The other girls are pitching in to help. All the regulars are asking about you. Ted Ames says his eggs and toast just don\u2019t taste the same.\u201d<\/p>\n She wondered if Ted had greeted some other waitress with the words \u201cGood Morning Sunshine\u201d today or if those words were only reserved for her.<\/p>\n \u201cHow\u2019s my father?\u201d<\/p>\n Instead of answering, Lou walked over to the bed, got the pink water pitcher from the table near her bed and poured. .<\/p>\n \u201cSarah, let me tell you a story.\u201d When was the last time someone had said that to her? Images of her mother came to her then. She had been skinny, dark haired like Sarah. Pale and pretty. And, then, holding the Little Golden Books that Sarah had so cherished, she had been young.<\/p>\n Lou handed Sarah his well-worn leather wallet. Sarah didn\u2019t know what she was supposed to do with it, so she waited.<\/p>\n \u201cLook here,\u201d Lou said, opening the wallet, pointing to a photograph. The grainy quality of the picture made Sarah realize it was old. It was a photo of a young woman with blonde feathered hair and a pastel pink dress with shoulder pads. The woman was holding a bonneted baby. He handed her the picture. \u201cThat was my wife and my daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n Lou looked at her, but she knew he was seeing his old life. \u201cI loved them, but I didn\u2019t know how to be a husband or a father. Instead, I was out chasing women at all hours, having fun, doing anything and everything but spending time with Teresa and Jodi. I thought they\u2019d always be there waiting. But, then one day, I came home from drinking all night, and they were gone. Teresa packed everything she owned and walked out. She hadn\u2019t left a thing, not even a spare diaper. I hadn\u2019t seen it coming. I felt like I\u2019d been hit by a ton of bricks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Sarah said. After her mother had left, she\u2019d felt a void a blackness. And she still felt that now.<\/p>\n With his legs crossed so that Sarah could see a small hole in the jeans near his left pocket and the way some of the thread was fraying, Lou continued, \u201cBefore I worked in the restaurant business, I used to fix cars. I think maybe I told you about that one of those nights when you offered to stay late. Well, anyways, sometimes I\u2019d come across a good car that didn\u2019t run so well no more because someone had worked it too hard, didn\u2019t do the maintenance on it, neglected oil changes, brake pads, those sorts of things. The thing is a good car, a great car even, can\u2019t just go and go and go. In order to run properly, it needs to be maintained.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah didn\u2019t say anything. Instead she just looked at him.<\/p>\n Finally, he spoke again, this time more plainly, putting a grease-stained hand to his beard. The other he let drop so it was there against the bed. She could take it if she wanted. \u201cSarah, even if sometimes the people who should be there aren\u2019t, it don\u2019t mean it\u2019s you. And it don\u2019t mean nobody cares. Do you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d Sarah said, \u201cI get it.\u201d She let her hand brush his and then she reached for it, held it. As she held it, she bit back tears. She wasn\u2019t the kind of girl who cried or made scenes. Still, she felt a change like a light turning on inside her. Nothing was different, except this: If she needed to picture someone now in those times when everything seemed beyond her, she could picture Lou with his hand stretched out, waiting, or she could picture the moment after when she\u2019d taken it and held it and held it until she felt alright.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Sarah first started working at McDonald’s as a teenager, she had tried to tell her father what it was really like, how bad, and her father, who was white-haired and bitter even then, after her mother, sick of his misery, had left him, had said, \u201cYou think you got it hard? You just look at me. When you got my problems, then you can complain, understand?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3228,3227,2621,1428,1513,3229,1147,3230],"class_list":["post-18818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-disappointment","tag-feminism","tag-fiction","tag-hope","tag-loss","tag-redemption","tag-short-story","tag-working-class-fiction","writer-lori-dangelo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18818"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19523,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18818\/revisions\/19523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}