Sadie
The first thing I notice about the new clinic is the smell.
It's the same smell every clinic has, everywhere, a combination of bleach and latex and a certain brand of hand soap they all seem to buy from the same supplier. The second I walk through the staff entrance on my first morning, it settles something in me that has been loose since I realized I had to leave my old life.
This I can do. This I know how to do. The front desk is a different person and the exam rooms are a different color, and the supply closet is in a different place from what I'm used to, but the bones of the work are the same everywhere.
Dr. Mehta is a small woman in her forties with tired eyes and a kind mouth, and she walks me through the morning clearly and quickly, without wasting either of our time. I'm shown the rooming protocol, the EMR system, the location of the crash cart, the coffee machine that lies about being decaf and the coffee machine that doesn't. I meet two other MAs named Priya and Denise, both of whom assess me the way established colleagues always assess a new hire, which is with a smile that isn’t quite trusting yet.
By ten o'clock, it has become one. By noon, Priya has offered me half of her sandwich and Denise has shown me the drawer where they hide the good pens. I’m starting to understand something I had forgotten in the last year of my life, which is thatwork is the place where I am most myself, and when I am most myself, people tend to like me.
I’d forgotten people liked me. I’d forgotten I was a person they could like.
The clinic is fourteen blocks from my apartment. I walk it, because I still don't have a car and the bus doesn't run a useful route. Besides, walking is free and my knee has been behaving itself more than I’d anticipated after the crash. By the time I get home, the sky is the color of a bruise and my feet hurt, but I feel good. I grab a sandwich from the deli just before it closes, and they give me a discount since I’m the last customer of the day.
Things finally feel like they’re looking up.
I push through the lobby door and stop.
The elevator, which has had an OUT OF ORDER sign taped across its call button for every day of the ten days I've lived in this building, is humming. The call button is lit. The sign is gone. There’s a small, clean patch on the metal where the tape used to be, as if someone wiped down the adhesive residue with alcohol and a rag, but didn’t bother with the rest of it.
I stand there for longer than I mean to, then I take the stairs anyway, because I'm not about to trust a metal box on the strength of a humming noise. Especially when the super said there were no plans to get it fixed anytime soon.
I tell myself that it's a coincidence. Buildings get their elevators fixed eventually. My landlord Terry is a harried man with a lot of properties and not enough time, and maybe one of his tenants got loud enough about it to move it up the list.
There’s a brown paper grocery bag leaning against my door.
My feet don't move. I watch the bag the way I’d watch a tiger. I listen for any unfamiliar sound. There are no footsteps or othersounds that don’t belong. It’s just me in the hallway, staring at a brown paper bag.
I pick up the bag and unlock my door, step inside, and set the sandwich and groceries on the counter.
"Okay," I say out loud, to no one. "Okay."
I round the counter slowly, keys still in my hand, because if somebody is hiding in here, I am going to scratch their eyes out before I die. I check the bathroom, empty. The closet, which is so shallow it couldn't hide a child much less anything else. I even check behind the shower curtain.
The apartment is empty.
I walk back to the bag of groceries, my heart running at a rate my meter isn’t going to like, and I look inside.
Oat milk, the brand I bought last week at the corner store where I have been careful not to use a loyalty or credit card. A loaf of sourdough, which is not the bread I bought, but is the bread I looked at for a long time before I bought the cheaper loaf because I couldn't afford the sourdough. A jar of raspberry jam. A small bag of coffee by a brand I don't recognize, chamomile teabags, fresh vegetables…
There are apples, three of them, a sweeter variety than the ones I bought. There is a box of granola with dark chocolate and almonds, the kind I looked at in the store. At the bottom of the bag, in a small cardboard sleeve, there is a container of blueberries.
My hand closes around the small box and stays there.
Someone knew I looked longingly at the blueberries in the corner store three days ago before I put them back, because they were four dollars and I needed the four dollars more than I needed blueberries.
I put the blueberries on the counter and slide down to the floor because my legs have stopped working.
The first thing I do, when I can think again, is call Terry.
He picks up on the fifth ring with the weary grunt of a man who has had a long day of other people's problems. I try to keep my voice even when I ask him whether anyone has been up to my apartment today.
"No." His answer is short and to the point. “Not that I’ve been told. Is there a problem?”
"I came home and there are groceries waiting for me at my door. But I didn’t order anything."
Terry is quiet for a second. Then he laughs. "Well, that's a new one. Could be a neighbor. Sometimes folks drop stuff off for the new person, a welcome wagon kind of thing."
