Chapter 2 - The Measure of an Apron
The employee break area was nothing more than a six-foot stretch of cinderblock corridor wedged between the walk-in dairy cooler and the grease trap. A metal locker unit stood against the wall, its gray enamel scratched down to bare metal around the handles.
Emily ripped her locker open with a metallic screech.
Inside sat her winter coat—a cheap, thin nylon windbreaker with a broken zipper that her mother had mended with three safety pins—and her canvas crossbody bag. Emily’s hands were shaking so hard she dropped her keys onto the concrete. She ignored them, plunging her hand into the bottom of the bag.
Her fingers found the small, paper pharmacy sack she had picked up during her forty-five-minute break between school and her shift.
Inside were two items: a half-pint carton of whole milk she had bought from the corner bodega for a dollar-fifty, and a cylindrical tube of orange-flavored chewable glucose tablets. Her mother was diabetic; Emily never went anywhere without glucose tablets in her pocket. She had spent five dollars and eighty cents of her remaining sixteen dollars on those two items, skipping her own lunch so her mother would have a backup tube in her purse.
"What are you doing back there?!" Bradley’s voice echoed down the narrow hallway, accompanied by the rapid, angry click of his dress shoes. He appeared in the doorway, his face mottled red. "Did you hear what I said to you? You are on the clock, Ward!"
Emily jammed the glucose tube into her apron pocket, snatched the carton of cold milk, and shoved past him.
"Don't you walk away from me!" Bradley shouted, lunging forward to grab her shoulder.
Emily twisted out of his reach with the fluid instinct of someone who had spent her adolescence dodging erratic drunks on the Red Line. She hit the swinging kitchen doors at a dead run, bursting back into the warm, scented dining room.
The patrons stared. The man filming with his phone swung the lens toward her, his eyebrows lifting in mild amusement as the messy-haired teenage dishwasher sprinted past the polished walnut tables, clutching a carton of dairy like a football.
Emily hit the brass panic bar of the front door with her shoulder.
The November air hit her like a bucket of ice water thrown directly into her face. The sleet pierced her thin cotton t-shirt, soaking her white apron instantly, gluing the fabric to her chest and arms. The wind roared down Michigan Avenue, a howling tunnel of gray mist and freezing spray that tore the breath from her throat.
She hit the wet granite on both knees, the impact sending a jolt of pain through her kneecaps that she barely felt.
"Ma'am!" Emily shouted against the wind, dropping the milk carton onto the pavement and sliding her bare hands under the woman’s shoulders. "Ma'am, can you hear me?!"
The woman was freezing. Her skin felt like raw poultry kept too long in the back of the walk-in cooler, damp and rubbery. A faint, sickeningly sweet odor clung to her shallow, rattling breath—an acetone smell that Emily recognized with terrifying clarity. It wasn't the sour stench of cheap whiskey; it was the smell of ketoacidosis. The woman's blood sugar was bottoming out, her brain starving for glucose in the middle of a frozen street.
"Hey, stay with me," Emily begged, slipping her arm behind the woman's neck, lifting her head off the freezing stone.
The woman’s eyelids fluttered, revealing eyes of an intense, cloudy amber that seemed unable to focus on Emily’s face. Her lips were cracked, coated in a white, dry film, moving soundlessly against the sleet.
Emily used her teeth to rip the plastic seal off the glucose tube. With trembling fingers, she popped out three chalky orange wafers, crushed them between her thumb and forefinger into a rough powder, and pressed the fragments between the woman’s cheek and gums.
"Swallow if you can," Emily pleaded, her teeth chattering so violently she bit her tongue. "Just let it dissolve. Please. Just keep breathing."
Behind her, the heavy glass door of the café swung open and slammed against the exterior brass stopper with a violent boom.
"Emily Ward!"
May you like
Bradley Thorne stood under the green canvas awning, refusing to take a single step into the sleet. He held his clipboard tucked under his arm, his tailored trousers fluttering in the draft, his face twisted into an expression of cold, petty triumph.
"You took company product past the perimeter without a supervisor's authorization!" Bradley screamed, his voice carrying over the sound of the traffic and the pelting rain. "You walked off your station during peak operational hours! You are done! Do you hear me?! Take off that apron! You’re fired on the spot!"
