The new girl Sam hired for the part-time position was quickly catching onto our routines. Once fully trained, she’d be covering the shifts left open by everyone’s vacation time. I’d shown her all of the tricks that every server should know. Currently, the ketchup and steak sauce lids were soaking in a container of scalding hot water to remove the residue from them, and we’d already wiped the excess from the tops of the bottles. Even though it wasn’t closing time, I helped her break down one of the fountain machines and a tea dispenser to teach her how to properly sanitize and reassemble them. She impressed even Sam when she switched out the pop syrup in the box like a pro. I had to say she really was doing great, and Sam may have finally hired someone worthwhile.

Her biggest mistake was choosing to wear such a nice top. Sam didn’t give anyone a uniform top until you were out of your trial period, which varied from person to person. He lost money in the past by doing the opposite and giving new employees tops that they never returned, as they didn’t either.

Her second mistake was walking into the exit door of the kitchen without yelling, “Wrong door.” It was a known fact in the food industry you needed to announce your error or you might end up colliding with someone else.

Maki returned from vacation today, and she was notorious for heeding the directions of the doors as gospel. She never looked to see if someone was using the wrong door. The rest of us tended to share our love of misdirection and just looked before leaving or entering the kitchen. Not Maki.

No amount of warning from my part could stop Maki’s hot plate of Gator on a Log, Sam’s version of an open-faced roast beef dish, from crashing with Desiree’s pale pink blouse.

“Watch out!” rippled from my mouth in such a shrill tone I didn’t recognize my own voice. I tried to save her blouse—it wasn’t something I would wear, it was too pink and feminine, but I still hated to see it ruined.

Mashed potatoes and gravy clung to the thin fabric, and some had even gotten on her face and hair. It was as if someone had taken the liberty of hitting the mute button on a gigantic remote because no sounds left anyone’s mouth in the diner. My eyes, like every other set in here, stopped on Desiree, awaiting her upcoming meltdown.

We’d seen this happen many times before with new employees; most left immediately after. Hence, Sam losing money on uniform tops. Gretchen’s dish was spaghetti. Mine was Chicken Alfredo. We’d been the only two that stayed after wearing Maki’s “accidental” plate of food. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Maki had always done it on purpose. It was her way of weeding out the weak.

Desiree’s tongue slid outward and circled her lips, cleaning the food surrounding them from her skin. They then puffed out into their fullness as she smiled in satisfaction. I cocked my head in confusion and raised an eyebrow as I glanced through the doorway and into the back of the house at Ray. He swirled his finger inches away from his temple, indicating what he’d told me earlier this morning before Desiree arrived.

“She’s crazy. I’m telling you, girl,” he whispered as she went into the office with Sam to fill out paperwork. He stirred the ingredients for biscuits around in a gigantic metal bowl and set it to the side, prepping the biscuit pans by brushing a mixture of butter and bacon grease onto them. If you were looking for healthy food, Dad’s Skillet wasn’t the right place for you. However, if you wanted to taste the best food your mouth had ever gotten a chance to eat, Dad’s Skillet was the perfect place for you to dine.

“You don’t know that,” I said just to defy what he was saying, when in all honesty, I didn’t care either way. Using an oven mitt, I placed the pans into the double deck oven, closing the door after all six pans were on a shelf.

“I do. Eyes show people’s souls, and that one has a wickedness behind hers,” his deep voice warned as he pinched his fingertips together and flung them fully open, releasing a tiny bit of flour into the air. Ray was very superstitious. He claimed it to be his natural Creole roots that made him more sensitive to things than other people. I knew better. He was just overly dramatic, but if he weren’t, he wouldn’t be Ray.

We argued back and forth until she was in earshot and returning to my side for more training.

He nodded his head at me through the open space and nodded toward Desiree, who continued to hold the entire diner’s attention. The fact she didn’t freak out only confirmed his suspicions. At least in his mind it did. It did nothing for me. After all, Maki’s plate hadn’t sent me running out the door either.

“That’s some damn good gator,” Desiree announced, elongating each word, and looked up into the mirror no one used and usually forgot it was even there. Sam added a mirror above the walkway to prevent situations like this from happening after the last “new girl” threatened to sue the diner.

“You’re right, Raymond Landry. I’m crazy,” she called him out on the actions we’d thought he’d only shared with me. My eyes widened. She was ballsy, and I liked it, but it made me a little uneasy, too. There was no way someone who’d only been on the shift for three and a half hours would know his last name. Just as I almost began to give in to Sam’s superstitions, Desiree debunked them.

“But, I’m no crazier than I was when we dated in high school.” She laughed, biting her lip and shooting a hateful glare to him over her shoulder as she bent down to help Maki clean the mess off of the floor. I shook my head in disbelief in Ray’s general direction. I guess he had told the truth when he said he knew she was crazy. I was too busy arguing with him to listen to the rest of his story.

This had proven to be more than enough excitement for one day. After the initial shock wore off, everyone seemed to go on business as usual. The pencil’s lead formed a circle, and then I numbered each seat around the table I’d drawn. Thankfully, she knew what I was drawing. Otherwise, it would appear I was teaching her to count with shapes. We went through the ordering number system again, and it seemed she understood it pretty well.

“Seat one is always the customer to your left and so on,” she repeated my words, nodding her head and shoving the diagram into her black book. If you always paired your orders with the correct numbers, anyone could run your food to a table and serve it to the right person versus standing at the table and “auctioning” off each plate. After securing the book into the pocket of her apron, she wrapped the black material around it and swirled the straps around that to ensure the contents’ safety.

“See you tomorrow?” she asked, hopefulness sang outward from her words.

“Nope. Maki’s got you the rest of the week.” I fumbled with my keys and they dropped onto the floor with a clank. “Besides,” I bent down and retrieved them, looping my index finger through the keychain, “I’m off for three.”

“Damn. Maki.” Her lips smacked together and her tongue clicked. “That woman has it out for me,” she voiced her concerns and threw her apron into her glittery bag, slinging it over her shoulder.

“That’s just Maki,” I pointed out the obvious. Maki never made anything easy on anyone. She didn’t believe in it. She was the oldest employee at Dad’s Skillet, other than Sam. In reality, she just expected everyone to do his or her job, so it didn’t leave your responsibilities onto someone else. As long as you did that, you’d get along with Maki, and may even like her. Personally, I had learned to love Maki and all of her ways over the years I’d worked here. She would tell stories at closing time on the evenings that business was on the slower side of how the diner used to be so popular a line of patrons would wrap around the block. As she told the stories, her eyes sparkled with pride. It was clear it was those memories that she held most dear to her heart.

The first person I thought of when I was thinking of the diner was, of course, Drex. That would never change, as he stuck out of our hospitality like a sore thumb. It was hard not to see the contrast Drex brought into every aspect of my life, but I was the only one who saw the heartache we shared, even if I didn’t know what the cause behind his was. I didn’t need to. I could tell he had suffered more than his share of pain.

The very roots of the diner had grown from Sam and Lorene. They’d brought a certain warmth to Blackwell that always reminded me of home. After my mind thought of them, it always passed to Maki. She was one of the first employees Lorene and Sam hired. She knew everything there was to know about the restaurant business. She could tell you tips and tricks, like making cocktail sauce out of horseradish and ketchup if it was a busy night and you ran out or the cocktail sauce wouldn’t arrive until the next shipment of the food truck. To me, this was something only a seasoned server would know. I never understood why she hadn’t opened her own restaurant, but I had never asked either.

My mood was better than it had been in some time, and I knew it was mostly because of Drex, but today was entertaining as well. Switching the radio onto a generic station, I drove home and hummed along with the music, pretending to know what was playing. I didn’t, so eventually, I sang my own words.

* * *

Mom texted three simple words, “I love you,” and I don’t know what changed in me, but I texted them back to her. It was the first time in years I’d replied, and I didn’t know how she’d react. I bit down on the tip of my finger waiting for her response, figuring my phone would be ringing any second.

Mom: I know <3

Her response floored me. We hadn’t spoken in years, and yet she’d somehow found the words to bring a smile to my face. Smiling, I set my phone down on the hamper after tossing my clothes into it and closing the lid.

My eyes closed as I sank into a warm bath and used my toe to change the temperature of the water spewing from the spout. It was a bit too warm and then too cold. I huffed, not wanting to move, but ended up sitting up to adjust the water anyway. I slid back into the water and closed my eyes again, breathing in the quietness, and rested my arms on the sides of the tub, letting them hang over the sides.

Today was exhausting. One wouldn’t think training someone would be so tiring, but it was nonetheless. The sad point was, Desiree actually had waitstaff experience, so she wasn’t too terribly hard to train. Really, she was the best employee I’d ever trained. Yet, having to explain my every move, more than once, my energy level dropped. It was normal to have to do this for anyone, until they were made familiar with the location of things and routines, that was. It wasn’t her fault, but it still didn’t annoy me any less.

“The doctor had a few questions concerning your labs,” the nurse, who moments before had assured me I could go home, announced as she slung back the curtain and exposed my naked body to the family walking behind her.

“Okay. What does that mean?” I asked, shielding my exposed skin with my hands. Although, there wasn’t much use in trying. I would be thirty-eight weeks pregnant tomorrow, and I was pushing two hundred pounds as the audio on the scales loudly broadcasted to the entire room twenty minutes ago.

“That,” she spoke softly and reached for the gown I had just taken off and laid on the mattress, “means you’re staying here.” She held the gown out for me to put my arms through. Tears touched my eyelids as fear climbed up the winding pattern of my stomach to my throat.

“At least for tonight.” She tried to comfort me with her words, but continued to help me get back into the bed and reattach all of the machines we’d just unhooked.

My heart pounded and anxiety filled the room, leaving little space for me to stay in it. I didn’t have a choice, though. According to Paige, the nurse’s name I learned after reading her name badge, my doctor wants to keep me overnight for observation.

As soon as all the cables were attached, I texted Mom as I stared at the IV in my right hand Paige inserted and gritted my teeth. The whole time I’d been here it didn’t seem real, but somehow, having a plastic catheter in my vein made it too real. I reminded myself this was the best place for us, if something was going on inside my body. I felt fine, though. Well, except the fact I couldn’t see well and was a little dizzy. I could deal with those things, though, and would have if I didn’t have another person’s life on the line.

“Noah, I’ll do better. I promise,” I whispered and trotted a line along my belly and watched his response of kicks show up on the monitors and against my hand. “I love you. Forever and always,” I assured him we were going to be okay, I’d see to it. I told him I’d never let anything hurt him, and as long as it was us against the world, we’d be okay. We were a team, he and I. Even if he didn’t like it, he was stuck with me.

The next day I was waiting for Mom to arrive. She had to wait until after Jaxson was on the bus. He apologized last night because he wanted to go on his field trip today. I didn’t blame him. I wanted to go to the Sunset Museum, too. It was a lot cooler than a hospital, and honestly, one thousand times less scary. If I hadn’t gotten pregnant and opted for homeschooling, I would be going to the museum, too. Instead, I was here.

In an attempt to make the rooms more welcoming, someone had painted colorful butterflies and flowers onto the drab beige ceiling tiles. No doubt to give the patients something to look at while pushing, something I hoped I wouldn’t be doing for another two weeks. I wished they had painted a Starry Night or something truly worth holding the attention of millions of eyes. Then again, art was specific to a person’s life. What I found beauty in may be the most horrendous thing the next person had ever seen. I loved that about art. Anything could be beautiful given the right person to love it.

“Looks like you’re having a baby today,” the housekeeper all but sang as she swirled the mop along the floor and pulled my attention away from the fourth purple butterfly I’d counted.

“Congratulations, honey,” she said with one last push of her mop and exited my room.

Shock and fear forced my mouth open, and suddenly, I found it a good deal difficult to breathe. The news that Noah may be here today was suffocating. I wasn’t ready for him. Not yet. I wasn’t happy to have failed my son this soon in his life. I should have listened to Mom and brought the bag with me, or at the very least should have let her come with me. She’d know what to do right now.

Maybe the housekeeper just assumed since I was in a bed on the Mother & Baby Unit that I was having a baby today and not here for observation. No one had mentioned this to me, apart from her, that was. My nurse, Josh, didn’t mention it when he dug a breakfast bar out of the desk drawer at the nurses’ station around three AM because I was starving and hated lunchmeat. Cold cuts were the only thing they had in the nutrition fridge for the patients, an awful choice for pregnant mothers, as certain meats weren’t recommended to consume during pregnancy. The phlebotomist who drew my blood two hours ago hadn’t mentioned anything when she and I discussed baby names. She was also expecting a little one. She was going to name her little girl Lilly when she arrived in November.

I’d only assumed my labs had improved, considering no one reported otherwise, but I knew my head hurt pretty badly. Again, it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. Every possibility of what could be wrong flew into my mind, and I felt my heart begin to fill with absolute fear. I tried to catch it before it was completely consumed, but knowing Noah could be in trouble wasn’t something I could deal with. Before I knew it, tears found my eyes, and the machine beside me alarmed because my heart rate was too fast. The numbers blinked and blurred a little the longer I stared at them.

My doctor silenced the alarm as she passed it and sat on the bed beside my legs, scooting the covers back to check the swelling in my legs. She took my hand, and I knew by the way her soft voice fluttered from her lips that the housekeeper was right. I didn’t listen to the words Dr. Kane said after preeclampsia. I didn’t need to. I had to prepare myself mentally for what was coming next. I wasn’t dilated at all, so that meant a C-section since something had to be done. I may have only been seventeen, but I had read so many mommy books to prepare, probably due to the fact I couldn’t do much else, that I knew a natural birth was out of the question at this point, given the risks increasing by the minute.

“You’ll see your sweet little angel soon, Eris.” She squeezed my hand and smiled caringly. She nodded and placed our hands on my belly. “See you soon, Noah,” she announced and explained how the surgery would go and what to expect.

Thankfully, Mom walked in as Dr. Kane began to explain everything, because I didn’t understand a lot of what she was saying. Everyone seemed so calm and excited, apart from me. Too calm if you ask me. Even Noah had stilled a little in my stomach, only kicking every once in a while, no doubt to remind me we hadn’t eaten since three AM. I wanted to be calm like everyone else, but I couldn’t. Excitement and panic waged war in my body, and I didn’t know which would be the victor. Both swung on the very tips of my heartstrings, and my pulse mirrored their fast-paced battle.

“I’ll see you in a few minutes,” Dr. Kane announced in a bubbly voice as eagerness radiated from her smile. Mom and I nodded in silent response, and then our eyes were on each other.

“This is it.” She pursed her lips together as she swiped my cell phone from my fingers. “Smile, honey!” she quickly whispered, noticing the tears begging to spill over the brims of my eyelids. I did as she said and leaned my head against hers to get into focus of the screen. Mom always insisted on taking photos for remembrance. Practically every moment Jaxson and I had been alive was recorded in some way or another. She claimed, “Memories fade and minds often become damaged, so capture the moment in a photo and secure the love in your heart for safekeeping. You never know when you’ll need a reminder of happiness.”

Before the numbing medicine they painfully injected into my back had time to work, the nurses and doctors in scrubs helped me lie down on the table. They strapped my legs down and hung a drape to keep Mom and me from seeing what they were doing. After a quick silent prayer, Dr. Kane and a few other staff members moved to the other side of the drape.

At first, I didn’t really feel anything, other than being extremely tired and scared beyond a level I ever thought possible. No one had updated me on how Noah was doing, and I could feel my eyes closing, which meant if I was losing consciousness, he could be, too.

“Please help him,” I begged everyone in the operating room that had been so cold I couldn’t keep my teeth from chattering moments before I was cut open, but now sweat was dripping down my forehead and mixing with the escaped tears sneaking down my face.

“You’re doing great, Eris. Try to relax.” Dr. Kane gave it her best to ease my anxiety. It didn’t work. Not even a little. She didn’t mention how Noah was doing. I had to know how he was doing.

“I’m about to pass out,” I murmured as I felt them trying to pull Noah from my stomach. Each time they pulled on Noah, they took my intestines with him, or so it seemed. I knew they weren’t actually pulling them because a baby is in your uterus, but they were definitely pulling something they shouldn’t be.

“Please,” I begged again. “How is Noah?” I managed to push out of my nauseous body in between tugs.

“Why do you think you’re going to pass out?” the male nurse standing behind my head asked as his warm coffee breath blew around the mask covering his nose and mouth. “We’ve already given you medicine to help with that, dear.”

“Administer more,” Dr. Kane ordered him and glared at him over the drape that curtained her neck and body. He nodded in response. I tried to read my blood pressure, but my vision was just too blurred. Closing one eye, I could make out the bottom number to be 45 mmHg, but I may as well have forgotten reading the top digits. I gave up. It wasn’t important. The only thing that mattered now was Noah.

One last nauseating tug happened, and everyone fell silent. My eyes darted to Mom’s as I waited for any emotion to flash in them. I needed some sign. No one was telling me anything, and I didn’t have the strength to be as loud as I normally would be.

A last, the most amazing sound filled the room, and it was incredibly loud. Noah screamed so loud I was sure people in the waiting room would be able to hear him. Mom’s eyes filled with tears of joy, mirroring the emotion that quickly transitioned in mine. Pure happiness.

“He’s absolutely perfect, Eris,” Dr. Kane proclaimed, lifting him up for me to see he was healthy and then handing him to the nearby nurse. Of course, at this point Mom had pulled her phone out and was capturing our happiness. She was right. This was a moment I would need for the rest of my life, even though it only began a few seconds ago. I thought I was alive before Noah was born, mostly because people and science told me I was, given the breathing and moving around I was doing. Technically, I was, but they were all wrong if you ask me. I knew in this moment, I was born right alongside Noah. Watching the nurses clean him off and take pictures of Mom pretending to cut his umbilical cord, I knew this was the first time my eyes had actually seen the world, and I understood the reason Mom took so many damn pictures.

I awoke with a smile, knowing my son had been born just moments ago, and then it faded into the most guttural scream I was capable of creating. I hated everything about this world and the breaths I was allowed to take. Nothing made sense about death. Knowing I’d been allowed to do more than my share of living and continued to breathe not only baffled me, it pissed me off. Seven years wasn’t enough time to even get to know the world, much less hold enough breaths to have them taken away from you.

Hate burned my throat and tears crept into my eyes, but I didn’t fight them. It was pointless. There was a breaking point with anyone, and mine had split along with my heart, repeatedly for years. A vicious cycle that repeatedly left irreversible damage in its wake. Many people said a heart wasn’t capable of truly breaking. They were wrong. If they’d endured even a millimeter of what I had, they may quit rattling off that stupid scientific nonsense.

I’d intentionally left behind all the pictures and the living people in them back home. I didn’t want to remember. Splinters of heartache had webbed across my heart for years, but tonight, I’d reached my quota. Misery burst through and shattered my soul into millions of little pieces.

I pounded my fist against the tub until I saw blood streaking down its hard white surface and then danced across the cold water as it mixed together. Holding my tongue between my teeth to prevent another scream, I raked my hands through my hair, not caring at all if the remnants of blood were left on my bangs.

My knuckles stung when I hastily dunked them into the water to clean the blood from my skin. I knew I couldn’t break my tub, but that couldn’t be said for most things in my apartment, and I didn’t have that much in here to destroy. I needed to leave or I’d be left to pick up the physical pieces of my life, alongside the mental ones I knew I’d be gathering tomorrow.