Shift Notes

I planned on writing him a note from the start. Let me get that straight up front. It just happened, the way things happen on a night shift when you're twenty-eight years old, stuck in a basement office at St. Jude's Memorial from eleven at night until seven in the morning, and the only other human being down there is the one guy on earth you've been competing with since you were twenty-three.

Bryce.

Yes, that Bryce. The Bryce from the apprenticeship, five years back, when we were both green and both convinced the other one was going to wash out first. He didn't wash out. Neither did I. What did happen was five years of bickering, one-upping, and me pretending I didn't think about him at two in the morning, which I did, constantly, and if you tell anyone that I will deny it to your face.

So there we were, Tuesday night, boiler maintenance and a leak on three that nobody could find. He had his head under the sink on three for an hour. I had the maintenance office to myself, the dented metal desk, the sad coffeemaker, the corkboard full of shift schedules from like 2019. And his toolbox. Sitting right there. Open.

Now, a normal person would ignore the toolbox. I am not a normal person. I am a person who found a pen and one of those little intake forms nobody ever fills out, and I wrote this:

*Hey hotshot. Remember the Delgado job? March, four years ago? You installed that check valve backwards and flooded the mechanical room while the supervisor watched. I held the flashlight. I also held in the laugh. I have never held in anything harder. Thought you should know that at least one person remembers. Yours in victory, M.*

I folded it up, tucked it in the toolbox between his Channellocks and his tape measure, and went back to pretending I was reading the boiler log. Did he find it right away? He did not. He found it at like 1:40 in the morning, and I know this because I heard him go "oh, you have got to be kidding me" from across the room, and I had to stare at the corkboard like it was the most fascinating corkboard in America.

He didn't say anything to me. Smart. What could he say? It's all true.

But around two, I came back from checking the riser on five, and there was a napkin under my coffee mug. One of the flimsy ones from the cafeteria, with grease spots. His handwriting is terrible, by the way, always was, like a doctor and a fourth grader had a baby. It said:

*That valve was defective and everyone knows it. Also you held that flashlight crooked on purpose so I'd have to reach past you. Who's the show-off? You've been keeping score for five years, and you're still losing. B.*

Still losing! I read it four times. I sat there with my coffee going cold and thought, okay, sure, we're doing this. Fine. I can do this all night. Literally. That's the shift.

So I found one of the old blueprints in the drawer, the ones for the second floor that don't match reality and never did, and I used the back of it. Because if you're going to escalate, escalate with visual aids, that's what my shop teacher always said, probably.

Here's roughly what I wrote, and I have it memorized because I have reread it an embarrassing number of times since:

*Bryce. Since you brought up the flashlight. Here is what would have happened if the supervisor hadn't been standing right there. I would have set the light down on the workbench, right about here (see sketch, corner of the mechanical room, away from the door). I'd have stepped into your space, maybe a foot away, angled in from your left so you'd have to turn your head to look at me. You always turn your head left. You probably don't know you do that. Then I'd have kissed you, one hand flat on your chest, and I'd have felt you swallow. And then, hotshot, I'd have asked if you wanted more, because I'm a professional. But we weren't alone, so instead you flooded a room. Sleep well. M.*

I drew the little arrow and everything. I drew a stick figure with his hair. It's possibly the best document I have ever produced and it's for a man who cannot spell "certainly."

I slid it in the toolbox this time, because the mug thing felt too public, and then I went and checked a pressure gauge I had already checked, because my hands needed something to do.

Now here's where it gets interesting, and by interesting I mean my heart did something I'm not writing down.

At about four, my work phone buzzed. Not a text. A voicemail. From Bryce. I stood in the middle of that cramped little office, boilers humming, gurneys clattering way overhead on some floor I'd never see, and I played it.

His voice was low. Lower than his normal voice, which is already on the low side. He said, "Milly. Supply closet by the east stairwell. Five minutes. If you want. If you don't want, ignore this and I'll never mention it again, and you can keep roasting me about that valve until we're sixty. But if you do want... five minutes. I'll leave the door unlocked."

And here is the part where you, the reader, shout at the page. Because I did not go.

I stood there. I counted to what felt like a hundred and was probably forty. I looked at the door. I thought about the east stairwell closet, which is about as big as a phone booth and smells like... actually I don't remember what it smells like, floor cleaner of some kind. I thought about walking down there. I thought about what I'd written on the back of that blueprint, which I meant, every word, and which had apparently landed, judging by the voicemail.

And then I didn't go.

Why? Good question. Because I'm an idiot? Partly. But mostly because a voicemail at four a.m. in a closet with an unlocked door felt like a dare, and I have spent five years refusing to lose dares to this man, and I was not going to lose this one by showing up on command like I was a trained dog. If he wanted me, he was going to have to say it in daylight, or at least in writing, like an adult with a pen.

So instead, I sat down on the desk chair, pulled my phone out, and took a picture. Just my hand, resting on my thigh, work pants and all, nothing scandalous, my palm flat and my fingers a little curled. Then I typed the caption.

*this is where I'd start.*

Sent it. Put the phone face-down on the desk. Picked it back up. Put it down again. Checked the boiler log for real this time, because if I didn't do something with my hands I was going to wear a hole in that corkboard with my staring.

The reply took eleven minutes. Eleven! I counted. My phone buzzed and I snatched it up so fast I nearly knocked the coffee over, and his text said:

*You're killing me. That's the thigh. I know exactly which part of the thigh that is. You realize we have three more hours of shift.*

I typed back: *I realize. Fix the leak first, hotshot. Then we'll see.*

Then I turned my phone over and did not look at it for a solid ninety seconds