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It was the realest night of my life.
“Okay.” I drop the last rollup into the bin. “That’s fifty rollups. I’m taking my break.”
“Kid, mind topping off the coffee at table seven?” Darla asks. “Gotta run some food.”
“Sure, let me…”
I stand up.
The floor doesn’t stay where I left it.
I grab the back of the booth. Darla’s voice sounds like it’s coming from the parking lot. “You all right, kid?”
Everything goes muffled, like we’re underwater. Gray creeps in at the corners of my eyes.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I just skipped breakfast. I’ll sit for a second. I’ll just…”
When I come to, I’m on the floor.
Darla and Jess and two customers are standing over me. One of them is still holding a fork.
“Stevie. Stevie, look at me.”
“I’m fine.”
It’s a lie, and now everybody knows it. “I stood up too fast.”
“You went down like a sack of flour,” Darla says, crouching beside me. “That’s not standing up too fast. Jess, you still got that shit-box car?”
“Betty is not a shit box. But yes.”
“Good. We’re going to the…”
“I can’t afford…”
“Urgent care. Not the ER. Cheaper. And you’re not the first girl to hit my floor in the middle of a shift.”
The urgent care on Steinway Street is fluorescent lights and laminate and sadness.
I fill out the clipboard with Jess beside me, and all I can think is how much this is going to cost.
“You’re fine,” Jess says, squeezing my knee. “Low blood pressure. My grandma used to get dizzy spells like that.”
“Your grandma was probably eighty.”
She thinks about it. “Sure. But still.”
“This place charges two hundred dollars just to look at me. If it’s nothing, I just set a whole day of tips on fire.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
A nurse pokes her head out. “Ms. Callahan?”
“That’s your cue,” Jess says. “Go. Come back with good news.”
The exam room is just as depressing as the waiting room. A PA named Marisol comes in, warm and brisk, somewhere around forty. Blood pressure. Allergies. Any conditions.
Standard.
