Chapter 8
I quit.
That was the text I woke up to a couple of days later. It was from my very best server, Presley, and it had me springing out of bed faster than anything had in a while.
Can we talk? I texted her back.
My phone immediately vibrated with a call. Since I’d literally just woken up, my voice was sleep-deep and rough when I answered, “Hello.”
“I can’t anymore,” Presley said. “It’s too unorganized. Not enough servers at night and last-minute changes to the schedule. Raya lets anyone switch whenever they want and then people forget what they switched to because nobody writes it down.”
“If I fix it, will you stay?” I asked.
She sighed. “I don’t know, Sutton, it’s a lot. I’m feeling overwhelmed.”
“Would you like to be in charge of the schedule? For a two-dollar-an-hour raise?” I shouldn’t have offered the raise without talking to Raya first, but desperate times and all that.
“Truthfully, no. I have school. That’s why I’m up so early today, and I don’t have time for that. But I will stay for two weeks, and if the schedule gets sorted in those two weeks, I’ll stay longer.”
“Okay, I’ll fix it. I’ll make sure everyone knows they can only change through the online app,” I said. “It has to be officially recorded.”
“Thank you,” she responded. “I personally think you need to hire at least one more server, probably two.”
“Done,” I said. Then I spent the day online reading through résumés and putting phone interviews on the calendar. I could whittle it down to a few good candidates and then have Raya conduct some in-person interviews to get a better feel for their personalities. I’d fix this.
“Mom, you have to hold on to my neck or I can’t transfer you.
” We’d done this every time I had to move her from wherever she was to the wheelchair.
And then from the wheelchair to the toilet or bath or bed.
And every time, she didn’t want to hold on to me.
I was sure it was her pride. She didn’t truly want my help at all.
She wanted to do this all on her own. Like she’d been doing all her life until now, she liked to remind me.
But she literally couldn’t walk, and one of her arms was immobilized and she was still battling dizzy spells.
She couldn’t do this on her own, but that didn’t stop her from pretending.
“That nurse you hired last week was better at this,” Mom said.
“I’m sure she was.”
“She knew what she was doing.”
I placed her hand around my neck. “Just hold on, okay?”
This time she held on and I was able to shift her to sitting. She cried out in pain.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it must hurt.”
“You don’t know,” she said. “You’ve never been in this situation.”
“Are you ready?” I asked, because fighting with my mom was pointless most of the time.
Without waiting for her answer, I helped her move her good foot into position to support some of her weight as I used all my strength, plus a lot of leverage, to maneuver her into the wheelchair.
I was going to be toned after my stint here.
“See, I’m not helpless,” she said.
“You’re not,” I responded. I was trying to be understanding. I would hate it if someone had to take me to the toilet too. “We have a physical therapy appointment tomorrow.” I wheeled her down the narrow hall, trying to avoid bumping into the walls.
“Physical therapy? On what?”
“On you, Mom,” I said.
“Neither of my injured limbs can move yet.”
“And they want to fix that,” I said.
“It seems too early,” she grumbled.
“You can tell the doctor that,” I said.
“Maybe I will,” she said.
I lay in bed that night staring at my phone.
Nate’s name was pulled up on the screen, and the Call button was staring back at me.
That little outline of a phone telling me that if I pushed on it, I could talk to someone.
Someone who until last week cared about me.
I could vent about my day. I needed to vent.
I knew that’s all I needed and that wanting to call Nate now was selfish.
Nate wasn’t good at handling vents anyway, I reminded myself.
He’d just try to solve my problems. He’d tell me to hire a full-time nurse for my mom, even though I didn’t have the money for that.
Our restaurant wasn’t losing money, but it wasn’t making much either.
We were definitely still in the building phase. The fragile stage.
Nate would tell me to call my dad and ask for money.
I hadn’t even done that when we were starting our business.
Raya’s parents had come through in the end for the full amount we needed, thankfully.
Because I knew my dad: He could’ve been sitting on a dragon’s hoard of wealth and he’d still claim poverty.
And he’d do it in the most smooth-talking way possible so that by the end of the conversation, I’d be tempted to send him money. That’s who he was.
I put my phone down before my body pushed the Call button, and Nate appeared on my phone without my mind agreeing to it. I rolled onto my side. My brain immediately took over, thinking of all the things I needed to do the next day and the things I’d done wrong in the last few weeks.
And then a set of hazel eyes flashed through my mind.
I cursed Dr. Franklin for the five-minute stare-offs she’d assigned us.
I wouldn’t know his eyes so well if I hadn’t stared at them for a total of ten minutes in the last week.
That was a long time to look at someone’s eyes.
I needed to avoid them from now on if I could, because having them invade my thoughts at midnight was not something I was fond of.
I closed my eyes and tried to think of anything else.