If this is the end

Chapter 1

       I was working a double shift at Pizza Hut when the news broke that the state of Minnesota was going on lockdown. All dining rooms are being shut down until further notice, and only essential places of business will be kept open. To me, that's a dream. The bitchy customers can stay outside and leave me to make their endless pepperoni pizzas in peace. My boss put the news on TVs mounted in the dining room and listens to people discuss the merits of a lockdown, followed by the opposing side adamantly proclaiming that a lockdown will do nothing but destroy our economy.

     "The lockdowns didn't slow down Covid-19 in the 20's. Why should we expect it do anything now?" A middle-aged man in a blue suit argued on the screen.

     Greg, my manager, nods along with the naysayers.  I fold the cheese into the umpteenth stuffed crust today, barely paying attention, and dream about when I'm a doctor. Then, I can afford to be the one ordering in on a regular basis, making it some other college student's job to feed me.

    A family of four walks through the door and Greg huffs in the waitress's direction. It's her first day. I don't even know her name yet, but I do know that it's Greg job to train her and he's been crabby about it the whole shift. She greets them the way she's been taught and seats them in a booth that's just out of my line of sight, but Greg keep his sour expression on her even as she returns and inputs their order. Thin crust pepperoni. Very original. I retrieve the dough from the refrigerator, and come back out to an angry Greg yelling at the wide-eyed new girl who doesn't seem to know what she did wrong and is on the verge of tears. I don't know what she did either, but I'm not about to get in the middle of it. I set the completed pizza on the oven conveyer belt and rush off to the dish room in case he decides to go in on me, too. Greg isn't the friendliest person even on his best days, but he is usually a little more mild-mannered. Today, he's almost an entirely different person.

   I check my watch. It's only 8pm, so I still have four more hours to go. Sighing, I fold open my Cast, which is a modern take on the old "phablets" that people loved in the past, but instead of just being one large brick screen it's a standard cell phone size when folded closed, and a large tablet when opened up. Technically, 'Cast' is the brand name, but when they came up with the design, they knocked their competitor's way out of the park in terms of sales, and now Cast is used synonymously with the name of the design of the phone, even though Samsung and Apple both still have versions of it. Much like Legos, the brand has completely over taken the phone-tablet-laptop combination industry.

      There's a sudden shout from up front, and I run to the lobby to try and see what's going on. One of the kids is on the ground, his wiry hair lying flat on the floor beneath him. His parents are panicking, trying to wipe the blood from his nose. The waitress is yelling for someone to call an ambulance. I pull out my Cast and dial 911 as quickly as my fingers will allow.

      "He's still breathing. He still breathing," repeats the father, who strokes the kid's dark curly hair franticly while piling napkins under his gushing nose. His mother is nodding along with one hand while massaging a bandaged wound on her shoulder absentmindedly, unable to do anything to help except hold tightly to the child's hand with tears streaming down her cheeks.

    "911 what is your emergency?" A polite female voice asks.

   "We have an unconscious child at the pizza hut on Hennepen. 2313 Hennepen," I answer, trying to remain calm in the middle of so many panicking people. Losing my nerve won't help anyone. New-girl for her part, is pacing back and forth with her hand over her mouth behind the crying mother, decidedly not keeping her cool.

  The father runs out of napkins pulls his overshirt to stem the bleeding instead. The small boy can't be older than four. He weakly opens his eyes and tries to talk, but instead chokes on his own saliva. His dad rolls him to his side, all the way repeating affirming statements. I can't tell if he's talking to himself, his son, or his wife. I hear the siren of the ambulance making it's way close as the family of four descend further into a panic, and my coworkers stare on in shock. I walk behind the counter and pull a container full of napkins off the shelf and move to  help, since clearly nobody else is going to. The dad nods in thanks when I pile the clean napkins under the still-gushing nose. His tiny chest moves up and down at a slower and slower pace, and by the time the ambulance arrives, I am sure I'm going to have to perform CPR. A small voice in the back of my mind reminds me that I've never had to do this in real life, and I can't start with a child this small. I shove the thoughts out of my head with the thought that I've practiced on so many dummies that as long as I stick to clearly defined instructions, I can't go wrong.