Skinny • Book 1 In The Reality Series

Ardian (the maitenence man)

Putting my mop in the bucket I lean against the wall to catch my breath.

I get tired easy.

I must be getting old.

I can't be getting old. Sofia just started school and her teeth. Good God the lord is testing me with that mouth.

She'll need braces.

That will be expensive.

So will college.

My kids have to go to college so they don't end up like me.

I went to college in my country. I was a doctor.

From near and far villages people would come to me. I was good at my job.

Then things got bad so I left. I took my Roxanna with me and we left.

We came to America. The land of freedom and equality. Opportunity, acceptance, food and fireworks.

That's what I'd thought anyway.

America is nothing like what you think. It's a face with giant smoggy cities dotting it like pimples.

The people here take choppy and nasally. Their words don't string together like music like they do back in Europe.

I work in a hospital here, but I'm not a doctor. I'm little more then a slave.

Every day I arrive at five in the morning and leave at eleven at night, to scrub the walls and clean the floors.

Blood, poop, vomit and much worse wait for me like puddles of spilt milk.

My hands are raw from washing them.

My back brittle from hours bent over a mop and my feet are swollen from stand erect day after day.

My paycheck barely pays the bills. It's minimum wage. I don't know why they call it that, I don't do minimum work.

Taking my cap off I wipe the sweat from my brow and look around. I'm in the emergency room.

Two beds are occupied. In one sits a little girl holding a bucket, her mom watching on in pity and in another there's a dead boy.

At least I think he's dead. He looks it.

Placing my cap back on my head I shuffle forward. My ripped and warn shoes glide silent across the wet floors.

The boy isn't dead I realize with relief, he's beeping, but he looks dead.

His face is gray and damp with sweat, his face sunken and hallow and his arms showing universe the blanket which covers him remind me of match sticks, long and slender. They look like they'd snap in the wind.

I wonder what's wrong with him. I hope it's nothing serious but deep down I know it is.

It makes me want to cry. My brother looked the same way when he died back in my country. If I was a better Doctor I could have saved him but I wasn't good enough, that's why I scrub puke and shit from the floors.

Taking my cap off once again I hold it in my hands and move closer to the bed.

"Alexi." I say quietly, not wanting the mother of the puking boy or the new girl behind the desk to hear, "Take care of this one. He's too young to go. Like you were. Watch out for him please, for me."

I say a Hail Marry and when that's over the Our Father.

"Good luck." I whisper to the boy, putting my cap back on my head and shuffling back towards my mop, "I'm praying for you."