Tracy rocks back in her swivel chair and practices the same stress-relieving techniques she prescribes to her anxious clients: inhale, then exhale two counts longer than the inhale, rest hands palms-up on the lap in a gesture of acceptance, turn the corners of the mouth up imperceptibly. None of it works.
She’s just read another company memo. The paper cups supplied in the breakroom for coffee and tea will no longer be provided. For environmental purposes.
It’s a lie, that last part. Potentate Healthcare doesn’t care about the environment. The truth is that they don’t want to pay for the cups anymore. They do want Tracy to take on ten new clients every week. They don’t want to give her time to work with the ones she already has, so her caseload grows continually—currently at two hundred clients, each one involving complex trauma, personality disorders, and/or terminal illnesses. The CEO does want a bigger bonus, even after his $4 million a year raise.
Tracy wants some things, too. She’d like more than a two-percent raise and less than twelve hours in a workday, but more than that she’d like to be able to conduct the proper treatment for her clients; instead of seeing them once every eight weeks, she should be seeing some of the more complex cases twice a week, plus group therapy once a week. She’d like to be able to stop hiding under her desk to cry at 8 p.m. when she’s not nearly done with her work and is too tired to continue but can’t go home because she has to save the lives of two hundred people. She would like to have not spent her fortieth birthday that way.
She spins her chair away from the beige, exactly square walls to look out the window. She recently moved into this office after spending more than a year with no window at all. Even though this one faces a cement building, it’s something. On the ledge there is a dark, glossy plant that was here when she moved in. She doesn’t know what kind it is—she doesn’t know much about plants at all—but she waters it sporadically. She stares at it without really seeing it.
An electronic ding lets her know she has another email. Maybe it’s a retraction of the memo. She swivels back to the screen.
Dear Staff,
We have received questions about how you all can continue to drink beverages in the office. We suggest that you each donate one or two mugs from home as a contribution to our efforts to reduce waste.
Best Regards,
The Potentate Administrative Department
Tracy hates it when they sign off with “Best Regards.” They don’t regard her at all. The “r” should be lowercase anyway.
She won’t bear this new injustice alone. She propels herself out of her chair and marches across the hall to her colleague Jackie’s office. Jackie is a child therapist, and her office is the same beige square as Tracy’s except for the bookcase littered with toys and games.
“Have you seen the memo?” Tracy blurts without preamble. She and Jackie don’t usually do hellos anymore, launching straight into catharsis.
“You know what else is good for the environment? Recyclable cups.” Jackie’s eyes flash.
“They could go to Goodwill and get mugs for a dollar each.”
“They don’t even provide recycling bins in the building. We’ve been asking for years.”
“Some people bring their recycling home with them every day.” Tracy’s on a roll now. She pushes her wispy hair behind her ears and it immediately begins to fly away again.
“I bring my recycling home every day.”
“It’s too depressing. I can’t end my days by packing out my own garbage, after everything else.”
They continue like this until they’ve worn the edge off their anger, their shoulders sagging, their breath short. A brief silence.
“You heading out?” Jackie asks.
Tracy shakes her head. “I have to finish my notes. You?”
“Mine aren’t done either, but I’m going home anyway.”
“Greg’s working late, or else I’d go home, too,” Tracy says. She goes back to her office, feeling lonely. She’s the last one in the building.
She sits back down and stares at her case files for a while, but her heart is still racing. Her rants with Jackie aren’t as satisfying as they used to be.
Soon Tracy’s gaze has returned to the plant, and she tries to imagine a way out, yet again. But Potentate is the only company in the area that pays therapists a living wage. She can’t move somewhere else because of Greg’s work. It’s too soon in her career and she’s too new in town to start her own practice. So, she daydreams of a life spent at the beach, bartending at a Tiki bar, the humid, salty air doing wonders for her hair.
Something catches her eye. She shakes her head, pulls herself away from her imaginary life. There is a flash of color in the mystery plant. She rolls her chair over to it, breathing in its green fragrance. With a finger, she brushes some foliage aside. There it is, a small orange bloom beginning to unfold. It’s the first time Tracy has seen anything brighter than taupe in the entire building. She feels something, a cracking open.
We suggest that you each donate one or two mugs from home . . .
You know what? She will donate mugs from home.
Tracy hops out of her chair. It’s the first time she’s felt even an ounce of gusto since she started working here. She gathers her things and heads out. Driving in the dark, her GPS provides directions to HOME, because otherwise she misses her exit every time. She takes out her small packet of mixed nuts, something crunchy to keep her awake on the drive. She’s gained a lot of weight in the year and a half since she started this job.
Home, she drops her bag and keys by the door. Greg still isn’t back yet. It’s just as well; he’s self-employed, couldn’t possibly understand. She goes to the kitchen, where she opens a cabinet and sorts through her mug collection. She pulls out the one stamped with UNION THUG in bold lettering. Her friend gave it to her after the first time she went on strike to protest the impossible caseloads. Next, she finds the mug that says WHEN WORK FEELS OVERWHELMING REMEMBER YOU’RE GOING TO DIE, which she bought as a gift to herself. Yes, she’ll donate these mugs to the behavioral health building, and her colleagues will calmly drink from them during their appointments with suicidal clients.
#
The next morning, she goes into work early so no one will see her leaving the mugs in the breakroom. She tiptoes into the darkened office, not even turning on the fluorescent lights. She will leave no trace. Hands shaking, she moves aside the last stack of paper cups and positions the mugs with their naughty captions facing outward. Maybe this is stupid, but right now all she cares about is the joy of an invisible rebellion.
Tracy slinks down to her office at the end of the hall and encloses herself in it, leaving the light off so no one will notice that she was the first to arrive. She barely feels the morning puffiness in her face. She stays in her office through her first four clients, ignoring the growing fullness of her bladder.
Today she helps her clients with more zeal than usual, a pep in her psychoanalysis. At lunchtime, she goes to the breakroom to heat up her carton of soup and, while standing in front of the microwave, she sneaks a peek at the mugs. They stand alone; no one else has donated to the cause.
Two colleagues in the corner of the room whisper to each other. A large man she’s never seen before, dressed in a gray jumpsuit, sits at the table and eats a sandwich out of a plastic baggie. He returns Tracy’s gaze with unnerving, colorless eyes. She looks away, resisting the urge to shudder. Maybe he’s here to audit the building’s compliance with fire codes. Auditors always seem a little off.
Tracy removes the soup from the microwave and peels back the sipping flap. She pushes the breakroom door open, looking past the sign on it bearing the Potentate mission statement: To provide the highest level of care, in service to our community. She drinks the soup during her appointment with a client who has advanced Parkinson’s and a death wish, whom she must convince to keep living.
In between appointments Tracy checks her email, scanning the many messages from clients and coworkers for something more official.
There it is. Another memo.
Dear Staff,
All employees in the behavioral health building must report to Conference Room 1 at 6 p.m. today for the announcement of a new policy.
Best Regards,
The Potentate Administrative Department
#
At 6:05 p.m. Tracy shows up in Conference Room 1. She is the last to arrive, and Linda from the main office gives Tracy a suppressed glare over the rim of her glasses. Everyone who works in the building, about forty people, is crammed into this room. The air is already infused with the intimate staleness of human breath. Tracy stands by the door with a few other late-arrivers, next to the plaque that states “Maximum occupancy: 20.”
“Thank you all for joining,” Linda simpers. “It has come to our attention that someone has placed inappropriate mugs in the breakroom. We ask whoever has done this to please come forward now. Otherwise, we will conduct an investigation and find out who you are.”
She surveys the group, making sure it sinks in.
They stand, frozen. Maybe the guilty party would be fired. Tracy considers what that would be like: a severance package, mornings on the couch in her pajamas instead of a one-hour commute in the car, sipping her own coffee rather than chugging the lukewarm dirt-water they provide at the office. She could go to the media and inspire an exposé on the corrupt practices of the country’s largest healthcare provider.
“It was me,” Tracy says. She steps forward.
Linda’s eyes snap toward her with hawk-like precision.
“You?” she says. Her eyes bulge. Tracy relishes her surprise.
“Yep,” Tracy says.
Linda turns and opens the door behind her. In comes the large man Tracy saw at lunch, flanked by two men also wearing jumpsuits.
“A new policy has been put in place today. Appropriate punishments will now be administered by EET: the Employee Enforcement Team.” Linda turns to the men. “You know what to do,” she says, then walks out of the room, closing the door.
The men approach Tracy. She begins to tremble. The large man shoves her in the chest. Tracy lets out a small gasp, an “oh” as she falls to the ground. The three men begin kicking her, halfheartedly but with steel-toed boots.
“Line up,” the largest man says, taking a break from the beating. “Everyone has to kick. We have to work together to protect the Potentate mission.”
Tracy curls into a fetal position. The therapists and admins remain frozen. But the man starts grabbing people, shoving them into a line. Jackie is first. She raises a foot and taps Tracy in the back of the knee.
Someone shouts from the back. It’s Derek, the grief counselor. “You can’t do that!” he’s saying.
“Assume positive intent,” replies one of the jump-suited men, leaving Tracy and charging toward Derek.
Across the room, a smack of knuckles on flesh. Derek is brawling with the jumpsuit. Throughout the room, more punches are being thrown. The therapists and admins against the jumpsuits, some holding others back, possibly even therapists hitting each other. Linda bursts into the room, more jumpsuits behind her, and the therapists descend on the new arrivals. Linda squawks as she is plucked, de-spectacled.
Another jumpsuit breaks free and comes for Tracy. She rolls onto her back, eyes fixed on the paneled ceiling and fluorescent bulbs. She will be a martyr for her cause if that’s what it takes. A single tear drips down her temple, into her ear.
#
Tracy shuffles back to her office to get her bag and jacket. She doesn’t know how long the fighting went on—it felt like seconds, it felt like days—before enough jumpsuits showed up to subdue the uprising. She had taken her beating; her job was safe. She wasn’t sure about Derek and the others, who were taken away for further discipline. Potentate won, again.
In her office, the window has darkened and now reflects a hunched figure—a version of herself she ignores. Before Tracy leaves, she checks on the plant one last time. The orange bloom is still there, a slash of fire, slightly more open. A new leaf is beginning to unfurl. She wonders if the flower will be in full bloom by morning.
Driving home, back aching, neck stiff, head pounding, Tracy plans which mug she’ll bring in next. Or maybe she’ll replace all the toilet paper in the building with HR manuals. Or write SAVE ME in invisible ink on the fax machine paper. One thousand tiny rebellions. As the GPS announces her upcoming exit, a hint of a smirk cracks across Tracy’s swollen face.
Shannon St. Hilaire is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. She serves on the board of The People’s Colloquium, a literary organization. She was the winner of the 2020 Forge Flash Nonfiction Competition. Her work has also been published in Hobart, Entropy, X-R-A-Y and elsewhere. She can be found online at www.shannonsthilaire.com.