Health Care

Somebody has smashed a brick into the back of my eyes. I’m not even joking. My head is wrapped in an iron band, and they’ve done it to Katherine too. Her voice is hoarse, and at every opportunity she sits herself down on the kick stool. Our supervisor, Steve, is not best pleased.

“I should’ve known this is what happens when I employ students,” he mutters to himself.

In our defence, this is only the first time both Katherine and I have suffered so badly at work. But 50p drinks are impossible to resist.

I ignore most customers’ comments about how tired I look, jokes about how I must’ve had a ‘rough night’. I appreciate the fact my hair is probably sticking up at the back, but my head is way too tender to touch. I’m relieved when Steve lets me off for my lunch break. I don’t even bother to walk home, or to the convenience store. I pick up one of the sandwiches we sell in the shop and head straight upstairs. We don’t have a staff room as such, but the far side of the stock room has four armchairs. I leave all of the lights off and eat my sandwich in near darkness. The good thing about the stockroom is that there’s no door. There is a velvet rope that hangs across the entrance to the staircase, to ensure no customers sneak their way up. It means you can hear almost everything that happens downstairs.

Halfway through my lunch break, I hear a familiar drawl.

“No, I’m not here to cause trouble,” Christopher says. “I’m here to buy milk. Where is Alexa?”

“On her lunch break,” Katherine says defiantly. “The milk is in the fridge.” She sounds groggy, but tough nonetheless. I shift off my chair and pull myself closer to the stairs to hear better.

“Is she suffering just as badly as you?” Christopher asks. “She did look a state last night.” I scowl. So did your date, my inner Super Bitch retorts. She's even more pissed off than ever, considering how rough she feels after last night.

“She’s fine,” Katherine lies for me. “Is there anything else I can get you?” she’s trying to be half-polite but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter much anyway, Steve isn’t in earshot.

“I mean, I don’t think she took to Melissa very well.” Oh look, Christopher isn’t finished. “What do you think? Do you think she might be jealous? She looked very jealous, which is bizarre really, seeing as she’s the one that broke up with me. I guess she’s just not used to seeing me happy with somebody else …” he was talking mostly to himself, and it touched a nerve in Cranky Katherine.

“Look!” she yells. “I know you’ve come here to gloat, so I can tell you now – there’s really no use, okay? One, Alexa isn’t even here, and two, her and Sam are still together and quite frankly, they’re way better than you and your bit of skirt last night!”

Silence. I do a mini-dance, all for Katherine.

“Thank you for your help, Miss Bowles. Good day to you.” And with that, he sweeps out of the shop in one long stride. At least, that’s how I imagine him to leave. The commotion however, has brought Steve over.

“You didn’t just talk to a customer like that, did you?” he asks warningly.

“He buys milk every Saturday so he can wind up Alex,” Katherine deadpans. “Really, Steve, he’s not worth it.”

“It’s not the Thompson boy, is it?” Steve asks. “You know, her ex,” he whispers the word like it’s cursed.

“Yes,” Katherine says. I squirm uncomfortably from upstairs. I do not hear any response from Steve. I assume he has just shrugged, the way he does when he can’t think of anything else to say.

At three, I return downstairs from my break. I stare at Katherine until her face cracks into a wide grin. She begins to laugh, but the dryness of her throat quickly turns it into a rattling cough. She sucks on her bottle of water and grins at me.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Are you kidding? I was doing myself a favour!” I know she’s partly joking, but I get where she’s coming from. After all, Christopher has been the bane of her life just as much as mine.

I glance at the clock. Only two hours left. My feet are demanding I sit down, but there’s nowhere to sit aside from the kick stool, and Steve will only moan if he sees us ‘slacking’. He swans back over to tell us there’s mopping to do, and the magazine stand could do with a clean. I seize the opportunity to begin cleaning the bottom shelf, so I can sit cross-legged on the cool floor.

“I can’t wait to get out of this place,” Katherine mutters, mopping around me. I can see her searching for Steve across the aisles and scowling at the back of his head.

Katherine and I have been best friends since secondary school. We attended the same college, where she studied a whole range of awful science subjects: Maths and Chemistry and Biology with Maths, and God knows what else, whereas I opted for the ‘soft’ (according to her) options like Sociology, Psychology and English. Katherine is now studying Chemistry at the same university as me. I’m still carrying on with Sociology. I know they say you shouldn’t choose your colleges and universities based on your friends, but it just so happens that Bristol was the university for us. Besides, it’s only a twenty minute drive, and the two of us often car share. Katherine’s group of friends, aside from Lucy, Louise and I, consists of a magnitude of geeky-looking boys who practically fall at her knees, because she’s so nice to them. Looking through Katherine’s uni bag after Valentine’s Day is always an absolute blast.

I have partially convinced Katherine to come with me to Majorca next year. She hasn’t seen sun for years seeing as her parents rarely ever go abroad as it costs so much for them: Katherine is one of five children. She is only reluctant about working abroad because of all the ‘horror stories’: drugs trafficking, prostitution, mugging. What I have to remind her is that they don’t print stories in newspapers and real-life magazines about girls who went abroad and had a ‘wonderfully safe time’.

“You’ll be looked after, I promise,” I assure her. She insists she’ll think about it, and I guess I don’t mind because there’s still another year yet. I even promise her she’d meet a nice man on a stag do. She giggles.