On her way to work that morning she stood in front of the stoic-faced bronze man for a few minutes. She would have normally just glanced, other times she wouldn’t look up at it, forgetting that it was even there. It was Wednesday, she was running a bit late, but the sun, rising up and through the streets, glimmering off the buildings, highlighted and caught the bronze figure’s contours and so her attention. The figure’s right arm was bent so as to gently hold up a syringe just at heart level, the needle pointing up and out. His left arm rested at his side, in his hand dangled a protective mask which looked as if it were about to slip from his finger tips.

Catherine liked the large man, thought he was good-looking, not like any of the doctors that she worked with. But she struggled to feel the sense of pride, importance, which it seemed to want to invoke. She knew she wasn’t exactly the person for whom it was made. A wave of guilt washed over her as she stared up blankly at its perfectly shaped, clean cut head, then out unto the coming blue sky.

It had been about years since she dropped out of nursing school, graduated with a degree in communications, and got a job at the front desk of an oncologists office. Her mother, who had been a nurse, wanted Catherine to be one as well, but caring for people was not something that Catherine should have ever thought she could make a career out of. She doesn’t hate people, she isn’t misanthropic–she works double the required hours at the co-op near her apartment, donates old clothing to Goodwill quite frequently–but the in real-time, actual, smelly sometimes putrid bodily fluids were too much. She knew that there were many types of nurses, that not all of them have to deal with the messier realities of bodies, but she resigned her mothers’ dreams, the school work was too hard anyway. Her mother was no longer alive to see where her daughter’s life was going anyway, and would have been only slightly disappointed at her current gig as a receptionist.

The guilty pit in her throat quickly subsided shortly after settling into work, where her mood was less beholden to personal gripes than to the chaotic nature of a generally busy doctor’s office. She was new, just hired a year ago after graduating. Her bosses thought her attentive, the girl who makes detailed lists, which her co-workers admired at first, before her sticky notes started to sprawl all over her side of the long desk, and slowly spread to Deena’s side. Some of these notes would end up with Sam, if Deena, unthinkingly, shoved them over to him, until the lists were too old to be relevant but were always surely Catherine’s. Her sticky note system was actually horribly inefficient, as she rarely remembered what it was that she wrote on them, or where she put them, and much to Deena and Sam’s irritation this all somehow came off to their bosses as proactive and charming. The other two soon began throwing them out without asking Catherine if she needed them or not. Catherine never noticed.

She took her lunch break a bit later than usual that Wednesday, because Sam was out sick and Deena had to take a long video call with her son’s principal. Catherine overheard the first few minutes of the call and was genuinely disturbed. Russ, as Deena called him, had brought a bag of very real-looking fake bullets to school to hand out to his classmates. It was just about 3pm when Deena convinced her husband to go and pick up the delinquent.

“He’s been working from home for three years now, why would he even ask me?” Deena asked whoever was listening.

“Maybe he likes it so much there. Maybe he never wants to leave!” Catherine said, and smiled as she got up and shuffled through her bag, looking for her cucumber sandwich.

When she realized that she had forgotten it, she rolled her eyes and started for the elevator. Making her way to the first floor, Catherine couldn’t decide if she hated Au Bon Pain because it’s in every hospital or if she generally just hates hospitals. Either way, she was annoyed at having to choose between a shittier version of her cucumber sandwich or a bowl of depressing broccoli cheddar.

While eating the depressing broccoli cheddar she thought about her trip to Paris. Her friends and coworkers had been telling her that it’s basically impossible to get drawn for a pleasure trip to Paris, but she had always wanted to go, and she didn’t really want to go anywhere else, so, Catherine thought, why not try? She’d been on the waiting list for months now, and something seemed to tell her that her chance was approaching–all there was to do was wait. She had become, as many people didn’t, pretty good at waiting.

As she sipped from her wooden soup spoon, she heard a group of younger nurses at the salad bar discussing a patient with a fever and cough. One of them made a joke about an impending quarantine.

“I’d jump into the East River before I go through that again.”
“Don’t even! you went to your parents house in Connecticut–all our asses had to stay here!”
“Where’s here? you live on Long Island. ”

Catherine swirled the questionably bright green maceration around her slowly disintegrating spoon. She thought of how, a few years ago, she was fired from her retail gig and spent a slow three months hardly leaving her house. She cooked for herself, she walked alone, with the streets mostly to herself. She said practically nothing to anyone, except for when she FaceTimed her dad who lived in Arizona. Catherine missed the suspension of everything. She smiled.

She ate a few more bites, threw away her garbage, and walked toward the elevator. As she waited for the car, she turned to look at the group of nurses that were still talking and laughing near the salad bar. Stuck to the heel of one of their crocs was a neon pink sticky note.