My name is Caleb. The black badge is still in my jacket pocket when my phone rings at four in the morning.
It is the hospital. A nurse says Elsie collapsed during dialysis.
She is awake when I get there. That is the only good thing about the room.
Elsie: I'm fine. I stood up too fast.
Her voice is thin. Her hand is cold in mine.
Nadeem: Her blood pressure dropped. We caught it before anything worse happened.
Caleb: Define worse.
Nadeem: She needs the transplant sooner than we planned.
Nadeem: The transplant deposit is due in two weeks.
Caleb: It was due in two months.
Nadeem: The fund moved the date. I don't control that. I'm sorry.
Nadeem: Forty thousand. If it isn't there, she goes back to the bottom of the list.
Forty thousand dollars. I say it in my head and it sounds like a joke somebody tells at my expense.
Caleb: Shit.
Elsie: Don't do that face.
Caleb: What face.
Elsie: The one where you're already doing math.
Caleb: I'm not doing math.
Elsie: You're always doing math. I can hear it.
She smiles. It costs her something. I smile back and it costs me the same.
In the hallway I put my back against the wall and let my knees do what they want for ten seconds.
Then I call my supervisor and ask for every night shift he has.
Caleb: All of them. Double routes, trash, the freight dock. Whatever's open.
He tells me the dock pays time and a half and nobody wants it.
Caleb: Give it to me.
The freight dock smells like cardboard and old water. It pays time and a half.
I work eleven hours, sleep four, and come back.
The black badge is still in my pocket. Every door in the building, including his.
I have not used it. I have not thrown it away either. That is a decision I keep not making.
On the fourth night I use it.
Lucien: You look like shit.
Caleb: I need more shifts.
Lucien: You have shifts. You have the dock, the routes, the trash.
Caleb: I need the ones that pay more. Private floors. Weekend contracts.
He looks at me the way a man looks at a bill he already paid.
Lucien: You stood in this office and told me you were not for sale.
Caleb: I'm not.
Lucien: Then what do you call this? Overtime is still a price. You're just paying it in hours instead of pride.
Caleb: You don't know a fucking thing about my pride.
Lucien: I know it's about to cost your sister two weeks.
That lands like a slap. My hands are shaking. I put them flat on his desk so he can't see it.
Caleb: Give me the weekend contract or don't. But don't talk about her.
Lucien: Weekends are yours. The dock and the east stairwells. Time and a half.
Lucien: And Caleb. When you decide you want to be bought, come back and say it plainly.
I walk out without saying anything else. In the elevator my hand is still shaking.
He thinks I'll come back with my hand out. Maybe that's what scares me. Not that he's wrong. That I don't know yet.
That night I mop the east stairwell from thirty-eight down to the lobby.
Forty thousand. Two weeks. Nine hundred a night if I keep the dock.
The camera above the door blinks red, and I feel watched all the way down.