My name is McKenzie Cruz. I am 29 years old, and my life is measured in steel wool and spreadsheets. By day, I am a clinical coordinator for Atria Ortho.
It’s a short-term contract, a six-month string of managing data for joint replacement recoveries.
I sit under fluorescent lights in Fairmont, Ohio, ensuring surgical protocols align with patient outcomes. I am good at it.
I am precise. I am also temporary—just a name on a timesheet that will expire just before Christmas.
By night, I am the lead dishwasher at the Maple Steel Diner.
This job is not temporary. It is permanent, heavy, and real. Tonight, the kitchen smelled of burnt sugar and old grease.
The radio over the swinging door was playing the Guardians game, but the static was winning.
I had my head down, arms deep in the industrial sink, steam rising to fog my glasses. My target was a stack of sheet pans, each one bearing the black, carbonized ghost of tonight’s meatloaf special.
I pressed the steel scraper hard, feeling the blade catch on a stubborn patch. The metal shrieked in protest.
It was a sound I understood.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket, pressing against the damp fabric of my jeans. I knew without looking that it was nothing. I’d sent the text three hours ago, right before my shift started.
It was to the family group chat, the one named “Cruz Crew” by my sister, Amber:
Got the email.
I have an interview for the promotion in Raleigh. It’s in two weeks.
I had checked it on my ten-minute break. All four bubbles were filled in.
My mother, Janice.
My father, Carl. My sister, Amber. Even her husband, Dave, who rarely read anything.
All seen.
Not one thumbs up. Not one “Good luck.” Just the cold, digital proof of my own invisibility.
“Table four stiffed me again,” Miguel muttered, slamming an empty coffee pot onto the warmer. “A dollar-fifty on a $60 check.
What am I supposed to do with that?”
I glanced up from the sink, pushing my glasses back up my nose with a clean wrist.
Miguel was 22, perpetually angry, and probably the closest thing I had to a friend at the diner. “It’s fine, Miguel,” I said, offering the small smile I reserved for the night shift—the one that didn’t quite reach my eyes but soothed the people around me. “Maybe they had a bad day.”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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