THE WORK HAZARD
Fiction by Sean Kenealy
No one was quite sure what to make of Mary Whemple’s behavior. For the past two weeks, she had spent all of her lunch breaks standing at the entrance of her office building, arms spread, eyes closed, and her wrinkled face tilted to the sky. Mary was still as she could be for the entire forty-five minutes of each break, looking like a lobotomized sunbather in a cheap woman’s suit, ignoring coworkers and clients coming and going and their overabundance of confused stares.
When the occasional spectator did ask Mary what the hell she was doing, she always re-plied the same: “Vitamin D.”
That was the truth. Mary needed more sun, a work hazard commonly associated with a full-time office job, or, in Mary’s case, a job that had kept her indoors 60 hours a week for the past 40 years.
#
“A pill to give you hours of sunlight,” Mary’s doctor had said, two weeks earlier. He wrote a prescription in illegible text, adding to Mary’s growing collection of pills and chemicals to fulfill one of her basic bodily needs.
“Maybe I could walk outside more,” Mary said. “A new hobby?”
“You’re 68.” The doctor laughed under his breath, his eyes glued to his tablet. Not until he realized Mary wasn’t joining his joke did he finally look up. “Sure, a new hobby.”
Mary returned to her office, to her paper mill of a cubicle, and filed the prescription in a hanging folder labeled “Personal Prescriptions.” It was between “Personal Mailings” and “Person-al Withholdings.”
This was Mary’s life. She worked in human resources at Sherman Wright Law in Dallas, Texas, spending her days, and often nights, navigating dozens of retirement plans and their pletho-ra of paperwork to help each employee of Sherman Wright Law retire with ease.
Mary had been eligible for retirement for three years.
And counting.
“Glad you’re back,” Mary’s boss said. Danny, less than half Mary’s age, stood above her cubicle holding a coffee mug with a picture of a Labrador Retriever and the text “Keep calm and hug a dog.”
“Doctors appointment go well?” Danny gingerly raised a tea bag in and out of the mug, the label front and center for Mary to see: “I’m organic.”
Mary hated him. Danny wanted to “go digital,” the antithesis of filing, someone she imag-ined only received his job because he was born into a generation that had an innate understanding of computers she would never have. If that wasn’t superficial enough, in Mary’s eyes, there was also his name—Danny, Danny boy, Little Danny—each variation triggering images of a ten year old playing baseball with popsicle stains on their shirt, as if he purposely chose the name to remind Mary of his eternal youth and her approaching death.
“Well, Mary, we’ll talk more later.” Danny walked to the next cubicle to have more chit-chats.
Mary sat alone. She reopened her “Personal Prescriptions” folder, stuffed to the brim with 25 prescriptions in illegible text. There was a slight tear on the side of the folder.
One more prescription and she’d have to upgrade to a quarter inch file size. Mary picked at the tear.
#
“What the hell are you doing?” a coworker asked Mary. He was just entering their building when he spotted her standing by the front door, arms spread and her face tilted to the sky.
It was day one.
“It’s my vitamin D,” Mary said.
“Your what?”
“I don’t get enough sunlight.”
The coworker stared at Mary for half a minute before cautiously entering the building.
It was the same for the next two weeks. Every day, at every lunch, Mary faced the sun. It was done as an experiment at first, something she assumed she would grow tired of and return to her decade old habit of eating lunch at her desk. Instead, she began counting the minutes until her break. She bought new dress shorts and shirts, exposing more skin. She walked outside before work, starting with a half-mile and making her way up to two. And for the first time in 40 years, Mary began packing up and closing her filing cabinets exactly at 5pm, allowing her another two hours with the sun and the chance to finally watch it set.
She’d forgotten how many colors it had.
#
“Looking Tan,” Danny said. He stood above Mary’s cubicle holding a coffee mug with a picture of a porcupine and the text “Thinking about porcupines.”
“You know, there’s a park just ten minutes from here. A strip mall too.” Danny sipped his tea, oohing and aahing loud enough that two cubicles down people knew how refreshing he thought his tea was. “Might be a better place to spend your breaks.”
“I have forty-five minutes. Taking a ten-minute drive to and from a strip mall would cut it in half.”
Danny sighed and stared at Mary’s filing cabinet, as if imagining she had printed out the documentation to prove her statement and could reveal it at any moment. “Well, there’s a bench by the back.”
“Those aren’t in the sun.”
“I thought you liked eating at your desk.”
Mary returned to her filing. It was the first time she had ever attempted to end one of their conversations first.
“It’s distracting. Leave the entrance alone, Mary. Find another place.”
Danny walked away, not taking the time to visit other cubicles or have more chit-chats.
12:55pm. She left early.
Mary didn’t stand at the front entrance that day; she left it alone, just as Danny had asked. Instead, she moved to the center of the parking lot, also putting her in a prime location for dozens of new spectators to get a clear view of her and her daily sunbathing.
Before, you only saw Mary if you happened to be entering or exiting the office building during her 45-minute break. Now all you needed was a window. And for the next week, lawyers, secretaries, janitors, and clients at Sherman Wright Law eagerly peeked outside each day to watch Mary and wonder what the hell she was doing.
1pm to 1:45pm became known as the “Mary Whemple break.”
Mary knew everyone was watching.
#
“I tried talking to you,” Danny said. “I did!”
Danny and Mary sat across from Sherman Wright, founder of the company, in his spacious office; all of it feeling as if it were cut from an expensive oak. “I didn’t want to have to call you here,” Danny said, “but I had to. You wouldn’t listen!”
Danny directed the harsh parts of his sentence to Mary and the pleading parts to Sherman.
“Let’s give Mary the chance to speak,” Sherman said, in his soft voice. At 70, Sherman still had a face that looked as if it could belong to a young man. A face Mary rarely saw but was always relieved to find when passing in hallways and conference rooms.
Sherman had hired Mary 40 years ago, one of his oldest employees. They hardly spoke over the years, but that didn’t change the fact they had shared one of the rarest things another per-son could share with someone—they had grown old with one another. They had seen each other turn gray. A lifetime of friendly nods and hellos; decades of stares, regardless of knowing only small details about each other’s lives.
Danny aggressively cleared his throat. “Do you have anything to say for yourself.”
“It’s my vitamin D.” Mary looked down at her hands.
“We can’t have you standing in the entrance,” Danny said. “Or in the parking lot. These aren’t unfair requests!”
Mary turned to Sherman. She never noticed, but he was as pale as her.
“Not on office property,” Sherman said.
Danny gave a single loud clap and smiled, as if finally hearing something that made sense after being subjected to hours of nonsense. The winner. He leaned closer to Mary, whispering so Sherman couldn’t hear. “It’s okay. We all have our problems. But that’s what family’s for, right?”
Mary dug her fingernails into her thigh.
#
At 26, Mary met a man named Bryan. Shy and skinny with short curly hair; a preschool teacher. Bryan played the flute, a passion he was deeply embarrassed about until Mary entered his life. He played for Mary every night, writing her over 30 songs about her face, her voice, and how beautiful he thought her hands were. Bryan was the first man to ever say Mary was beautiful. And he meant it.
They were married at 27. They had a child at 28, Deborah. Olive skinned.
Bryan, despite having the appetite of a teenager in the middle of a growth spurt, was a hor-rible cook, an ongoing joke in their relationship. But over the years, he became excellent with eggs and pancakes; breakfast was his unspoken job. And it was a Saturday morning when Bryan was returning home holding eggs, bread, orange juice, and two-year-old Deborah in his skinny arms when a drunk driver found them.
Broken eggs and a leaking juice carton could be found over a dozen yards away.
Mary never ate breakfast again. She never listened to music on her own again.
She took a job at Sherman Wright Law two months later. She was placed in human re-sources, retirement, helping people plan their futures so Mary never had to think of her own.
She worked, ate at her desk, and rarely saw the sky, until one day she was a pale, old lady with arthritis and ulcers and a hanging file folder filled with 25 prescriptions in illegible text.
Mary was deficient in vitamin D.
#
Mary abruptly left Sherman’s office. She ran down the hall, bumping into three coworkers, hyperventilating, heading to the exit.
Mary didn’t care if it was time for lunch.
Outside, sweating and out of breath, she ran to the center of the parking lot. Dozens of em-ployees watched from their windows, smiling nervously at Mary as if she were a rabid monkey behind a thick pane of glass.
Mary tore off her blouse; threw it on the pavement. She pulled off her skirt and kicked it to the side. Only her bra and underwear covered her flesh, which she began to reach for until she faced the sky. For the first time in weeks, it began to rain. It poured. Mary’s world turned black, and she fainted to the sound of thunder.
It sounded just like a car crash.
#
“Glad you’re back,” Danny said. “Last week wasn’t the same without you.” Danny stood above Mary’s cubicle, holding a mug with a picture of an elephant and the text “Your argument is ir-elephant.”
After Mary’s incident, which quickly became known as the “Mary Whemple incident,” Mary was advised to take a week off and tend to personal matters.
She spent all of it in bed.
“Not sure how you feel about this,” Danny said, “but maybe you and I could have lunch together sometime. Would you like that? I’d like that.” Danny smiled and tapped the partition of her cubicle. He looked at her paper piles like a hungry animal would look at its injured prey. “See you tomorrow.”
It was 12:59pm. Mary’s coworkers began to squirm and peek above their cubicles to see if she was still there. At 1:05pm, Mary remained at her desk. She reached into her purse and removed a frozen pizza and yogurt you could squeeze from a plastic tube. At the bottom of her purse was her vitamin D. Two pills a day.
Mary began to remove the pill bottle but then stopped. She pushed the bottle back to the bottom of her purse. She lifted it again, then quickly put it back. Up. Down. Repeating the move-ment; listening to the pills rattle as if it were music, her own song. She squeezed the bottle until her hand cramped up.
Mary walked past the building’s entrance, past the parking lot, and stood on the side of the main road. She was so far away that coworkers inside could only see Mary if they squinted, which they all did.
“What the hell is she doing,” a lawyer asked. Dozens of them were huddled by a window.
“She’s not on office property,” a janitor responded.
Mary felt the wind from passing cars splash against her body. She would only have to move a few steps to touch them.
She tilted her face to the sun, but instead of closing her eyes like she had done so many times before, Mary tried as hard as she could to keep them wide open, to fully see what it was that caused her so much pain and gave her so much life.
When Mary could take no more, she looked back at her office building, knowing what was waiting for her—scared and nervous faces pressed against glass.
Except there was something new. Sherman stood at the entrance, watching her. A little old man who appeared to be swallowed by a building he had spent the majority of his life making.
Sherman slowly walked to her.
It’s funny, Mary thought. For the first time, when she was excited to retire, she would be fired. Mary knew she deserved what was coming.
Sherman stood at Mary’s side. After over 40 years, this was the first time they had ever seen each other outside of the building.
A lifetime of friendly nods and hellos; decades of stares. That was Sherman and Mary.
Sherman gently took her hand.
“I’ll stand with you, Mary.”
And they remained hand in hand for another thirty minutes. They used every second of Mary’s break. Coworkers inside couldn’t look away; you would have thought the entire office shut down. They stared in wonder; they stared for Mary. At two old souls who needed nothing in the world but each other’s soft touch.
In this moment, they didn’t even need the sun.
Sean Kenealy co-wrote & co-directed the award-winning independent feature film, In Action, available on Amazon Prime & iTunes, and the horror short Two Knocks on a Door, currently playing film festivals. He has fiction published with Clockhouse, AU-RORE, Scapegoat Review, The Satirist, Half and One, and Humans of the World, as well as a one-act play published with Original Works Publishing. Sean has an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York, and he lives in Lawrence, KS with his partner and their two kids.
