“I have to go,” Paulina said. “My daughter is working the night shift at the hospital and I’m the chauffeur for her two sons.” She rolled her eyes, but with a smile on her face. She liked complaining about being the chauffeur, but she loved being the chauffeur.

Of course Paulina’s daughter was a nurse. Paulina was the type of mother that daughters wanted to imitate.

“There’s pierogi in the oven. Judith loves it. Take it out in fifteen minutes. Call me if you have any questions. Anything. I left my number on the table. Love you, hon. I’m so glad to meet you.”

And she was out the door.

Paulina and her type, cozy and too friendly, made me uncomfortable, but this type of motherly woman was also the reason I’d become a phlebotomist.

After we’d moved away from Hunther, Rodney had to go in regularly for blood tests. I couldn’t remember exactly why; my kid brain assumed it had something to do with him being not quite right in the head.

Each time I tagged along, it was the same trio of woman phlebotomists. A Black woman with clumpy mascara on her lashes and short black hair dyed orange at the edge of her forehead. An Asian woman, smiley and chatty, who wore no makeup. And a white woman with her hair in a messy bun, four studs up each ear, sloppy tattoos on her fingers, and hanging on to a smattering of teenage acne.

These three women had joked sharply with each other, touched each other often, and laughed easily. They were competent, tough, and smooth with people and needles. In my young mind, they were goddesses. I’d wanted what they had. I craved their closeness and their confidence. I grew to love the smells of ethanol and apple juice. Sometimes picking a job is that simple. That stupid.

“Who’s there?” A wobbly whisper of a voice from the next room.

“It’s me, Judy. It’s Heather.” I walked out of the oven-warm kitchen, down the hall. “Trevor couldn’t get here in time, so I’m here.”

From her living room came soothing, melodic voices and the sizzle of butter on a frying pan—a cooking show.

Judy lay on a hospital bed, her head slightly inclined. Her eyes were fish gills, barely open and drug-dazed. Her body was covered with a flimsy sheet, and the blue absorbent pads layered underneath her hung off the mattress on both sides. Her feet stuck out from the sheet, toes gnarly and veiny. Very Wicked Witch of the West after the house fell.

Her hospital gown was open at the chest, and her pain patch stuck to the sunken skin beside her clavicle. “Paulina made you pierogi,” I said. “It will be ready soon. Do you have an appetite?”