Survival (#Wattys2015)

13

unedited

Tasha’s POV.

When Geisha told me that the Monahan family was moving in with us I was relieved. The day the father, his brother, his wife and three children age four, six and thirteen moved in I felt an enormous weight lift off my shoulders. Finally the incomes would come in more fluently and I wouldn’t have to stress so much. Only it didn’t, two days after they moved in Gill got sick. Geisha did what she could but soon it was clear he needed proper medical care so we took him to Christian Bells, a retired doctor who used to work in another country until he failed an operation which resulted in the death of his patient. He was fired and to escape humiliation he moved here, since then he’s been helping poor people to survive. I was tempted to take him directly to Maggie’s when Bells said he needed medication but quickly decided against it. Johanna had told Emma that Maggie wasn’t receiving visits at the moment because she had an old friend over.

With the money the Monahan’s parents and I were bringing life would have started to look up, we had contracted electricity again and hot water, not to mention that the food had gotten better and arrived to our plates more often. Gill’s medication threw all that away, to maintain our home the way it was I had to do extra hours. And so I started to take the evening shift at the restaurant too. The environment wasn’t the same in the morning as it was during the evening. I had started getting friendly with some customers that came over for breakfast, but on the first night working there I knew there was no way I’d have time to stop and chat. People who came Chez Martin to have dinner were either too posh or just came for a final drink before heading back home. Another drink after many others during the day.

I’d started socializing a bit more with my working companions, in fact Nikita had already told me about half her life and even invited me to a coffee an afternoon after work. Joshua was by far the one I got on the best with, he was a real flirt but that was alright. It made me feel good, desirable, not a suburb teenager who had no future. Frank wasn’t as upright and party pooper as I first thought, he still wasn’t the life of the party and we barely ever talked, but he was nice enough. Elizabeth, Martin’s wife, only worked in the morning and sometimes gave me the cupcakes or tarts that were left at the end of the morning, she’s push them in my hands and place her index finger on her lips when I’d tried to argue. I don’t know if her husband, my boss, ever knew about it, but if he did he never complained. Like I said, it seemed that life was finally smiling up at me.

Tonight was being especially hard, the restaurant was more crowded than ever and Nikita was ill, meaning we had triple work to do. I had already spent three hours running around the place trying to get all the orders in time when Frank told me we had a new arrival. I hastily hurried over to them, a group of nine men that looked to be in their twenties, some in their early thirties. I quickly grew restless when they didn’t seem to decide what they wanted and offered to come back later when one of them suddenly stopped me.  His deep and manly voice caught my attention so I checked him out from the corner of my eye. The first thing I noticed was his intimidating gaze that was on my body, I couldn’t really decide whether his orbs were green or brown, a mixture of both. His chin was prominent and strong and made him look intimidating but still in an elegant way, I couldn’t see his lips due to the way he was looking down, feigning to look at the menu when in fact I knew he was doing the same as I. The whole of his face was framed with dark auburn hair that curled in a way that made me want to pass my hand through it and push it back.

“Er yeah, yeah… So, I’ll have... ermm a cheddar cheese and meat pie” a blond guy speaks up, breaking through my thoughts. I nod and take note in my small pad before turning to the man sitting next to him.