Kim’s Earth: Bethany: Waking Up (part 2)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1

Trigger warning: mentions of death, nothing particularly graphic, though

The orange juice was warm, but it made me feel better. Even though I knew it wouldn’t help me I put my phone in my pocket, not bothering to change because I didn’t have the energy, and then, wishing I’d bought a couple of chocolate bars, I left my room behind. I knew I wouldn’t be going back there. All of the other rooms on my floor had been taken up by ill staff members, those who could simply walk away, and I probably should have gone to bed long before I did, but I had a job to do. A job I was going to do once more, as I knew there was a chance someone else might have survived.

On my floor I found only death. Tears trickled down my cheeks and I did nothing to stop them, because they were people I’d cared about. We should never have been given the injection, obviously, but the World Government had forced it onto to us in order to better reduce the number of unplanned for births. Fines weren’t doing the job well enough. Slowly I made my way up the stairs, to the floor that had been given to the actors and director, feeling certain that it wouldn’t be any different, even though I hoped I might find someone else alive.

It wasn’t a surprise when I found the director dead in his bed. He hadn’t been a friend, but we had come to understand each other and we’d had a couple of nice chats when he wasn’t busy. From what he said it had been nice for him to relax a little occasionally, so having someone like me to talk to, someone who had no expectations of him, was nice. Even the other staff had pestered him for minor roles in the new movie, while I… even though I was fascinated by the whole thing I wasn’t interested in being anything more than the girl who helped the actors. That was probably why he’d offered me one and smiled at me knowingly when I turned it down.

Everyone had asked me, the actors and the other staff at the hotel, why I’d done something so stupid, but I hadn’t thought it was. My decision was made based on what I wanted from life and I’d never wanted to be in the spotlight. I much more enjoyed helping people who needed it, even if those people were spoilt actors who didn’t want for anything in their lives, but didn’t have any interest in getting their own coffee, because, in general, they were lazy. There was only one actor who’d never asked me for anything, happier doing it himself, and he was someone I respected in the same way I respected the director, who usually only called on me when he was in the midst of something. He was almost always busy with something, so I never minded getting him a mug of coffee when he needed it or a chocolate bar when one of the actors was asking him for yet another script change.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.