I Carried His Soup Tureen While Wearing the Glove That Could Ruin Me...

I didn't take the highway because it was faster. I took it because Highway 9 had the lights on all night and I didn't want to fall asleep at a stop sign with my uniform still on.

The urgent care sat between a gas station and a closed diner, one of those low flat buildings with a buzzing sign. I parked under it and sat there a minute with the engine ticking. My left hand was in my jacket pocket, the glove balled in there with it. I hadn't looked at the burn since the kitchen. I didn't want to.

My name is Claire. I was twenty-eight and on probation because I was afraid to say my hand was hurt.

Inside it smelled like cleaner and coffee. The woman at the front didn't look up right away. She slid me a clipboard.

"What brings you in tonight?"

I hesitated. "Burn. On my hand. A few days ago."

That got her to look up. "A few days?"

"Yeah."

She handed me the forms. I filled them with my right hand, letters slanted and slow. Employment: catering agency. Emergency contact: I left it blank, then wrote my mom's old number and crossed it out. Insurance: none. I checked self-pay and my stomach dropped.

The waiting room was almost empty. A man with a wrapped ankle watched a game show with the sound low. I kept my left hand in my pocket. Every time the door to the back opened I could hear paper crinkle and someone coughing, and I breathed in through my nose to stay calm. The fluorescent light made everything look gray.

They called me after twenty minutes. A nurse took my temperature and blood pressure and asked me to sit on the exam table.

"Let's see it," she said.

I pulled my hand out. The glove came with it and fell on the paper. My fingers were swollen. The skin across the back of my hand and up two fingers was red and blistered in patches, shiny where one blister had broken. It looked worse under that light.

She didn't flinch. "Ouch. How'd this happen?"

"Grease," I said. "In my kitchen."

"When?"

"Four days ago. Maybe five."

She wrote it down. "Doctor will be in."

The doctor was a woman about fifty, hair pulled back, reading glasses on a chain. She put on gloves and took my wrist gently and turned my hand.

"Second-degree," she said. "Partial thickness. You've got some blistering here and here. No signs of infection yet, which is lucky."

She looked at me over the glasses. "Why'd you wait?"

I stared at the cabinet with the boxes of gauze. I could hear my own breathing.

"I was working," I said.

"You were working with this uncovered?"

"No. Covered. With a glove." My voice sounded thin. "I serve. I couldn't — I didn't want them to see it."

She waited. She didn't write. That was worse.

"It happened in my apartment," I said. "I was working a double that day. Lunch shift downtown, then I picked up a private dinner because I needed the hours. I came home between to change and eat something. I put fries on. Frozen ones. The oil was old and I was in a hurry."

I could see it again so clear I felt sick. The little kitchen with the stove that ran hot on the right side. The phone buzzing with the agency asking if I could come early. The pan spitting.

"The grease popped when I dropped them in. I jerked back and caught the edge of the pan. It tipped. It went across my hand before I got to the sink."

Cold water. Dish towel. Me standing there counting seconds because I had to leave in ten minutes. Me wrapping it in gauze from the dollar store and pulling a glove over it so the agency wouldn't send me home.

"I ran it under water," I said. "I thought if I kept it clean and covered it'd be okay. I needed the catering hours. If I called out they'd give the shifts to someone else."

The doctor nodded once. She wasn't judging me, just listening. "You ever burned like this before?"

"No."

She started cleaning it. The antiseptic stung and I sucked air through my teeth and gripped the edge of the table with my right hand.

"Breathe," she said. "Slow out."

I did. In, out. The paper under me crinkled every time I moved.

"This is going to need proper dressings," she said. "And you need to keep heat and friction off it. No hot trays, no dish pit steam, no carrying over a stove. You understand what I'm saying?"

"Yeah."

"I'm serious, Claire. Another heat exposure and you risk infection and scarring. You could lose function if it gets worse."

She applied silver cream and wrapped it in clean white gauze, taping it loose. It felt strange to have it out in the open, heavy and white. No black glove. Just hurt skin taken care of.

She typed on the little computer and printed a sheet. Work restriction note. No food service involving heat, open flame, hot liquids, or heavy lifting with left hand for ten to fourteen days. Follow-up in three days.

She handed it to me. "Give this to your employer. If they make you work around heat anyway, that's on them, not you."

I folded the paper in half, then in half again. It felt heavier than the tray.

"How much?" I asked.

She told me. I put it on the card I used for gas. My hand shook signing with my right.

In the parking lot the air was cold. I sat in my car and put the note on the passenger seat and stared at it. Ten days with no heat. That was every shift I had. That was probation blown.

I unwrapped nothing. I just sat there breathing, listening to the highway cars go past, my left hand throbbing cleanly under the bandage for the first time in days. The truth didn't feel good. It just felt plain. I hadn't been hurt by anyone. I hadn't been hiding anything stolen. I'd tipped a pan in my own kitchen because I was tired and scared to lose work, and then I'd kept covering it for the same reason.