The Cleaner

CHAPTER SIX

Sally says hello to everybody she knows on her way to the elevator, and to those not in earshot she offers a small wave. She pushes the button and waits patiently. She never feels the temptation to keep pushing the button like others do. The elevator is empty, which is a shame, because she would have liked the company on the way to her floor.

She thinks about Joe, and what a nice young man he is. She’s always had the ability to see people for what they really are, and she can tell Joe is a wonderful human being. Though most people are, she thinks, since they’re all made in God’s image. She wishes there were more like Joe, though. Wishes there was more she could do for him.

When the elevator comes to a stop, she steps out, ready to smile, but the corridor is empty. She makes her way to the end of the hallway and walks through the door marked Maintenance. Inside, the room is full of neatly kept shelves on which are several varieties of hand and power tools, different types and sizes of wooden beams, metal beams, spare panels of suspended ceiling, spare floor and wall tiles, pottles of adhesive and grease, jars full of screws and nails, clamps, a spirit level, various saws, different types of everything.

She moves over to the window and picks up the glass of orange juice she set there twenty minutes earlier, just before rushing downstairs to say good morning to Joe. She isn’t sure why she made the effort. Probably because of Martin. She thinks about Martin more than ever over these two days of the year, and that has somehow led her to start thinking of Joe. People outside her family did very little to help Martin. Some, and she thinks about the kids at school, went out of their way to make life hard for him. It was the same for all the kids who were different. It will always be the same, she thinks, as she sips from her orange juice. It’s warmer than she would have liked, but the taste still makes her smile.

She finishes her drink, then moves over to a large box full of cardboard-wrapped fluorescent tubes jammed tightly. She takes two out, one for this floor, the other for the ground floor. While she replaces the first blown tube, she remembers how Martin’s disability changed her own life. Growing up with him, she had the idea that she wanted to become a nurse. She wanted to be able to help people.

She had spent the last three years of her life, until six months ago, at nursing school. It was difficult to decide exactly which path she wanted to follow, whether to work in a hospital, in a retirement home, or whether to help those who were mentally challenged like Martin and Joe. There were plenty of options, but she never got the chance. Martin died, and that made wanting to help people harder to do. There were too many diseases out there, too many viruses. You could live life the best you could, do the right things, make the right decisions, and still be struck down by something you were born with that had been biding its time. There were simply too many ways to die, and she didn’t want to see that happen to people she knew she would become attached to.

The other factor was her father. Two years ago he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which quickly led to him losing his job. Since then the disease has advanced. He can’t work, and his weekly benefit payments aren’t enough to cover the medical bills. She didn’t have the luxury of completing her studies. Her family needed her, not only to help look after her father, but to help them survive. She had to earn money. She had to help them get through this. She couldn’t afford to keep studying.

Her father had a friend who was a full-time maintenance worker at the police station, a friend who was getting older and needed an assistant who would one day replace him. Sally took that job, and now, six months later, she even has his desk and view.

She catches the elevator down to the ground floor; the entire trip down she thinks about Joe, and she thinks about what she can do to make his life better.