Sterling Removed My Nameplate And Blamed Me For Four Missed Treatments

Sterling Pike took down my name while I poured tea into my second thermos.

I always packed two. One was for me. The extra was for passengers who got stuck between a boat and a bed. Its yellow cup had three dents from a fall on a ferry ramp.

That morning, he set my nameplate beside the sugar.

“You'll work reception now, Teresita.”

“Who will meet the boat?”

“Someone who can book it correctly.”

I was a short Filipino American woman of fifty-nine, with brown skin, a silver braid, and square glasses that slid down my nose.

For sixteen years, I had been the transport coordinator at Rain Channel Dialysis in Juneau. I matched treatment slots with sailings, booked rooms when boats ran late, and arranged rides from the terminal at Auke Bay. Some days, my whole job was finding one warm chair for someone who had traveled all night.

I had moved from the Philippines at twenty-seven. In my first Alaska winter, a stranger had shared hot tea while we waited for a canceled bus. I remembered the warmth longer than the wait. That was why I packed the extra thermos.

Sterling was a broad white man of fifty, with neat sandy hair, a pink face, and spotless brown shoes.

He stood by my wall calendar. He wore the soft smile he used when telling families a room wasn't covered anymore.

“Four missed treatments,” he said. “Four ferry failures in one month.”

“Which four?”

“Don't make this harder.”

Two nurses had stopped beside the staff mailboxes. He made sure they could hear.

“At your age, a quieter position could be a blessing.”

“Please give me the dates.”

He handed me a sheet. February 11, 18, 25, and March 4. Beside each date, someone had typed BOOKING ERROR: T. MACAPAGAL.

I knew those dates.

“Those were approved trips.”

“Approval isn't a booking.”

“A cancellation isn't a booking error.”

His smile stayed. His eyes changed.

“Your new rate is twenty-two dollars an hour. Effective today.”

I had earned twenty-eight. At thirty-six hours a week, that meant $216 less before taxes. My apartment didn't become cheaper because he had found a kind voice for the cut.

He tapped the calendar.

“We need records people can understand. This isn't enough anymore.”

The calendar showed boat times, weather notes, and birthdays. It had never been my payment record.

“Do you want a handover inventory?” I asked.

“Just leave the keys.”

I put down the van keys. I kept the little brass key to the records cabinet until someone signed for it. That was the rule printed on the cabinet door.

He had signed that rule himself.

Our emergency travel fund used numbered forms in three layers. White went to accounts. Yellow went with the booking packet. The bound blue copy stayed in the transport office. I checked each set, signed the monthly count, and locked the books away.

Sterling had once called them my little coloring books.

He thought the quiet woman near retirement had a calendar and a kettle. He had forgotten who held the bound copies of every emergency travel authorization.

I didn't remind him in front of the nurses.

At reception, I answered calls and watched my replacement turn my calendar sideways. A family from Hoonah called about an overnight room. Sterling took the call in his office.

When he came out, he said, “Please stop promising things we can't afford.”

“Who did I promise?”

“This is the sort of attitude I hoped we'd avoid.”

At lunch, I asked accounts for the cancellation reference on February 11.

Elaine Voss looked at Sterling's open door.

“I can't pull travel files for reception,” she said.

“Then give me a written handover appointment. The cabinet still has my name on its custody card.”

She wrote one for Friday at three.

I put the slip in my lunch bag. I had learned long ago that a small piece of paper could be a place to stand.

After work, I carried the extra thermos to the bus stop. Rain shone on the curb. Across the channel, low cloud hid the tops of the hills.

My phone rang.

“Teresita? Agnes. Did they really take you off transport?”

Agnes Kookesh was a sixty-four-year-old Tlingit Alaska Native woman who worked as a harbor dispatcher. Years earlier, she had ridden our van as a patient. Now her work involved berth assignments, vessel movements, and people who believed a large boat gave them the right to shout.

“They did,” I said.

“Were you given dates?”

I read them.

She was quiet long enough for a bus to pass.

“I had a berth change on the eighteenth,” she said. “That boat came in. I remember because a tug needed the space after it.”

“Sterling said ferry failures.”

“A boat can fail to carry someone without failing to sail.”

She asked me to meet her after her shift. She didn't ask me for patient names.

At six, she arrived at my bus shelter with rain on her sleeves and a long envelope tucked under her coat.

“Before you open this,” she said, “tell me whether you still have the blue books.”