My Boss Took My Badge While The Dashboard Bears Watched

Merritt Shaw laid my new badge beside the bear with blue earmuffs.

The badge said OFFICE SUPPORT. The bear said nothing. I had made its earmuffs during a long wait outside a community house in McMechen. One stitch had come loose. I kept looking at that stitch while Merritt cut my pay.

“Nineteen an hour,” he said. “Until we restore trust.”

I had earned twenty-nine.

“Whose trust?”

He folded his hands. “Let's keep this useful, Danuta.”

I was a broad-shouldered woman with pale skin, gray eyes, and a thick brown braid that reached the middle of my back.

At thirty-seven, I had spent eight years as a mobile audiology technician. I set up the booth, checked the earphones, ran hearing screens under our audiologist's standing plan, and kept each ear's results straight. I did not diagnose hearing loss. I helped people reach the person who could.

My Polish American mother had taught me to crochet. My father had taught me to keep receipts. Neither lesson appeared on my new badge.

Merritt was a tall white man of fifty with neat silver hair, soft pink cheeks, and rimless glasses that made his blue eyes look kind.

He owned River Lantern Hearing, which sent one clinic van through the northern panhandle. He used the same low voice for frightened patients and workers who asked hard questions.

“Your inconsistent testing triggered the grant review,” he said.

“What inconsistent testing?”

“Don't turn this into a fight.”

Outside his office, a truck groaned up the hill from Wheeling Creek. I could hear each gear change. I wished he would give me one plain fact to answer.

Instead, he slid over a form.

It said I accepted a corrective assignment because of unreliable field work. Below that sat a line for my signature.

“I'll take a copy,” I said.

“You need to sign first.”

“Then write that I declined.”

For a moment, his bedside voice stopped.

“People remember how we make them feel,” he said. “They don't remember which Thursday they sat in a van.”

I took a picture of the form with his permission and left it unsigned.

In the van, I unclipped my old badge. A bear and a felt rabbit sat on the dashboard. Both wore earmuffs smaller than quarters. Patients liked them. Some people would talk to a rabbit when they would not talk to me.

Beneath the booth bench sat my audiometer in its gray case.

I had bought that machine for $6,800 with money my father left me. River Lantern rented it from me under a written equipment agreement. Merritt called it the company machine because it rode in his van.

The agreement said otherwise.

It also named me keeper of its original session exports for quality checks. The clinic received copies for patient charts. I kept the protected originals in an encrypted archive, as the contract required. Owning a machine did not make its patients' records mine to share.

Every Friday, I checked the export count against the visit sheet. Each file carried the machine's serial number, M41, and a session time. I had asked Merritt three times for the grant billing list so I could check that too.

He had said billing was above my pay grade.

At noon, the director of Elm Landing Community House called.

“Danuta, Merritt said you shouldn't run our next clinic.”

I held my lunch bag very still.

“What else did he say, Ruth?”

“That your results had put the whole program at risk.”

I asked her to save his email. My voice sounded calm. The inside of my mouth tasted like pennies.

Two more center directors called before three. Each used his words: unreliable testing. Each sounded embarrassed for me.

I spent the rest of the day folding appointment cards at a desk beside the copier. Merritt passed twice and gave me a sad little nod, as if he had found me in trouble instead of put me there.

At five, Verna Pruitt waited by my car.

She was seventy-two, a Black woman with silver curls pressed close to her head and shoes polished bright enough to catch the light. I had screened her hearing the previous fall. After her referral, she got hearing aids and told me she could hear her granddaughter whisper again.

“Heard you caused some kind of review,” she said.

“That's what he's telling people.”

“Well. I brought my book.”

Verna had retired from bus dispatch. She still arranged rides for three community centers, and her calendars mattered to her more than most people’s photo albums.

She opened a cloth shopping bag and brought out a thick calendar bound with two red rubber bands.

“Routine days count,” she said. “That's why I write them down.”

She turned to March 6. Across the square, in firm black ink, she had written CLINIC CANCELED. NO VAN. ROAD CLOSED.

Then she laid a grant service list beside it.

For that same day, River Lantern claimed eighteen completed hearing visits.