My Boss Suspended Me Beside The Ear I Had Just Painted

Felix Rook set the suspension letter beside an ear that had taken me six hours to paint.

The ear belonged to a woman who wanted to wear her hair up at her grandson's wedding. I had put a small brown spot near its rim, just like the one on her other ear.

"Leave that," Felix said. "We have a larger concern."

I laid down my brush.

I was a forty-three-year-old Pakistani American woman with brown skin, a long braid going gray at the temples, and round silver glasses. At Rook Facial Restoration in Tucson, I shaped and painted silicone ears, noses, and small facial pieces under our visiting doctor's care.

I could mix a patient's skin tone from memory. Felix treated that skill like a trick a pet had learned.

That morning, he had brought a visitor through my room and asked me to do it. I had mixed the base, then asked the visitor to leave before the patient came in.

"This isn't a show," I had told him.

He had laughed then. He was not laughing when he returned with the letter.

"Three patient devices are missing," he said. "Your workroom. Your duty."

"Which patients?"

He tapped the letter instead of answering.

Felix was a fifty-one-year-old white American man with neat sandy hair, a soft belly, and square gold glasses. His voice could make bad news sound like warm soup.

"This is paid leave while we review things. Sign here."

The letter said unpaid suspension. It also said I had failed to deliver completed devices worth $55,200.

"That's three times $18,400," I said.

"You don't need to concern yourself with billing."

Behind him, the desert light fell through our high windows. My lunch sat by a little pot of roses. I grew miniature roses because a full-size garden took water and room I did not have. That morning, one yellow bud had opened.

I looked at its cool shadow. One drop of blue. That was what most people left out when they tried to paint living skin.

"I need the names," I said.

He folded his arms.

"Desert Lantern Health is inspecting us Thursday. Missing work cannot be sitting on our books."

It was Tuesday.

"Then show them the work orders."

"Uzma. Don't make a difficult thing ugly."

I read every line before I wrote anything. Beneath the signature space, I printed: Received only. Facts disputed. No patient names supplied.

His mouth tightened.

"That isn't necessary."

"Then it won't hurt."

I photographed my signed copy and took it. I did not open the computer or go near the patient cabinet.

Instead, I reached for my narrow blue ledger.

Felix put his palm over it.

"Clinic property stays."

"Page four of my work agreement."

He stared at me.

"The casting archive stays in my care. You signed that when you bought the business from Dr. Bell."

He gave a small laugh.

"We're discussing missing ears, not your pottery collection."

That was what he called the numbered plaster casts. Pottery. He had never asked why I marked each cast with a blue crescent beneath its rim, or why I kept dates beside each number.

The ledger held cast numbers, dates, and coded work tickets. Names were in a separate clinic index. My agreement required me to keep the archive for patients, and barred any sale or move without the right written releases.

I had insisted on that clause after the old clinic almost lost a shelf of casts during a rent dispute.

Felix had wanted the purchase finished. He had signed.

"I'll leave the casts locked here until a proper transfer," I said. "But I take the ledger I am required to keep."

He lifted his hand.

"Fine. Take your notebook. Bring back your keys."

Our receptionist, Beth, stood by the front desk when I came out. Her eyes moved from my rose pot to the folded letter.

"Are you sick?"

"Suspended."

She glanced at Felix's closed door.

"Those three shipping labels came from his office," she whispered.

"Keep whatever you're allowed to keep," I told her. "Don't change anything for me."

Outside, the heat rose from the parking lot even though October was nearly over. A bus sighed at the stop on Speedway. I sat in my old car with the roses between my shoes.

For eleven years, I had made faces easier for people to show the world. Now my boss had put theft on paper beside my name.

I opened the ledger to the last three completed jobs.

All three had fitting dates. All three had patient sign-offs. None matched the dates in his letter.

At home, I found my work agreement in a folder marked TAX AND BORING. I made two copies.

Then my phone lit up.

The message was from Felix.

Before Thursday, I need you to sign a release transferring the entire archive to the clinic's buyer.