Blood and spilled coffee look surprisingly similar on cheap linoleum.
Sadie didn't want to save a life today. She wanted to finish her double shift, scrape the hardened ketchup off her sneakers, and make rent. But when a frail body hit the pavement outside her diner with a sickening crack, instinct overrode exhaustion. She didn't know the woman bleeding on the concrete was worth billions; she only knew the sound of bone giving way, and that she couldn't just walk away.
Rain in this part of the city didn't wash things clean—it just made the grime slick.
Sadie leaned against the counter of the diner, pressing the heel of her hand into her lower back. Her apron smelled of old grease, bleached rags, and the sour tang of the split pea soup they'd been pushing all week. The diner was empty, save for a trucker asleep in booth three and the persistent, headache-inducing hum of the flickering neon sign in the window: Open 24 Hours (the U was burned out).
She watched the street through the smudged glass. It was 3:00 p.m. on a Tuesday—the dead zone between the lunch rush and the early dinner crowd.
Out on the sidewalk, an old woman was moving at a glacial pace. Sadie watched her with a detached, cynical pity. The woman wore a beige trench coat that looked two sizes too big, the hem dragging slightly on the wet concrete. She carried no umbrella. Her head was bowed against the drizzle, gray hair plastered flat against her skull.
Just keep walking, Sadie thought, rubbing her aching arches inside her cheap orthopedic shoes. Don't come in here. I don't want to make another pot of decaf.
The woman didn't come in. Instead, her sensible black shoe caught the jagged lip of a raised paving stone.
It happened in slow motion, yet too fast to process. The woman's arms flailed, bird-like and frail, before gravity took over. She pitched forward. Her chin and shoulders slammed into the concrete. The sound breached the diner's thick glass: a wet, hollow smack.
Sadie froze. Her breath hitched, catching on the stale diner air. She waited for the woman to stir, to push herself up, to embarrassedly brush off her knees and keep walking. Five seconds passed. Ten. The bundle of beige fabric remained motionless on the wet sidewalk.
"Damn it," Sadie muttered.
She didn't want to go out there. She was off the clock in twenty minutes. If she went out, there would be paperwork, paramedics, questions, and a mess. She was exhausted; her bones felt like lead. She looked around. The trucker was dead to the world. Dale, the line cook, was in the back smoking next to the grease trap. Nobody else was going to do it.
Sadie shoved through the heavy glass door. The November chill bit instantly through her thin uniform.
"Hey!" she called out, her voice harsh, defensive. "Hey, lady, you okay?"