Heatwave

Amy turns off the tap. The short bathroom break is over, and it is time to go back to serving orders. In the mirror, she sees a slightly tired 17-year-old girl with visible under-eye circles, a few sweaty strands of hair stuck to her forehead, and the collar of the work polo messily twisted up on the left side. The shirt is plain black with the restaurant logo, a small white crab, a reference to the restaurant's proximity to the sea. It's hard to find your shirt size on a busy day when many employees are scheduled, which means that today Amy is wearing a large, when she usually goes for a small. The expectation is for everyone to look put together and professional, but that doesn't work too well when everyone wears whatever they got their hands on from the clothing rack in the changing room. There are a few food stains on Amy's polo as well, which she gave up on trying to wash off, accepting in defeat the wet rim around them. Nobody seems to care about neatness anyway during rush hour.

I have to hurry before the floor manager notices I'm taking too long, thinks Amy as she turns around towards the door. She twists the locking mechanism upright and pushes back the handle; the door slides open by a few centimetres, but no further than that. The door never felt particularly heavy to move. This is unusual.

Stuck.

Somebody must have put a box next to the door or something. Or maybe the hinge is stuck.

Amy leans against the door and pushes with her entire body weight. Nothing. Still stuck. Only a small gap between the bathroom door and the outside. The outside happens to be the inside of another room, the shower. The doors are perpendicular to each other, and somebody must have left it slightly open when they were done showering. The handles must’ve caught on each other and interlocked. Understanding what happened is not much help. Amy keeps pushing with all the strength in her small teenage body, but to no avail. “Somebody help! I'm stuck in the bathroom!” she shouts. Nothing. She shouts again. And again. Her vocal cords feel strained, her throat already raspy and dehydrated.

This is not the main staff bathroom, but the spare one that is only used when there are more people working than usual. It is tucked away in the changing room behind the kitchen, at the very back of the restaurant.

Nobody was there when Amy came to use the toilet. But someone has to come at some point, right? Another waiter or the cook will want to go to the bathroom soon enough and find her. Right? She just has to be patient.

***

Time crawls so painfully slow. There is absolutely nothing to do in the small bathroom. In the stall, which is maybe 1-by-2 meters in size, there’s only a toilet and a tiny sink with a mirror over it. The plain walls don’t even have tiles; they’ve just been painted over with cheap white paint. A tiny window covered with a mosquito net sits at the very top of the wall. A small shelf-like ridge between the toilet and the wall contains a few forgotten containers of hair styling gel and air fresheners, left to collect dust. Ocean breeze, reads the worn-off label. Clearly, nobody cared about the design of this place. The floor is relatively clean, aside from a half-dried puddle of greyish water. Someone probably walked in there with dirty shoes.

Amy climbs onto the closed toilet lid and sits there, wrapping her arms around her knees.

​It’s the peak of the heatwave that swept over Europe, which means that there’s increased demand for the restaurants around the coastline. It must be at least 35 degrees inside now. No air conditioning and barely any flow of fresh air from the small gap between locked doors. The window doesn't provide any air either, too small to ventilate the room. At least she has water. That’s comforting.

Workers aren’t allowed to carry phones during shifts, so of course Amy’s is lying a few meters away in the staff area. So close, but out of reach. Even if she had a phone, what would she do? Call one of the colleagues? They don’t have their phones on them either. Call the police? That’s bullshit; nobody calls the police because they are stuck in a bathroom stall.

Amy is growing bored. She opens the tap again and looks at the water going down the drain. A little bit of freshness in this tiny, sweaty room. She makes a cup from her palms and lets the water pool into it. The little puddle is warm, even though the faucet head is turned to the cold setting. There's no telling as to whether the water is safe to drink. The little discolored paper above the sink only reads Careful, high water pressure. Amy sprayed herself with said tap on her very first day. She remembered, now, how she had to stay in the bathroom for a few extra minutes because she was too embarrassed to go back out with a huge visible water stain on her jeans. She was already worried enough about making a good impression.

She takes a few sips anyway, dragging her wet palms across her face. It should feel better, but the lukewarmness of the water only amplifies the annoyance of the overall heat. Damp hair stuck to the back of her neck, the work polo glued to her skin. It was already soaked in sweat from working in the sun, now even more so. Amy decides to take it off, but it feels more like peeling off a layer of skin. It is a painful few moments, which leave her upper body even more exposed to the heat of the room.

There is no way to tell how much time has passed. Five minutes? Ten? Twenty? Surely not more than twenty. A thought pops into her head. The terrifying idea that maybe nobody would be coming after all. Amy suddenly feels the urge to scream for help. What else is there to do? Help me! Help me! I'm in the bathroom, and the door is locked! She jolts up, thinking she heard footsteps. Is she gonna be let out now? Did someone hear her? False alarm. The noise is coming from the adjacent corridor, the one that leads to the kitchen. At its end stood a big AC, making noises like a wind turbine. Of course, it drowned out the screams. If she wanted to be heard, she would have to try again, louder.

Something moves in the corner of Amy's vision. A fly buzzes around in the tiny space, bumping into walls. It must have flown in through the gap between doors.

Having been reminded of the door, Amy starts pounding on it again. Her hand quickly starts to hurt, and she reverts to doing it with her feet. She presses the soles of her shoes to the door and pushes with all her strength. Nothing.

Only as she puts her legs down does she notice a grey smear of dirt on the plastic surface of the door. Oh no, Amy thinks, quickly wiping it away with her hand. She doesn't pause to think of it; it's more of an autopilot move. Not causing trouble is too ingrained in her work behaviour.

***

Surely by now more than thirty minutes have passed. Amy keeps hearing the hum of the ‘air turbine’ and the steps and chit-chat of kitchen staff, but still nobody comes near the bathrooms. The restaurant is full of people; she can hear it. Did no one really notice she was gone?

It was only her second week working at that place, and she wasn’t yet friends with anyone, but she thought they all were on good terms. At least on good enough terms to notice that someone was missing. To notice she was missing. Did anyone even realise she was working there?

There were a lot of newcomers at this time of year, in the peak season, so maybe she got lost among the others. The job was new to her, and she was very preoccupied with doing things right, which was costing her a lot of energy. She did make small conversations here and there with her colleagues, but she was mostly focused on getting things right work-wise. At lunch breaks, she was occupied with consuming every last bit of food on her plate because she was so exhausted every time.​

***

Amy goes back to using her fists. Suddenly the door gives way, and the gap widens by a noticeable five centimeters. Release feels so close now.

The gap is just barely big enough to squeeze an arm through it. Reaching through the tight space between plastic panels, she feels around for the handle of the shower door and attempts to push it down. Her sweaty fingers keep slipping off the smooth metal surface, and the more Amy tries, the more slippery it becomes. She reaches her hand back inside for a brief moment to wipe off the sweat on her jeans and goes back to trying. That did hurt, though. A constant pressure on the skin and bony part of her wrist. The doors give way a bit more, and, blinded by hope, Amy keeps on trying and trying until she feels genuine pain, as if someone was squeezing her arm in an attempt to break it. It's now hard to bear, and she has to retreat back into the stall.

Her wrist hurts, displaying now noticeable reddish-purple marks from pressing against the hard material of the door. Beads of sweat are running from the nape of her neck and forehead, amplifying the sticky discomfort.

To calm down, Amy goes back to the sink. She opens the tap and puts her mouth to it, greedily swallowing the warmed-up liquid. But this time her body barely seems to register that she is drinking at all. The temperature seems to have risen everywhere, both in the room and at the tap. Amy grips the sides of the tiny sink, feeling dizzy.

The fly keeps buzzing around, causing even more annoyance and distress. Why didn’t it leave the way it came? At least it had the option to leave.

Leave, leave, leave. Amy feels like she is losing her mind, sitting back down on the toilet lid. She looks up at the tiny vent-like window. How come she never paid attention to it before?

It's probably too small to fit through, but maybe if she were to shout from it, she would have a better chance of being heard. Well, she has all the time in the world to try. It's about three meters up from the floor, and Amy will have to climb on the ridge behind the toilet to reach it. The space is smaller than her foot, and there is nothing to grip onto when she makes the step.

***

It’s near closing time as another waitress comes into the changing room to get out of her uniform and into her normal clothes. She usually changes in the bathroom, because there’s no privacy in the actual changing room. Not today. 

She pulls the door open and freezes in terror. On the floor lies Amy. The girl's limbs are in an unnatural position, as if she had fallen. A puddle of blood has pooled underneath her temple. 

The waitress quickly shuts the door.