catfish and code blues

I am enjoying my new job, now that my grasp on its demands is sure and my acquaintanceship with coworkers and employees is strengthening. In what context other than the serving line (dishing hot food onto customers' plates) is "Catfish!" an acceptable and even sensible response to "Hello!"?

I'm even learning a little bit about the culinary arts. For example, adding hot water and stirring it into hours-old creamed potatoes and vegetables will work a temporary miracle of revivication. Nothing can make a pot of greens look appetizing. Catfish is edible!--a fact that still makes me shudder, linked as it is in my brain with memories of a friend's aquarium of bewhiskered mottled slimy catfish, and also rumors (urban myths?) of Volkswagon-sized catfish snuffling over river bottoms.

Then I get to enjoy the immortal flirtatious teasing of aged men, the sweet precocity of children. Who knew I'd be able to dramatically beg people not to "shoot the messenger" as often as I do when, seated behind the register, I am compelled to extort $4 plus tax for three measly chicken tenders, $3 plus tax for a limp slice of day-old cheese pizza.

It can be a sad place to work. A hospital cafeteria is hardly most people's fine dining choice. Every so often someone will share a grief with me: a mother dying, a husband with kidney failure discovering he also is riddled with cancer, a 25-year-old man losing his battle with brain tumors after three years of struggling. In the context of such heartache, I find it it easy to forgive a petty complaint, an impatient demeanor, a sharp retort. In some ways, I am glad for these reactions, glad to offer some sort of outlet for bitterness or grief.

A chill always passes over me when I hear a "Code Blue" announced over the speaker system: adult heart failure: an infrequent but sobering interruption to the day's work. It's a reminder that all around my insulated hub of commerce, lives are being handled with both care and perfunctoriness. My heart flings a prayer heavenward, and then I keep dishing out food, wiping down tables, refilling plastic silverware, taking people's money.

With care, but also perfunctorily.