When I got to the hotel today (long story) Anchor was dying to hear all about last night. In light of the nasty phone call, she told me the last time there was a guest complaint, one of the owners told Miss S. to fire the front desk person involved. Miss S. refused.

I said, fine. Let them fire me, and I’ll collect unemployment while waiting for the lawsuit to go through. See this bruise on my arm? Yeah.

Anchor suggested we take pictures of Nell’s room, and while I didn’t relish the idea of going up to that room, it was a great suggestion.

Walking into that room was like walking through an insane person’s mind. It was awful. I took pictures of the barbeque sauce (The Devil’s Saliva, or something like that) and the trashed kitchen. The damage to the doors, the flipped furniture, the food flung everywhere. I took a picture of (what I thought) was a half-chewed olive resting on a piece of paper with some kind of picture printed on the paper, on the counter right by the door. Then I moved on to the bathroom which was covered in food and laundry detergent.

Anchor called me back to the olive. She said, I don’t want you to see this, but you need to take a picture. She lifted the paper.

There was a knife thrust through the paper into the olive.

****

I thought I was going to pass out, and I bent over so the blood stayed near my brain. It all hit me, you see. Not just this incident, but others in which I have acted before thinking things through (like the time the diabetic guest decided to walk to Walgreen’s at night five minutes from East St. Louis, and me right behind him) and putting myself in danger, for what? For what, exactly? The worry I must have caused those who love me, and for what?

Anchor said, it’s okay, it’s okay, but she was shaking almost as bad as I was. She said, maybe you stopped her from hurting herself, look at it that way. She said, her husband never should have left her here. I said, if she had stabbed me, I wonder if he would have been able to face my children, and that’s when I lost my shit.

****

I told Anchor I will never leave the front desk again. I asked her to call the sister hotel and tell them I would be unable to take the shift there Monday (I couldn’t. I could not call and talk to some stranger about all this, actually, I could barely speak at all.) I don’t know the hotel, I don’t know the people IN the hotel, and it’s in and out over there. I cannot deal with it.

I also made my formal apology to the knight and the GC. I’m also extending it to anyone else that has worried even one second on my account. I will do my very best to see that it doesn’t happen again. This was just way too close.


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