The Daughter of the Northern Star

Late to Work

Chapter 1 - Alana

Like any other morning when the alarm on my cell phone rang for the first time, I groaned as I woke up, irritated by the noise that brought me from the dreamlands to reality.

Turning it off after looking at the time, I thought about sleeping a little more, just five more minutes as many other people usually did too... Just wake up half an hour later with my mom knocking on my bedroom door while saying I would get late to work.

Normally, I would be already in the kitchen by the time she got up, so when I heard her voice, I immediately jumped out of bed, yelling at myself for having overslept while changing clothes before running to the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face.

"Don't forget to comb your hair. It's a mess." And as something that was a routine to us, my mom told me when I passed her on my way before she returned to the table, where my younger brother was already having breakfast too, while my older sister seemed to be doing something different for herself.

... Maybe she had started a new diet or something like that; I wasn't sure...

Anyway, quickly finishing with my teeth and throwing some water on my face, my struggle that morning was with my hair, which seemed to have become a bird's nest around my neck, not allowing me to make a quick bun as I planned at first.

Combing it back into the kitchen, I heard my mom saying that I would let the strands fall all over the house as soon as I stepped into the living room, it was a small apartment, and the main spaces were all almost together as many were in the last few years in our city.

"Desculpa, mãe. Mas eu limpo tudo quando eu chegar, eu prometo." Apologizing in Portuguese, I promised her that I would clean it up when I arrived later.

... After all, like everyone else, I believed that I would come home after work that morning...

Just drinking a simple latte and eating some cookies, I soon ran to the bus stop, which, thankfully, was close to my home!

However, as many like to say, what has to happen will happen anyway, and like some sick joke, the bus that I would take to work, which was always late as far as I could remember, arrived at the right time that day.

And as tempting as it was to want to wait for the next one, it would take a while for it to pass again, and the other buses that passed here had their stops too far from the hospital where I worked.

I could take an Uber, I thought; however, it was already the end of the month, and the money I had in my account at the time was just for unplanned situations at home as if something broke and stuff like that.

I thought about maybe paying with my credit card, but then I remembered how I had just bought our refrigerator in installments with it, and that had used up all my limit... My luck...

... Honestly, it had been a complete disaster when it broke out of nowhere in the middle of the Carnaval holiday when I was home alone.

My mother and siblings had gone to visit our grandparents in the south since we were unable to go for Christmas, and I would go with them too if it weren't for the sudden change in hospital shifts in January...

Back at the building, I went straight to the garage to get my bicycle, it wouldn't take that long to get to work with her, and if it depends on me, it would be my only transportation every day instead of buses.

But to make my mother's peace of mind, I always took the bus since she always used to tell my siblings and me that it was dangerous and that anything could happen to us like get hit by a car or even fell because of something silly like a rock that we didn't see.

Her concern might seem a little too much, yet I understood it as something that all mothers in the world may felt about their children... 

In reality, it even causes a big fight between her and my dad when we were kids, and he bought the bicycles in secret for the Dia das Crianças, the children's day, without her knowing about anything.

She was so upset that even my sister and I become worried while my brother was still too young to understand what was going on.

However, to our surprise, in the following morning, everything was back to normal, and they had reached an agreement that we could only use them in the parking lot or on the street in front of our building when one of them was with us.

... Which was completely funny as I remembered about it now, after all since the sixth grade I had some colleagues who went to school like that and even in high school, without her knowing it, I would go with some friends to the beach on a bicycle, sometimes sharing someone else's so she wouldn't realize mine was missing... 

Those were good times when life was much simpler and more peaceful, and when our family lived complete and happy...

The same couldn't be said of the subsequent year, which was largely spent in the hospital by me as a drunk driver crashed into our car when we returned home from summer vacation after New Year's Day.

... My sister told me afterward that nothing happened to the man who left safe and sound with just a few minor injuries while our father died right away... I wasn't too far from him and was considered a miracle by many doctors when they saw the accident photos.

The car had been destroyed completely on the driver's side since he hit us sideways after crossing the route, almost hitting the front of others car before he hit us.

... It was truly a terrible accident, which seemed to haunt us still every time I saw the look on my mother's eyes when we mentioned we would go out with my sister's car or take an Uber...

Slowly, life was improving despite everything, and that's how I found myself my new dream of becoming a nurse.

The years in college were hard with all the work to pay the tuition without delay and the studies, yet everything was worth it in the end, and as I said, slowly everything was getting better like life was finally taking its correct course... But then... Why I never arrived home that evening, even if everything seemed to be fine now?