FROSTY

FROSTY

She came to with a start. The deep cold of wherever she was made her begin to shiver violently. It took the air from her lungs.

As she lay trying to take in air, she tried to look around. To her dismay, she seemed to frozen to the ground. Try as she might she could not free herself. Exhaustion overtook her once more and she slept.

Prying her eyes open with difficulty, since the tears on her lashes had frozen, she tried to remember how she might have gotten here; wherever here was.

“What is the last thing I remember?” she quizzed herself silently.

Try as she might, she couldn’t recall. All she wanted to do was go to sleep again. But some part of her brain told her that if she did, she might never wake again.

So, she decided to try and make a move to get herself up. Painfully, she tore her hair out in order to raise her head. When she saw the shelving and stacks of boxes and bags, she knew!

“The walk-in freezer in the restaurant kitchen? How did I get here? When?” she mouthed through cold-stiffened lips.

She pulled some more. Ripping both uniform and skin she managed to sit up. Finally, she could see the temperature gauge for the unit.

“Who would crank it to maximum while I was in here?”

Slowly, it was coming back to her. She had been getting ready to go home, when her boss walked up to her and stood very close. The whole time, he kept trying to look down her top She’d stepped back and he’d followed, forcing her back until her back hit the heavy freezer door.

“I’ve been refusing to have a date with him for weeks. I thought I could handle him, so instead of walking out and looking for a new job, I stayed,” she recalled as she finally managed to get on her knees, tearing pantyhose and skin.

Crawling and sliding, she managed to make it to the door. With a mighty effort, she pulled herself up, using the inside handle. Then she tried it.

“Locked!” she managed to scream the word.

“What’s going on? Who’s in there!”

She realized it was Millie, the cook and screamed her name over and over. Suddenly, the door swung open and she fell into Millie’s arms.

“What in heaven’s name! Julia, is that you? I’m calling an ambulance and the cops!”

After she did so, Millie wrapped the young waitress in whatever she could find, mostly tablecloths, layer after layer. She heated up yesterday’s soup of the day and made her drink cup after cup.

“Who did this! Was it the boss man?” Millie asked.

When she was finally able to nod yes, Millie stood up and went to his office door and began pounding on it. Luckily, the police arrived within minutes, closely followed by the EMTs. The cops pulled Millie from the door and took over the pounding. When the door swung open, the officers marched in over the boss’ protests.

As they loaded her into the ambulance, Millie insisted on coming too.

“Don’t worry, Julie. I’ll stand by you. He tried that on me too, when I first started here. But I told him he better not touch me or my brothers would take care of him permanently.

“He didn’t believe me, until my big brother Tom came to pick me up from work once and caught him at it. Needless to say, there was no more of that after he was done. “

“Why did you stay?” Julia shuddered.

“Them times jobs for women of color were hard to come by. Besides I like the location. It’s only a single bus ride from my place to here. The customers are generous with tips and never overly demanding. I also get to make my ‘soup of the day’ famous because I never follow a recipe for it, or anything else for that matter.”

The ambulance attendants wheeled her into Emergency, with Millie glued to her side like a limpet. In no time, she was headed up to a room. When they’d checked her over and left, Millie barged right in to make sure she was treated right.

Every time Julia woke, Millie was still there. She always jumped up to see if she was all right. Since she had extreme frostbite that caused blisters on her skin, she was bandaged from head-to-toe, literally.

Milly would read to her from the gossip papers and crack jokes about what was in them. She often sang to her as well to help ease her pain and relax her for sleep.

“Well, would you look at this here,” Millie said as she came in the door, waving the local paper.

“What’s that?”

“Look like that jerkwad got what’s coming to him! Five other women came forward to tell the cops about the boss man. He’s in jail, waiting for trial. I’m gonna testify and they want you too, as well, when you get out of here.”

Julia breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at Millie when she reluctantly had to leave.

“Stay frosty,” Julie said to her.

“If anybody can, you and I can!” was the reply.

875 WORDS 1/29/2023