#last time she did this shit she actually had strep so how am i supposed to judge her illness when she is so.....

[rxwen]

kiddo has a 100.4 fever and a cough.

I'm shaking and crying bc I'm afraid she's got covid and is going to die.

then she says "mom. I'm fine. watch." and somersaults onto my bed 😮‍💨😌

[swimmingnewsie]

Of Coffee and Cookies (Chapter 7)

...You know I used to be patient and methodical with my upload schedule. But now I just want to share with the world my work <3 So enjoy two chapters in less than 24 hours.

Link to AO3

---

"I just don't understand why she can't tell me what's wrong. Obviously there's something, and maybe I could help if she would just let me in!" Maren said in frustration as Ryder drove.

It had been three days since Maren had walked out on Elsa in the cafe, and she hadn't heard from the woman since. What was so bad that Elsa couldn't bring herself to talk about? It wasn't like they hadn't had deep conversations before. They had talked about everything from miscarriages to the death of parents to mental health crises. What was so bad Elsa couldn't even name?

"Have you considered the chance that maybe she's still processing whatever it is? And that she wants some sort of grasp before she tries to talk about it with someone else?" Ryder suggested, eyes focused on the open road ahead of them. There was no destination today, but Maren had a feeling that Ryder was doing this so she would talk candidly. They had never been good at a direct face-to-face conversation. Driving provided an easy environment for them both.

"Maybe, but she's my girlfriend, Ry. I'm supposed to be there to help her with stuff," she exasperated. All she wanted was to be there for Elsa. Why was that so hard?

"You may be her girlfriend, but she's still her own person. She's allowed to keep her secrets if she wants. That's just something she does. Have you tried talking to her about it?"

Maren shook her head. "I told her to come back when she was ready to be mature about things. She needs to come to me first."

Ryder raised an eyebrow. "But is that fair? You're the one who walked out on her because she wasn't talking. Do you really think that's the best way to get what you want?"

Maren rolled her eyes. "No, but- but- I don't know!"

"Then put your stubbornness aside and apologize. She may have done things wrong, but so did you." Ryder said, looking at her. "You yelled at her for not opening up when you knew full well the shit show that the last week has been for her with Anna being so sick.

"Look I don't know Elsa as well as you do, obviously, but I do know this: she internalizes her feelings while you externalize your feelings. If you guys are gonna make this work, you’re gonna have to learn to deal with that."

Maren looked stunned at her brother. Where the hell had all that come from? Her brother had grown a lot from that flighty boy who wouldn't talk to anyone for anything. Maren laid her head back on the seat. "When did you get so wise?"

"I'm dating a self-proclaimed love expert who was raised by actual love expert marriage counselors. You pick up on this kind of shit," he said simply. Ryder sighed, turning the car back towards home.

Maren could hear the sadness in her brother's sigh. She was far more adept at her brother's emotions than anyone else's. "Well, I may not be able to pick at my girlfriend's mind right now, but I can pick at yours. What's running in that pretty little head of yours?"

Ryder gave a hint of a laugh. "Just trying to solve all the world's problems today, aren't you?"

She nudged her brother in the shoulder. "Maybe," she said with a slight smile.

"You're worse than Anna about meddling!" he teased.

"Am not!" Maren slapped her brother's shoulder.

"Hey! Hey! No hitting the driver!" Ryder called out laughing. "And answering your question would require whiskey, and considering we both have work tomorrow, that is not an option."

Maren rolled her eyes. "So you're not going to tell me? Even after everything I've gone through with Elsa?"

"Dramatic much?" he asked, mirroring her eye roll. "We'll talk about it Friday. I promise."

Ryder held out a pinky that Maren happily linked. "Friday," she agreed.

"And in the meantime, you are going to your girlfriend's and talking this out."

"As you command, Mr. Love Expert."

---

"Hi, Maren! I wasn't expecting to see you today." Maren was greeted at the door by a sleepy looking Anna. She looked much healthier than the last time she had been by. Her face had more color, and she seemed far perkier.

"Hi, Anna. How are you feeling?"

"Tired still," she admitted coughing in the sleeve of her sweatshirt. "But what can you expect when you get the flu and strep throat at the same time?"

"Oh, Anna, that's terrible," Maren frowned. "I'm sorry. Have they been able to give you anything to make you feel better?"

Anna nodded. "Antibiotics for the strep and cough syrup to help me sleep at night. Seems to be doing well enough. Elsa's in her room if you want to come in." Maren nodded in reply, entering the apartment. "She had headphones in earlier, so she might not hear you if you knock."

"Thanks, Anna," she said sincerely. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Honestly? Get my sister to go to bed," she said with tired eyes. "She won't say anything, but I heard her coughing all night and I'm worried."

Maren's eyes softened. Of course Elsa wouldn't say anything while Anna was still sick. "I'll do my best."

"Elsa?" she said as she entered the bedroom quietly. Her heart ached at the sight. Books and tissues were scattered on Elsa's bed while Elsa herself was passed out in the middle with her laptop open on a half finished word document and Marshmallow curled up at her side. Her face was much paler than usual- something Maren had thought was impossible- and she shivered violently on the bed clinging to the fluffy cat for warmth. Maren placed a gentle hand to get girlfriend's head; she was burning up. Their discussion could certainly wait, she thought.

Marshmallow meowed up at her. Maren didn't know cats could looked worried, but he certainly did. She gave him a comforting pet. "Don't worry, Marshie. We'll take care of her." He meowed in reply before rubbing up on his owner again, pleased with her words.

"Hey snowflake. Can you wake up for me?" she asked softly. Elsa couldn't be comfortable like that, and if she was hiding her illness like Maren suspected she was, then she was going to get her the rest and medicine she needed.

Elsa's eyes slowly opened to reveal glassy blue eyes. "Maren? What are you doing here? You were mad at me. I'm- I'm sorry," she managed before coughs overtook her chest, scaring Marshmallow off the bed. She sounded terrible.

Maren shook her head, patting Elsa's back to help with the cough. "That's not important right now. How long have you been feeling sick?"

"'m not sick," she said, sniffling as her runny nose betrayed her.

"While you make a very compelling argument, snowflake, do you think you could you tell me the truth?" Maren asked wrapping an arm around Elsa.

Elsa tried to recoil from the touch. "Don't want you to get sick," she said hazily.

"So you admit you're sick," she said with a small smirk. "Love, I teach middle schoolers. My fear of catching a cold is long gone. Now how long have you been feeling bad?"

"Monday."

Monday. Monday was when they fought. A wave of guilt passed over her. "And have you been going to school and work every day like a bad sick person?" Elsa nodded wearily. "Oh, love," she sighed.

Maren moved from the bed, beginning to pick her up her papers and books. "What are you doing?" Elsa asked, clutching at some of her books. "I still have work to do."

"That may be true. But if you have the same thing Anna does, you need to rest more than you need to work. Did you even tell your sister you weren't feeling well?"

Elsa shook her head. "I didn't want to worry her. She has enough to worry about."

"I think you failed that mission, snowflake. She told me she heard you coughing all night last night. Meaning you probably didn't sleep and that you definitely shouldn't have been teaching today." Maren turned to Elsa's drawers. "What pajamas do you want? You aren't resting in those clothes."

Elsa slowly relinquished control, allowing Maren to help her change, something the brunette was very happy about. How Elsa had still been pushing on stunned her. She was running a temperature of 103 and yet here she was still working away on research. But Maren had told her enough was enough, and Elsa was settled in bed with two quilts and a dose of nighttime cold medicine.

"I'm sorry," she said sleepily looking at Maren.

"What for, snowflake?"

"For not calling, not talking to you, not telling you. I know you just wanted to help," Elsa said teary eyed. The combined illnesses must have been making her more emotional than usual, Maren thought.

"I'm sorry too. For yelling and running away on you. But we can talk about those things when you're feeling better, okay?"

"But I was so mean to you," she said before being interrupted by a sneeze.

"Bless you. You were getting sick and under a lot of stress, sweetheart. I can't hold that against you. Especially when you're still so unwell."

"But I don't- but I don't want to sweep it under the rug like it never happened." Her voice cracked, clearly strained by all the talking.

"We won't. There's a difference between sweeping an argument under the rug and waiting until you're well enough to talk without your body interrupting." Maren brushed a hand against her girlfriend's hot forehead. "We will talk about all this another day."

"Promise?" she asked.

"I promise. Now shush, don't strain your voice anymore." Elsa happily snuggled up against Maren, eyes shut. Soon enough, her wheezy breathing evened; and Elsa was fast asleep.

Maren was still just as confused as she was three days ago, but that didn't matter. Elsa was here with her, willing to talk. They would take it one step at a time, one breath at a time. They would figure this out. They would be fine.

[sending-the-message]

White Noise by Sergeant_Darwin

I’ve never been much of a man. I barely crack 5’6”, can’t handle my liquor, and I’ve never been in a fight in my life—but when Lainie got pregnant, I decided it was time for a change. I started working out. I learned how to change the oil and tires on the Buick. Hell, I even bought a pistol. I was going to protect them, Lainie and my unborn child both, whatever it took.

I could tell Lainie thought it was all a little silly, my newfound quest for manhood. It was easy for her to say. She was doing her part. Carrying the burden of life inside her, while all I could do was hold her hair, in the early stages of pregnancy, as she puked into the toilet—and sometimes I even fucked that up. She seemed to think she could do it all herself, and she was probably right. When I brought home the gun, she was livid. All we needed, she said, was a baseball bat. And someone strong enough to swing it, she might have added.

I took it back the next day and bought a Louisville Slugger instead.

The baby came without a hitch—little Annika, looking just like her mommy—and what we lacked in protection, Lainie made up for with near-neurotic preparation. She had it all; the books, the vitamins, the breastfeeding techniques. But perhaps her favorite new mom-toy came in the form of a Kiddos Baby Monitor that she got at the baby shower. I can’t remember who gave it to her.

It gave off a small hum, scarcely a whisper, every single night. Vague static; white noise—interrupted, only on occasion, by a cough or hiccup or whimper from sweet Annika. She wasn’t a fussy baby at all. The monitor rested on Lainie’s nightstand, securing my wife like a second quilt. A small red dot, indicating the device was alive and well, dimly bathed the room in crimson, and an optional display provided a blue-tinted camera feed aimed at Annika’s crib. We could hear her, we could see her, and all was well in paradise.

Oh, there were tough times, sure. The jaundice was bad and it led to things even worse. Pneumonia. Strep. Infections no fun for an adult but an enormous goddamn deal for a baby. We spent plenty of time in the hospital. The nurses all loved Annika. They always remarked on what a well-behaved baby she was.

The marriage grew stale, but what marriage doesn’t? The sex was rare and forced, just another thing for Lainie to check off her to-do list. Was it ever really not that way, though? I tried to remember, but life before Annika seemed trapped in a cloudless haze. Becoming a father seemed to alter the very structure of my brain.

The first year came and went. The Kiddos Baby Monitor ran out of batteries, and we never bothered to replace them. Annika was crawling. Then walking. The first word, spoken at the dinner table, which Lainie and I were both there for: Mango.

The words kept coming. Mommy. Diaper. Full. They were all expected, yet all met with excited applause from her mother and me. And then, one day, while Lainie was at spinning class and I was doing the newspaper crossword on the couch, Annika piped up from her playpen with a word I did not expect.

Fa-ther.

I sat up, straining silently to listen, sure I had misheard. But then it came again, even clearer than before.

Fa-ther.

Most dads would be thrilled. I was confused, and frankly, a bit unnerved. I had no idea where she’d learned that. I was always ‘daddy.’ In fact, as far as I’d seen, nobody had ever so much as breathed that word in front of her. Yet there she sat, squawking away, giving voice to a word uncomfortably formal as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Father. Father. Father.

Lainie didn’t seem as interested as I did. In fact, she seemed more than a little bit miffed—Annika had been growing more distant from her lately. This was the age children usually clung tightest to their mothers, yet Annika seemed to have no such proclivity. One doctor theorized that Annika might be having her needs met through another source—did she have a stuffed animal she was particularly attached to? A blanket, maybe? We could think of nothing.

We had her tested for autism. Hell, we had her tested for everything. Nothing could explain her level of detachment from us, nor her remarkably tame behavior. The professionals had never seen anything like it, but didn’t seem to think it much cause for concern.

“Count your blessings, friend,” one of them told me in a heavy English accent as he escorted me from his office. “Between you and me, nine out of ten kids her age is a right little shit.”

Still, we couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. One night, Lainie had decided she’d had enough. She dug the old Kiddos Baby Monitor out of a box in the attic. She put new batteries in it, rewired the camera in Annika’s room, and for a few hours, the white noise hummed beneath our sleep once more.

I awoke to the sound of Annika babbling away in her crib. I turned toward the monitor, and my eyes swam, barely open, in the sea of crimson from its light. She was repeating the same word, again and again.

Fa-ther. Fa-ther.

I rolled over toward Lainie. She was still asleep—Annika wasn’t being very loud. I stumbled out of bed, wiping my eyes, and picked up the monitor. My fingers fumbled for the switch on the back, and when I flicked it, a dull blue glow sprang from nowhere. I squinted my eyes to see into Annika’s crib, and I let out a strangled cry. The monitor slipped from my hands and crashed to the floor. Lainie woke with a start, mumbling.

“Whatsamatter?”

But I couldn’t speak.

Someone was holding my daughter.

Without a word, I ran into the hallway, not even bothering to grab the Louisville Slugger from the closet. The door to Annika’s room was open. My socks slid out from under me and I crashed to the wooden hallway floor as I reached it, and as I lie prone I had a clear view into the bedroom.

Annika sat up in her crib, crying wildly for a change, startled by the noise. Nobody was holding her.

“I swear to God, honey—”

But Lainie wasn’t having it.

“The first night we start using the monitor again, and it just happens to be the night an invisible man breaks into our house? And leaves her placed all neat in her crib where he found her?”

“He wasn’t invisible, and I can’t explain it, Lainie, I’m telling you what I saw.”

“Alright,” she said, as though humoring a child. “What did he look like?”

At this, I drew blank. I couldn’t exactly describe him—I hadn’t looked long enough. I felt that I had seen him before, though. Somewhere. I felt that seeing him at all, even in a completely non-threatening context, would have made me deeply uncomfortable. But I didn’t know how to explain this to Lainie, this vague recognition. So I just shrugged. She scoffed.

“Jesus. What am I supposed to do with this.”

But the whole thing had her spooked, I know it. That night she told me—if you hear anything from the monitor, anything at all, you wake me up right away. So I did.

Father. Father. Lainie’s voice rang out above the dead white noise.

Lainie snatched the cooing monitor from her bedside table less than a second after I’d woken her. She sat up and flicked the switch.

Lainie shrieked a horrible sobbing shriek. She flung the covers from her and leapt from the bed in one fluid motion, leaving the monitor face-up on the sheet behind her. On it I could see the man, cradling Annika with a light bounce, more clearly this time. And in a flash I knew exactly who he was. And this time, I stayed right where I lay.

It took Lainie a long time to calm Annika down—that scream had put a good scare into her. I don’t think Lainie even noticed that I never came in. By the time she got back to our bedroom, the lights were on and I sat on the bed, spread out with a couple of her old college photo albums.

She walked into the room and stopped in her tracks. She looked at me, at the albums, and back to me. I think in that moment we both knew it was over.

“He wasn’t in there,” she said after a long pause. “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t him. Nobody was in there.”

“Fine,” I said. “But he was on the monitor. You know he was on the monitor. Why, Lainie?”

She looked down at the albums, at the old pictures from which Will Harding’s dumb fucking face grinned up at both of us, feigning innocence.

“Father...”

She looked at me, and the guilt shone in her eyes.

“Will’s the father. Not me. Will Harding.”

She started to cry. I stood up and walked out of the room, pausing a few inches from her face to say, softly, almost sweetly:

“You’re a real bitch, you know that?”

Then I left the house and never walked back inside. Lainie brought all my stuff to my new apartment a couple days later. The divorce went through quickly; she didn’t want it but she understood. She, of course, got custody of Annika, having the tremendous advantage of not only womanhood but of actually being Annika’s biological parent. I didn’t fight it. It’s amazing how quickly I stopped loving both of them.

Will Harding was a big, brash man. He had tattoos, muscles, and watched football and drank beer and got mean when he did. That’s why Lainie left him, after two passionate, terrible years. She once told me she married me because I was everything Will was not. But it wasn’t long before she realized that by the same token, Will was everything I was not. I guess old habits die hard. And three months after Annika was born, so did Will. He found out that Lainie had had a baby and came to the house. She shut him out, screaming at him that he wasn’t the father, he wasn’t, he wasn’t. But he knew—she was lying. So he got real drunk and real mad and didn’t put on his seatbelt and on his way back to our place he sped his fucking Camaro up a curb and into a big brick mailbox.

Lainie went to his fucking funeral. She told me she was getting her teeth cleaned.

She sent me a Christmas card last year—she and Annika, smiling underneath a hearth in cheesy red sweaters, stockings hung on either side of them. I looked at the little girl I used to call mine, now seven years old, and felt nothing. I wondered absently if I should feel guilty, and if I’d somehow failed as a dad. But those thoughts, often though they came, never lasted long. She didn’t need another father—she already had one, after all, and she seemed to like him just fine.

[junkyardlynx]

My experience with sepsis, also known as “god please no”

So as I’ve said a few times in passing, I got to 1v1 sepsis about four years ago now. I’ve never really written out the experience, but the entire two months of my life surrounding that period is a hell scarred into my brain. So. Hey. That’s a fun story, right? Right? A brief primer on sepsis is basically uhhhh, “your body is trying to fight an infection, but it did it wrong and now all those chemicals it just released are running rampant inside of you.” The real bad part is when you go into septic shock, which is where your body just can’t hold it together and your blood pressure plummets. That’s where I ended up. 

Long read, so I’m gonna put it under a read more. It’s also...somewhat graphic. A big part of why I’m finally typing this all out is because I want you guys to know why I’m so fucking scared of COVID-19. I don’t e-beg lightly, you know? I don’t think I do, at least. Anyway.

So, how did I get it? Glad you asked. Never help your friends move. Okay, that’s disingenuous. If you help your friends move and you cut yourself, god, please clean that shit. It was January and I was helping my best friend move into his new place. We were moving his shitty old couch in when I managed to tag my inner thigh on a nail sticking out of the bottom. I swore, we laughed it off, I splotched the blood off afterwards and threw out those jeans, end of story. Right? Wrong.

I hadn’t washed it until I went home and took a shower and I guess the damage was done by that point. It was stupid and careless of me, but I’d cut myself a thousand times before on dumber shit and didn’t think anything of it. About a week later, I was in crippling pain all over my lower body. The worst pain in my life (up until that point; More on that later!) and I had a massive fever. I took a week off work, not really connecting the dots until I was crying in the shower trying to bathe myself and I felt a really hard...plateau? underneath my thigh meat. I’d noticed the area was really black and blue, but thinking was hard with a 102 fever. When I touched it, I screamed for dear fucking life, and I realized it was all centered around that cut I’d suffered. 

I’d gotten myself a massive abscess, and in the two weeks I’d let it fester, it became necrotic. You might say to yourself, “Spence, how did you not notice before hand?” and that’s a valid question. Here’s some more background. I’ve been through a decent amount in my life and am no stranger to pain. I am also...quite poor. Always have been. So when I notice my body hurts and I have a fever boiling my brain, bad enough to keep me from going to work for once? My last thought is going to the doctor. It’s “I’m already out of work for a week, and I can’t afford anything else.”

Yeah, that didn’t last so long. It got to the point where I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, couldn’t move. I spent two days curled up on my couch, barely sentient until I called my best friend and begged him to drive me to the hospital. He did. I was a shivering, shaking mess and I vomited outside of his car more than once on the 15 minute drive. Kinda owed me for helping him move houses, I guess. 

When I made it to the emergency room, they immediately tried to give me IV fluids. I was so fucking dehydrated that they had to stick a needle in my shoulder because the veins in my arms and hands kept collapsing. I passed out a few minutes after, assuming it’d be a matter of getting some fluids in me and some OTC antibiotics. 

So began my nightmare and recovery. 

I woke up in a hospital room, with two doctors and three nurses crowding the room. Now, I’m not a scientist or a medical professional, but that’s generally a bad sign. One doctor is usually a bad sign. They began to explain what they thought had happened to me - I had a bacterial infection in my leg, it was real bad, my flesh started to die. What’s more, that bacterial infection had spread into my bloodstream. Bacteremia! Three cheers for being just on the cusp of septic shock. I was enjoying a little major organ failure, as a treat. 

I was scheduled for a surgery the next day to remove the necrotic tissue. You have to remove necrotic tissue, as it doesn’t tell the cells next to it that it’s died, so it kinda...does a whole chain reaction thing. That’s bad, if wanna keep living. So I went in for surgery. I wasn’t going to say no. I wanted to live.

I came out and the first thing they asked was “are you feeling okay?” and when I nodded in the affirmative, they gave me the bad news.I needed more surgery. It had spread from my right thigh up around my asscheek. 

It ended up being two more rounds of surgery to tunnel all the dead flesh out of me. I couldn’t really lay on my right side or anything due to the massive surgical I’d endured, so I favored my left side heavily. I couldn’t walk or go anywhere, so I spent my time curled up on the shitty hospital bed. Somehow, things only got worse for me because I learned about a very important procedure we had to do. 

Packing the wound.

See, missing a massive chunk of flesh? That’s bad. That’s ripe for more infection and almost guaranteed to heal and scar badly if left alone. So it meant I got to have medicated gauze stuffed into my body’s wounds. I’m not sure how many of you have had fingers jammed into a non-natural orifice, but holy god, that is the most pain I’ve ever endured. 

So I endured it daily for just under two months.

See, they would come by with a syringe of dilaudid to put directly in my PICCline (a long term catheter inserted directly into a large vein, used for anything from blood draws to IV/medication distribution) before they went to pack my wound. Now dilaudid is a magical mixture that does take every ounce of pain away in your body when it’s uh, dumped directly into your heart. Yeah, for about 20 minutes. Thing is, the nurses that would administer the Dilaudid and the nurses that would shove their fingers into my open wound were different people, and they had very different ideas of what 20 minutes was. 

I’d get high as FUCK for 20-30 minutes, then fall back down to earth in the next 30 minutes, just in time for the packing nurse to show up an hour later. You know, when I was feeling pain again. This went on daily for under two months, and I begged the nurses to just find a way to come together as a team and I’d wait as long as I had to for them to both come together. One main “team” of nurses eventually tried, but it didn’t last long. The others just told me to stop being so whiny about it, in slightly nicer terms. I knew they were busy, so I bit my tongue. More than once.

So while I suffered extreme pain on the daily exacerbated by the inefficient drugging/packing schedule, I was also diagnosed with acute kidney failure due to the extremely high levels of creatinine in my piss. Creatinine is basically waste from your muscles that your kidneys are supposed to filter out. Mine weren’t. Thankfully, it was only acute, and not end-stage renal failure. A nephrologist came and added some more pills (including a diuretic) to my diet that already consisted of about 15 pills per day. My kidneys never regained full, 100% function and to this day I have elevated creatinine levels and I’m prone to vomiting and nosebleeds. Fun. 

So for two months I went through this cycle of pain and pills. I went into physical therapy for a bit to learn how to walk again, adjusting to my lack of muscle / tissue on my right side and coping with the pain. I was informed that my immune system was “remarkably weak” and it was surprising that I’d made it this long without any big issues. When I explained my history of strep throat and the like, the doctors didn’t seem surprised. 

Full disclosure, my mother was a drug addict and did everything from coke to heroin, which is why she died when I was 3. I imagine most of my health problems stem from a, uh, cursed birth. 

When I was discharged, I was given a month’s supply of percocets and my doc told me to just ring him when I needed more. He was very understanding. 

I never did, both because of the cost and because I...well, I enjoyed the feeling too much. That wasn’t a path I wanted to walk down. So I didn’t. Both sides of my family suffered with addictive personalities.

I still feel pain in my leg almost daily. I’ve never been the same. I almost died. My health deteriorated greatly, and it’s been a struggle to stay sane and alive and functional. 

So I feel a bit like a coward for not simply getting a job at a grocery store or the like, but...if I catch COVID? When no one around me is being careful and I have the body of a malformed creature born in the depths of Mordor?

I don’t wanna do that again. I’d actually rather die. I can’t suffer that again. If my quality of life dropped any more than it has since I had sepsis? Yeah.

[myvelouri]

I got fired.

I'm pretty bummed. I'm actually pissed. It was my first week of work and I literally got infected with strep throat the morning of my first day of work. I worked two days and then I fell way too ill. The manager that trained me said it was her last day as well, and she warned us all that this new manager that would replace her was a bitch, strict, and shitty. Gave us examples of the fucked shit she'd do to us.

So yeah it's my first week, the manager that was supposed to train me is gone, they've also given me two different schedules that don't align and I have no idea what days I work, I was super sick with a fever of 104. I called and called to call out. I got nowhere. I tried again. And I honestly couldn't keep calling like that. I passed out. The whole week was a painful blur and I went to the doctor, then they fought with me as well. Nobody is watching out for me. I got a doctor's note and I was trying my best.

Today I felt better and I think I only missed 2 days of work. But the schedules I have are weird so I don't really know. I couldn't get a hold of anyone whenever I called.

I called today cause I felt better to work, and I noticed my work app showed that all my scheduled days were deleted. So I am sure I was fired. I called. Again I got to no one. Finally I got to my department manager. It was that bitch we were warned about. I was extremely sweet to her, I explained that I'm not sure how many days I missed as the schedules were confusing and I also have a doctor's note, I have had strep throat. She cuts me off. With big attitude she says my name. She's a complete bitch. She nearly yells at me saying I didn't call out the days I wasn't there. I told her "no... I did, multiple times and couldnt get through to anybody" and she wouldn't listen to me or help me out, she said "THEN COME SEE ME FRIDAY" and I was in mid sentence, I was saying "I am feeling better, I can come in today--” and she hung up on me.

This is Target. They tell us not to post about Target on social media. I still love Target but honestly, that manager was a fucking cunt. I can see why we were warned about her. I don't understand assholes. I really don't.

It was my first week and I got super ill. I already feel so bad about that. The pay was really good too and they gave me a shit ton of hours. I never got the chance to milk that opportunity. My life is crap. I don't want to see her Friday. I don't want to work for a cunt manager. Been through that many times. It's always like that. You get good, sweet managers that are chill... And somehow they always have to leave for some reason and then you get the worst abominations on Earth to replace them, straight fucking cunts. Sigh.

Now I have to find another job. Man. There's a thing I am bummed about big time. I met a lot of cool people at work and I won't ever seen them again. Sigh.