I Was Billed For Every Minute Of Their Love novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Unbilled

At three in the morning the break room smelled like burned coffee and Bev's reading glasses.

Eleven nurses were crowded in, and two techs, and a respiratory therapist who had come in on her night off.

Bev stood on a chair with a clipboard.

"This is not a union meeting," she said. "I don't have the energy for a union meeting."

"Then what is it?" somebody asked.

"The board meets again after the gala. Mr. Sorensen wants the night differential to be his gift, and he wants to hand it out personally."

"So we say thank you," said a tech.

"Or we tell him what he can do with it."

It went quiet.

The differential was four dollars an hour.

For some of them it paid the rent on the second bedroom.

"I'm not telling anybody what to do," Bev said. "I wrote a page. If the money comes with his hand on it, we work nights at base pay. We staff this floor anyway, because it's our floor."

She held up the clipboard.

"Nobody has to sign."

The respiratory therapist was first.

She wrote her name so hard the pen went through the paper.

Then the tech, and the two new graduates, and a nurse who had a baby at home and a mortgage and signed anyway with her mouth tight.

The line stretched past the microwave.

I stood against the wall with my arms around myself.

"You can't do this for me," I said.

"Honey, I'm not." Bev glared at me over her glasses. "It's not about you. It's about who gets to say what an hour is worth."

"Bev."

"Sign it or hold the clipboard."

I signed it.

Under it Bev had printed one line for the head of the page.

We don't charge for our hours, and we won't be paid in leverage.

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