The alarm rang. My eyes opened. They fixated on the beige ceiling. It was smooth, evenly painted, with no variance in texture. My phone was directly next to my ear and the alarm continued to blare. I had a vague memory of scrolling through god knows what last night. The last thing I remembered seeing was a fat, half-naked guy cosplaying as a Peashooter from Plants versus Zombies, spitting peas into the camera.

I needed to pee. What if I peed right here, right now? It was freezing outside the covers in the morning. I imagined a damp spot growing larger and large in my pajamas, spreading across my blankets and bed. The floor would eventually start to fill up with piss, and the piss levels would rise. If I died, I guessed I would stop pissing. So the maximum height for the piss level in my room would be a centimeter above the tip of my nose.

Fifteen minutes passed as I drifted in and out of sleep. My phone chirped with a notification. The morning sync must have started. They had been enforcing a return to office lately, but I always skipped on attending the morning sync in person. I walked to the bathroom while I entered the meeting.

Priya said, “Is everyone here? Can everyone see my screen? Okay, let’s start.”

I sat on the toilet and slumped over my phone, staring at Priya’s screen. I liked to do a little mental bingo during the morning sync to keep myself entertained. I zoomed into the Google Doc Priya used to organize talking points for our morning sync. Our production cluster for Cosmos broke yet again. Check. We were onboarding to yet another cluster on Wednesday. Check. Priya cleared her throat.

“So we know this is a very, very, very, important prod issue we cannot afford to drop. I’d like to advise all the code owners to get into a war room and work on this until the problem is solved.”

Check. Priya said that something was “very, very, very important.” On average, she’d say that at least 4 to 5 things were very important during each morning sync, with varying numbers of “very” attached to the items. The highest I’d ever counted was 7. If everything was important, what was really important? I yawned as I flushed, and walked over to the sink. I began to brush my teeth.

“Joy, could you update us on the status of DEVOPS-521?”

Fuck. I spat into the sink. My stomach fell to my feet. I had finished writing the code for my bugfix, but it broke a third of our test suite. So I was far from done. My fingers tripped over each other as I attempted to unmute myself.

“Uhm… I wasn’t able to finish it yesterday. It should be done end of today.”

I don’t know why I promised that. I just had a feeling Priya would tie a concrete block to my ankle and throw me into the sea if it wasn’t done by the end of today. I felt a little pressure building near my heart.

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“Please, please have it in by the end of today. It needs to be finished as soon as possible so we give QA ample time to test.”

The tension in my chest spread across my body. I froze. My eyes blinked open, closed, open, closed as I stared out into space. I don’t remember what the rest of the morning sync was about. It wasn’t like I could remember what they were about five minutes after them anyways, even on a good day.

“Unless you’re invited to the breakout meetings, you can leave the meeting.”

Priya’s voice brought me back to the present. I was still standing over the sink, toothbrush in hand. I left the meeting, and rinsed out my mouth. There were 11 beers left in my fridge. I’d had one last night. I imagined chugging beer after beer until I was crawling on the floor in a drunken stupor while I slipped into some jeans and a t-shirt.

I picked up my work backpack off the floor, where I left it. It was a couple feet away from the front door to my apartment. I slung it across my back and left home, rubbing my eyes. I should have stopped rubbing my eyes before I went down the stairs. I misstepped ever so slightly, and I tilted fully forward. I must have grabbed the railing before I ate shit, because I managed to not split my skull open on the concrete stairs.

The shock dissipated in a moment. It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my entire lower half. I screamed into my backpack, gripping it until my knuckles turned white. After all the air had left my lungs, I held my breath until the pain became more bearable. It lessened, just a little. I sniffled as I assessed the damage. A couple bruises on both my knees, a long scrape down my left shin. Blood pooled, and dribbled down my shin, into my socks. I slid a finger across my shin and stuck it in my mouth. I don’t know why. It’s not like I didn’t know what blood tasted like.

I had some first aid back in the apartment. I stood up, and hissed. Pain radiated from my right ankle and my knees buckled. I grasped the railing, and pulled myself up the stairs, gasping on each step.

As I opened the door to my apartment, the door next to mine opened. An Asian girl with her hair dyed a dirty blonde stuck her head out.

“Did you hear any screaming?”

“Oh, uhh… That was me. I tripped.”

I guessed my backpack wasn’t very soundproof. She looked me up and down and clicked her tongue.

“That’s no good. You need some help?”

“I’m good.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m good.”

“Are you sure?”

I looked down at my shin.

“Do you have any big bandages?”

“Yup! I got a big scrape last month as well. Let me lend you some. Actually, just come in. I have some first aid too.”

I hesitated, but she was already gone. The door was slightly ajar. I sighed, and entered the apartment. I wondered if Priya would be fine with me working from home today.