My job is watching a woman trapped in a room. I don't know where she is.

[Note: if you're looking for an update on this, it's best to go to my profile and scroll down a bit. I won't be updating this original entry.] You can stop any time you want. Just quit, go outside, take a walk. That’s what I tell myself. I’ve been thinking about it for months now. I can’t stay in this room, alone, forever. How did I get here? This dimly lit cubicle, surrounded by monitors. Endless windows into a life not my own. Work. It was an easy hire, almost too good to be true. I was a student and struggling for money. A friend of a friend of a friend who worked for a good company was looking for a new employee. It was shift work, 12 hours per day, 4 days per week. It paid well, which was good, because I needed the money to pay for school. I wouldn’t have gotten the job if I had to compete with other applicants. I had no experience, and not much of an education. But I got an interview, and a week later, I was working there. My job was simple, and not as if I’m typing this, you will understand why. This entry will be the first break of that rule. My job is to watch a monitor, and hit a button if something goes wrong. There’s a book I refer to if there’s an emergency. I’m not allowed to describe that book, or its contents. I’m not even sure I’d want to. I have to watch the monitor because it displays the feed from a camera. The camera displays a room, and in that room is a woman. I don’t know her name, I just know she is my responsibility. She is my job. There is a red button off to my right. It’s the largest thing on the desk I sit at, and it blinks whenever I’m on the clock. I’ve hit that button four times in five years. The first time, I thought I’d fucked up. I had dozed for almost twenty minutes, and when I came to, she was on the floor. I couldn’t see if she was breathing. I hit the button without even looking at the book. I didn’t know what else to do. It had been three months since my first day, and I was still pretty new. Nothing happened right away. I started to panic and was looking around, wondering if there was some kind of alarm or something I’d missed. Ten minutes later, a man in a lab coat walked in and looked at me sternly. I tried to explain, almost crying. He took the book from my desk, flipped to a page, and pointed. There was a definition, and underneath it, the word * Protocol *. The man in the lab coat looked at me and undercut the uncomfortable silence with, “Next time, read the fucking book.” Then he left. I looked at the monitor. I had almost forgotten about it. The camera hasn’t moved, it’s fixed in place with a wide-angle lens that displays most of the room she’s in. The woman was sitting on the bed now, reading a book. There was a small band-aid on her forehead, near her hairline. It was where she was supposed to be. It was what she was supposed to be doing. I still hit the button because I was freaked out by what I had just experienced. But I was also relieved. I clicked the button. Nothing happened. The second time I hit the button was because she was running a fever. She had been sick for a couple days, and my job was to make sure she had food and water. I was also responsible for making sure she had Gatorade. She was a grown woman, but I was instructed in several places to refer to her as ‘subject zero’, as though she was some kind of science experiment. She had a little thermometer that looked like a torture device. It didn’t seem to bother her, though. I’m sure she knew she was being watched. I can’t imagine what it’s like, being spied on your whole life. When she finally broke 103, I hit the button. This time, I did the right thing. I followed protocol. The book’s instructions were very specific on what to do, but I was still worried I fucked up. It took almost twenty minutes for someone to show up this time, and there were two of them. They came in wearing scrubs and wearing masks. One of them was the same man from the lab coat. He was holding a clipboard and glared at me as he walked past. The other was a woman. She wore rubber gloves and she took the book from me. She crossed out the word ‘Fever’ and drew a happy face underneath it. Then she wrote, in all capital letters: *NEVER HIT THE BUTTON OVER A FEVER*. The man in the lab coat was looking at me over his shoulder. I could see his glare reflected in the window of the monitor. The woman handed me the book and they both walked out. I looked back at the monitor, and the woman was crying. The people in scrubs must have given her some bad news. She just sobbed and held her knees. I was surprised. She didn’t seem like the type to cry. I felt bad for her. The third time, it was an honest mistake. She had dropped a book, and it had fallen behind the bed. I’ve been doing this job for years, but it still surprised me how large the room was. The camera’s wide-angle lens didn’t help. It was so distorted, and the room looked so big, that I sometimes forgot it was a real place and not some digitally created simulation. I was surprised at how much I had forgotten. I had spent countless hours watching the woman, but it took a dropped book for me to appreciate just how big the space was. I hit the button without looking at the book, and I almost felt a little proud of myself. Ten minutes later, the man in the lab coat walked in, alone again. He didn’t look at me. He simply dropped off the book he was carrying, and walked out. When I picked it up, I saw a page that was circled. It was a definition, with the word *Protocol*, just like before. But underneath that, there were two simple sentences: *Don’t hit the button over stupid shit.* *But don’t not hit the button because you think it’s stupid.* The last time I hit the button, it was because the camera feed went down. I freaked out. My heart pounded, and I couldn’t catch my breath. It had never gone down before. Usually, it just turned off at the end of my shift and turned back on at the start of the next. But this time, there was nothing. Just a monitor displaying *NO SIGNAL* in red letters. So I hit the button, and I waited. Nothing happened. I waited again, but no one came. I started to sweat, and my breathing got worse. I felt like I couldn’t move. I looked back at the monitors, and there was a flicker of movement. The camera turned back on, and displayed the room. The woman was lying on the floor, a small pool of blood forming above her eyebrow. The band-aid I had seen years before was back, but it was falling off and dangling on her skin. I gasped, and hit the button again. This time, I waited for almost half an hour. No one came. I started to feel like I was going crazy. I looked at the monitor again, but it hadn’t changed. The woman hadn’t moved, and the camera hadn’t switched. I started to wonder if I had been seeing things. I waited some more, but no one came. It was almost the end of my shift. I was starting to feel a little better, calmer, as time went on. I thought maybe it had all been a bad dream. I was so stressed out. I had just fucked up my own life, and now I was projecting it at work. I took some deep breaths, and thought I was feeling better. When my shift ended, I almost forgot to log off the computer. Almost. But with a sigh, I reached over and did what I have done a thousand times before. I typed in my password, and closed out the application that displayed the feed. It didn’t shut down. It was stuck, and I couldn’t figure out why. I tried closing it again, then I tried closing the monitor. That’s when I noticed something, a small button on the bottom of the monitor. I had never seen it before, and I wasn’t quite sure how to use it. But when I pressed it, a screen popped up. It was simple, just a couple lines of text on a black background. It read: *SUBJECT ZERO IS OFFLINE. PLEASE WAIT.* I froze. I stared at the monitor, trying to process. I didn’t know what to do, or who to call. I thought about hitting the button again, but my hands were shaking too much. SUBJECT ZERO IS OFFLINE. PLEASE WAIT. I stared at it for almost twenty minutes, trying to figure out what to do. Finally, I got up and left. I went home. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I thought about SUBJECT ZERO IS OFFLINE. PLEASE WAIT. At four in the morning, I got in my car and drove back to work. I was afraid of what I might find. I was afraid of what I might not find. I was just afraid. I knew the way by heart. I had done it for years. I parked and walked inside. The night shift guy was already there,

My job is watching a woman trapped in a room. I don't know where she is.

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