Long Term - Chapter 1

The older man in the beret who'd been standing in line ahead of me rolled his suitcase past, his freshly issued room key in his other hand, and it was my turn.

"Hello." The woman at the front desk was about my age. She wore an old-fashioned braid and looked at her computer screen instead of at me. Her voice sounded drained, as if the excessive use of this greeting formula during the previous hours of her shift at the counter had cost her all energy. 

I put on a smile, even though it fizzled uselessly against the hotel employee's slightly furrowed brow. "Hi, Rachel Young, I'd like to check in." I'd already fished my ID out of my wallet and laid it on the gray counter.

The woman at the reception glanced up briefly as she took my ID, her distracted gaze brushing mine, then turned back to her screen. "Ah, here it is, Young, yes..." she murmured in the same monotone voice as she found my booking. She typed something on her keyboard, then handed me back my ID and a sheet of paper from her printer without looking up. "Sign here once— No, wait."

She paused, looked up at me, then back at her screen. Finally, she even half-rose from her office chair, glanced down at me briefly before sitting back down and leaning far forward toward her computer until her nose nearly touched the screen. "Oh, I see!" She laughed gleefully and I flinched at her surprisingly vehement reaction. I hadn't thought her capable of such liveliness.

"Yes... you must have made a mistake," she said to me, triumphantly, as if she'd caught me shoplifting. "You booked one of our accessible rooms. But I'll fix that quickly, won't I?"

"Uh, no, that's fine as it is," I hastened to say.

The woman looked at me with raised eyebrows. "Are you sure? That's a room for wheelchair users."

"Yes," I nodded firmly, hoping steadfastness alone would end the discussion. "That's correct."

"But..." The woman frowned, consulted her PC again, and looked at me once more. "You're traveling alone." A statement, not a question, and the room was indeed booked for only one person—me.

I nodded again and decided to say nothing more. Mainly because it was none of her business, but especially because I didn't have a particularly good explanation. I also didn't mention that there are people who use wheelchairs sporadically. That didn't apply to me, but she couldn't know that, and even less could she see it.

Either the hotel employee had just thought of this herself, or she gave up anyway. "Okay..." she said, drawing out the word and shrugging.

I took a breath. "And I have one more request." I'd inquired in advance about the height of the bed. It had turned out, however, that it was two inches too low. When I asked about a higher mattress or an additional topper, I was put off until later and only received the rejection this morning by email.

But that didn't have to be a problem either. "Could I have two extra blankets?"

"Two extra blankets?" Now her eyebrows nearly disappeared completely under her bangs. "You have two blankets on your bed, it's a double bed. Even with a single booking."

I nodded understandingly. "I know. I still need two additional blankets."

"So four blankets total?" She almost whispered it, as if I'd asked her if she could get me the best coke in town.

"Yes."

At this point, the woman abruptly stood up and disappeared without another word through a door behind her. She came back out shortly after with another hotel employee. This one was marginally older but seemed to know the hotel's computer system better.

"We're blocking a hotel room," she murmured while typing something into her colleague's keyboard. She had a short haircut, dyed black. "And then we’re taking these blankets."

"Everything okay?" I asked, still waiting in front of the counter.

"Yes, of course," the black-haired woman assured me without bothering to smile. "I'll bring the blankets up to you in a moment."

"Thank you very much."

"This is your key," the woman with the braid informed me, sliding a hotel card across the counter. "And this is the passcode for night access. The front desk isn't staffed after 8 p.m."

"Got it." I grabbed the card and the slip with the passcode, took my suitcase with my other hand, and hesitated briefly. I suppressed the impulse to apologize for the inconvenience. "Thanks again, and have a nice afternoon."

The two were still bent over the computer and merely nodded absently. With firm steps, I walked past the line of waiting guests, which had grown considerably since my arrival, and headed for the elevator. The elevator call button lit up reliably when I pressed it, and shortly after, the doors rattled open.

The door to my hotel room fell heavily shut behind me. It was wide, the room large with clear access to the bed. Everything as it should be. When I freshened up briefly in the bathroom, there was a knock. I accepted the blankets and thanked the black-haired employee, who looked simply bored. Then I tossed the blankets onto the armchair opposite of the bed and let myself sink backward into the mattress.

Actually, I should have been satisfied with myself. The room was as adequate as it could be after all the effort. Upon my arrival just now, I'd also been able to inspect the ramp at the hotel entrance directly. It was in usable condition, neither worryingly dilapidated nor blocked with junk, and the elevator obviously worked. In the past eight months, I'd experienced much worse "accessible" hotels, at any rate.

But it was all completely irrelevant when the person for whom this hotel room was actually equipped wasn't here. Why was I still going to all this trouble with hotel bookings anyway, as if Adam might roll through the door any moment? Honestly, I didn't know. Maybe I did it because I didn’t want to face the truth. The thing is, I did know very well that the probability of us needing this room was vanishingly small. Still, any other room would have felt like betrayal, like surrender. And at least I knew how to do this—the accessible hotel room thing. During the last eight months, I'd at least learned that.

Or so I thought.

I jumped up and checked my phone, but there had been no new messages in the last hour. As I fixed my hair in the mirror, I decided to take this as a positive sign. Then I picked up my small backpack and room key again and left the hotel room. No message meant nothing unforeseen had happened. In this case, no news was good news. That's how it had been for the last two months. At least when it was only radio silence for an hour. Longer than a day, and I got nervous.

As I hurried past the front desk and stepped outside through the automatic sliding doors, I ignored the frown from the hotel employee with the braid who watched me leave. Let her think what she wanted. In a certain way, I needed the accessible hotel room. Maybe not for Adam—but for myself. It gave me something to do, something to feel adequate about. And more than anything, it reminded me of before.

And I still hadn’t given up hope that “before” might return.

Damn those probabilities.