Another Wistful Evening

I recently started a new job cooking for the patients at the hospital. During the day the kitchen is full, cooking breakfast and lunch and recently cooking for the staff. I run around slicing cucumbers and flipping burgers. Twelve O’clock rolls around and suddenly we’re bombarded with staff orders, the hot greasy grill working overtime to get their food out in time before they come up to the window and ask why their order isn’t out yet. The lowly two-basket deepfryer constantly getting dropped and lifted again, oil sputtering everywhere coating everything in a greasy film, the manager constantly overlooking us and whenever anything goes awry I am the one he blames, telling me I’m wasting too much food when my coworker dropped the extra chicken strips. At night I’m alone, the rest of the kitchen  leaving at three. I cook my patient meal in peace, not having to worry about the staff orders, whizzing back and forth from the dish room back into the kitchen, passing by the door every time, where there is a window looking into the hallway. When I’m alone at night, when I get into my flow state, managing the ground beef and boiling soup, chopping veggies and cleaning as I go, I sometimes catch glimpses into the hallway from the corner of my eye. Sometimes there's custodians pushing a cart by, sometimes it’s the IT people making their way to their next ticket, and sometimes it is the formless shadow people stalking my life, watching me with malcontent and disgust, and everytime I stop dead in my tracks, mid step, and whip my head towards the hall, asking myself if I really did see them or not. Other times they're in the dishroom with me, peering around the corner where I only catch the smallest speck of their outer-most appendages as they dash out of sight again.  I know they're there, either literally in the kitchen with me or merely figments of my imagination, I don’t know, but they assuredly add to my constant paranoia.