Here's a draft longer piece tying together the three themes:
Wings Earned
Today I passed probation and became an official member of The Loft team. No more looking over my shoulder, worried I’ll screw up and get canned. Joe gave me a firm handshake – I’m in.
Earlier I tried to be an angel, comforting Ken and Barbara before her cancer operation. I cracked bad jokes until she laughed, hoping to lift their spirits before the long day ahead.
Who knows if my bumbling humor helped at all. But I’d like to think I provided a moment of levity before the grim pre-op rituals began, visions of IV drips and surgery dancing in their heads.
The rest of the day I was in pure dish pig mode – scrubbing caked sauce pans, listening to racks clank through the industrial washer. A zen rhythm of tuning out the kitchen clatter and finding strange peace in piles of dirty dishes.
On a bathroom break, I contemplated Ken and Barbara’s fate. Did the surgeons crack her chest open, remove her cancer-ridden parts piece by piece? I shivered, hands still prune-y from the hot sink water.
Walking down the hall, I spotted an orderly wheeling biological waste toward the disposal chute. The remains of someone’s surgery earlier today, I reckoned.
I thought of kind Barbara, praying it wasn’t pieces of her inside those bags. Hoping instead to see her upright and smiling soon, coming to claim her free meal at The Loft.
But Joe’s words rang in my mind, about how the cancer usually wins with patients like her. As much as I wanted to believe I was her angel, maybe all I offered was a brief interlude before the inevitable.
Either way, I’m proud to have earned my wings today – both as an angel of small comforts and as an official dish washing member of the kitchen team. Not everyone gets to help shepherd someone’s spirit and scrub baked ziti from a pan in the same day.
Let me know if you would like me to modify or expand on this piece tying together the three themes. I'm happy to keep refining it based on your feedback!