The uniform had stopped embarrassing him a long time ago.
That did not mean other people had stopped trying to make it embarrassing.
At thirty-four, Marcus had once expected his life to look very different.
He had earned a mechanical engineering degree from Ohio State.
Not effortlessly.
Nothing had ever been effortless for Marcus.
His father repaired elevators. His mother worked nights as a respiratory therapist. College had been scholarships, part-time jobs, borrowed textbooks, and enough student loans to remind him every month that education was not free simply because somebody called it opportunity.
After graduating, Marcus found work at Kelton Aerospace Systems outside Columbus.
He started in component testing, moved into design support, then became part of a team working on environmental-control hardware for commercial aircraft.
He loved the work.
Not the meetings.
Not the corporate language.
The machines.
A mechanical system made promises it had to keep.
Pressure went somewhere.
Heat went somewhere.
Force transferred.
If something failed, there was a reason.
Marcus liked reasons.
By twenty-nine, he was earning good money.
He and Sarah had bought a modest house.
Lily was born the following year.
Marcus assumed adulthood had finally settled into place.
Then Sarah began getting headaches.
The headaches became scans.
The scans became consultations.
The consultations became a diagnosis neither of them had been prepared to hear.
Cancer.
Aggressive.
Treatable, the doctors said.
Then difficult.
Then complicated.
Then the language changed again.
Marcus used every day of paid leave.
Then unpaid leave.
Sarah needed help after chemotherapy.
Lily was barely two.
Marcus's mother came when she could. Sarah's sister traveled in from Cincinnati on weekends. Friends brought food.
None of it was enough.
Marcus started missing work.
At first Kelton was patient.
Then projects slipped.
A manager who genuinely liked him took Marcus aside and said the words as kindly as possible.
"You need to decide where you need to be."
Marcus already knew.
He left engineering.
Not forever, he told himself.
Six months.
Maybe a year.
Sarah would recover.
He would go back.
Instead, Sarah got worse.
Insurance covered much of the treatment but not everything.
There were deductibles.
Out-of-network specialists.
Travel.
Medication.
Home support.
Lost income.
They refinanced once.
Then sold the house.
By the time Sarah died, Marcus had lost his wife, his career momentum, most of their savings, and any illusion that hard work created guarantees.
Lily was three.
For six months afterward, she asked when her mother was coming home.
Marcus learned there were no correct answers to some questions.
Only answers a child could survive.
"Mommy died, sweetheart."
"What does died mean?"
"It means her body stopped working."
"Can the doctors fix it?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Will you die?"
"Someday."
"Today?"
"No."
"Promise?"
That promise terrified him.
He made it anyway.
After Sarah's death, Marcus tried returning to engineering.
He sent resumes.
Interviewed twice.
But three years out of full-time technical work, with a child who needed pickup before four and recurring medical appointments, made reentry harder than he expected.
One recruiter told him:
"Your skills are still strong, but we'd need full schedule flexibility."
Marcus did not have full schedule flexibility.
Lily came first.
So he took the first steady job whose hours matched the life he had.
Meridian Facility Services held the cleaning and maintenance contract at Ashford Industries' corporate headquarters.
Shift: 5:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
That meant Marcus could finish work, take a bus to the after-school center, and pick Lily up before the late-care surcharge started.
The pay was less than half his old engineering salary.
The medical plan offered through Meridian was basic and expensive for dependent coverage.
Still, it was work.
Honest work.
Marcus never considered himself too good for it.