Waitering around hasn’t really been challenging for me because I love what I do, yet, the job is more demanding that anyone who never worked as a waiter thinks it is. You deal with all sorts of people and you really need to know how to handle all sorts of situations.
When a couple walked out without paying a $400 tab, I broke down crying in the break room. Losing that amount of money from my paycheck felt like the end of the world.
Looking back, though, little did I know that losing those $400 would be the best thing that could ever happen to me. Luckiest $400 lost, honestly.
That money wasn’t pocket change to me because it covered almost two weeks of food and utilities, with whatever was left going toward my college fees. I was working as a waitress near campus, juggling classes and late shifts to support myself and send money back home.
Lately, however, “whatever I could spare” meant handing over every single cent I made. Four months ago, my mother, Evelyn, had vanished without a trace.
Though Mom certainly wasn’t a cuddly sort of person, she was very organized. She planned her week out weeks ahead, filed receipts away in labeled files, and called me on Sundays at eight precisely. She even had specific places for her kitchen towels. So for her to disappear without taking a suitcase, and leaving behind her purse, phone, medicine, and car keys, was completely baffling.
They set up a file, but since she was a grown woman and there wasn’t an obvious crime, leads got nowhere. A private investigator was definitely out of the question for me financially, so the only choice left was to print out missing-person flyers and post them everywhere around town, think grocery stores, bus stops, laundromats, and coffee shops. And after each of my shifts, I would look at my phone, hoping for a call. Four months, nothing.
And then the Friday night came.
A neatly dressed couple took up residence in my section somewhere around seven o’clock. It turned out that they were marking their anniversary, and although they were courteous, they appeared to be rather distracted. Every time the husband checked his phone below the table, the wife would stop to observe him.
Nevertheless, they ordered a fancy dinner – oysters, filet mignon, lobster and a good bottle of wine.
After they asked for the bill, the amount came to $407.63. I placed the leather folder on their table and left for just three minutes to run some drinks.
Returning from there, I found the booth empty. The payment tray was also empty.
My heart sank. I looked in the restrooms and even at the front door, but they were nowhere to be seen. Upon notifying the manager, Jett, he shook his head and recited the policy I already expected: walkouts were deducted from the salary of the server right away.
“It’s almost four hundred dollars,” I complained.
“It’s a hard lesson learned,” he replied.
I ended up paying the bill from my own wallet and crying like crazy in the bathroom. My mother was still missing, and I did not know how I was going to pay the rent.
Jett called me in early the following morning at 8 a.m. As I entered the restaurant, he stood by table number twelve.
“The cleaning crew found something,” he informed me, giving me a plastic bag that contained a gold ring with a narrow band, three small diamonds, and a light blue center gemstone. I could not breathe anymore; I recognized that ring in every detail because for four months, I had been studying pictures of it. It was my mother’s; she had worn it for twenty-three years.
Jett played back the footage of the previous night and we saw the lady at table twelve pulling out something from her purse, while the ring got stuck in the purse clasp and dropped into the crack behind the booth. Then suddenly her husband’s phone rang, he picked it up, turned totally white, showed the screen to his wife, and they ran out of there without paying for anything.
They were not just going to avoid paying the bill; they were answering some emergency call.
Jett located the valet who was working that night and he recalled that the man screamed at him, “Call the hospital, tell them we are coming.”
I took the ring and headed straight to the hospital with my heart racing.
When I got to the reception, I took the crumpled flyer of my mom’s picture and showed it to the clerk together with the plastic bag with the ring.
She examined the photograph, examined the ring, then began to type.
“There’s no one registered under the name Evelyn Shaw,” she replied. “Wait just a minute,” she corrected herself. “There is an unknown female patient who was admitted several weeks ago, quite disoriented, and moved to neurology.”
My heart began beating hard against my ribs. “Does she look like this?”
“I can’t confirm, but the age and general appearance fit. Though, you should know, she had a seizure yesterday. She’s fine now, but she has two visitors already.”
The couple from the restaurant.
The receptionist handed me a visitor’s pass, and a nurse took me upstairs to room 318. Looking through the glass window, I saw them, the couple from Bellamy’s, looking worn out.
I opened the door. The woman turned around and instantly looked down at the plastic bag that I carried.
“That ring,” she whispered.
“Where did you find it?” I asked.
Her husband held up his hands. “The patient needs peace.”
“You had my mother’s ring.”
My eyes moved past them to the bed, and everything else in the room dissolved into oblivion. It was her. Mom. She was smaller, paler, with a drip attached to her arm, but it was her.
As I moved closer to her, her lids opened slowly, and her eyes flickered around the room until they landed on me. The recognition came slowly, clouded with confusion.
“Laura?”
Tears streamed down my face as I made my way to the bed and held her with gentle care. She touched my cheek with her fragile fingers. “I knew that you were out there somewhere,” she said. “I just couldn’t remember how to find my way back.”
I slipped the ring off of my finger and placed it back onto hers. It was too big now because she had lost weight, but she held on to my hand tighter. “Take me home, Laura.”
Behind me, the woman began sobbing, and her husband put his arms around her.
That is when it all became clear to me. Her name was Margaret, and her husband was Thomas. A couple of weeks back, they had come across my mother wandering aimlessly without any footwear on a highway just outside the city limits. As she could not recollect her name or whereabouts, they called for an ambulance which took her to the hospital. Since she had no identity and also was out-of-state, no connection could be made with my missing-person reports.
These were the people who had been visiting her nearly every single day. Whenever the nurses used to take off her ring because it did not fit, Margaret kept it safe in her handbag so that it would not be misplaced.
The previous night, after many exhausting weeks, they had decided to have a quick anniversary dinner. This was the reason why they were glued to their mobiles as they were waiting for news from the hospital. It was because of the call regarding my mom’s seizure that they rushed away completely forgetting to pay for the bill.
I was no longer mad about those $400 because these people saved my mother’s life, and I could never repay them for their kindness.
If only they hadn’t forgotten to pay that bill, and if only Margaret hadn’t dropped that ring, and if only the cleaning staff hadn’t pulled it out from under the booth, then I would have never discovered her.
At the time, I felt I was losing money I absolutely needed. In reality, it got me right to what I was praying for during four whole months. All of a sudden, $400 didn’t feel like much anymore.
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Love and Peace
