Oblivious to the looming danger,
the housekeeper in the hospital
continued doing her job as diligently as she could,
wiping things down,
disinfecting,
sweeping and mopping,
cleaning grime out of sinks and drains,
making enough money to put food on the table,
take her young son for a hotdog in the park,
go to the movies.
She didn’t see herself in the larger story,
never thought of herself as a heroine.
But one day,
she cleaned and disinfected a floor drain
filled with a deadly bacterium that,
in a different story,
would have infected many of the patients in the hospital,
spread to the city,
and killed more than fifty people.