Page 156 of Sexting the Pakhan

“Painkiller,” I say.

“I took one.”

“You can take the next dose at twelve.”

“I know.”

“I wrote it down.”

“I saw.”

“Good.”

I grab my laptop and go into my bedroom before I can change my mind.

My room is not ready for work. There are folded clothes on the chair, a hairbrush on the bed, and one of Mila’s socks under the desk. I move everything quickly, open my laptop, and sign in.

My first meeting is with a school archive client in Pune. Their scanned records have duplicate student files from the 1980s and 1990s, and half the names are tagged wrong because the old forms were handwritten.

I put on my headset and join the call.

“Morning, Zoya,” my manager says. “Rough connection?”

“Rough morning,” I say, keeping my camera off.

Nobody asks. Thank God.

For the next hour, I try to be a normal employee.

I talk about duplicate matching rules. I explain why old admission numbers should be kept as secondary identifiers instead of being overwritten. I share my screen and show them how the search filter breaks when the year field is left blank. I make notes about a batch of scanned transfer certificates that need manual review.

From the living room, I hear Bluey’s opening music.

Then Mila laughs.

Then Nadia says, “No, that’s Bandit. He’s the father.”

Ruslan says something too low for me to hear.

A minute later, Mila says, “You have to watch from the beginning or you won’t understand the family system.”

I mute myself so the client doesn’t hear me sigh.

The second meeting starts before the first properly ends. This one is internal, about a new archive batch from a private college. Someone has uploaded documents without dates. Someone else wants us to “use judgment.” I explain, for the third time this month, that judgment is not a metadata field.

By the time I finally close the call, my neck hurts.

I realize the apartment is quiet. Too quiet.

I take off my headset and stand quickly. The bedroom door is still open. Nothing is broken. No one is crying.

I walk into the living room.

Ruslan is on the couch. Mila is tucked against his left side with a cushion under her chin. Nadia is on his right, sitting straighter, holding the remote like she has been appointed technical supervisor.

They’re watching Bluey. The episode is “Sleepytime,” because of course Nadia picked the one that makes adults question their entire emotional existence.

Ruslan sits between them, very still, his injured leg stretched out carefully on the coffee table with a pillow underneath. He looks like a mafia boss who has been taken hostage by two kindergarteners and is losing the negotiation.