Story code: ST-001144
Part 3: Scalable Oversight
The OSB groaned again, a long, sickly tearing sound. The crack between my knees widened by a fraction of an inch, revealing the dark, humid space of the attic below. Hector was panting, his fingers digging uselessly into the slick tar paper. Blood continued to well up through the ragged tear in his jeans, soaking the exposed splinters of the plywood.
I couldn’t wait for a fire department ladder truck. If that rotting sheet gave way completely, the sudden drop would rip Hector’s leg to shreds against the rusty nails, or worse, send us both crashing through the ceiling joists to the hardwood floor twelve feet down.
“I have to pull you out now,” I told him, keeping my voice as flat and steady as possible. “You have to help me. Push off your right boot. Do not put weight on the left.”
I flattened my body against the fifty-degree incline, spreading my weight out like a starfish against the baking roof. I dug the steel toes of my boots into the crease of a layered shingle and wrapped both hands firmly into the thick leather of his tool belt.
“On three,” I said. “One. Two. Three.”
I hauled backward with everything I had. Hector screamed, a raw, guttural sound that tore through the quiet neighborhood. The jagged edge of the plywood held him for a torturous second before snapping under the force. We slid backward together, clearing the collapsed hole. The entire sheet of decking bowed deeply under us, the nails screaming in protest against the rafters, but it held.
Hector lay flat on his back on the blue tarp, clutching his thigh. The denim was soaked a dark, heavy crimson from the knee up.
“Can you stand?” I asked, grabbing his shoulder.
He gritted his teeth, his face pale under a layer of dirt and sweat. “Just get me off this roof, Mateo.”
It took agonizing minutes to drag him to the eaves. I went down the aluminum ladder first, taking his weight on my shoulders, step by slow step. The metal rungs bowed under our combined mass. My thighs burned, my boots slipping against the dew and blood now slicking the ladder. Every time Hector’s bad leg bumped the rails, a sharp hiss of pain escaped his teeth.
When my boots finally hit the soft grass, I laid Hector down gently near the manicured flowerbeds. I stripped off my high-vis work shirt, balled it up, and pressed it hard against the gash in his thigh.
“Hold this,” I ordered him. “Press down hard.”
I spun around. Vance was still standing by his silver truck. He hadn’t moved to help. He hadn’t brought the job site first aid kit. He was holding his phone up on his fancy tripod, leaning in close, adjusting the angle to keep us in frame.
I stormed across the lawn, my heavy boots leaving deep, bloody impressions on his pristine driveway. “Call an ambulance!” I roared, the adrenaline finally boiling over into pure rage. “He’s bleeding out! Call 911!”
As I closed the distance, the audio from Vance’s phone suddenly became clear. It wasn’t a silent recording. It wasn’t a one-way social media broadcast. I heard a crisp, distinctly corporate voice filtering through the phone’s speaker.
“-looks like a serious liability issue, Vance. Is that blood? Are your contractors insured?”
Another voice chimed in, equally sterile, equally detached. “We’re looking for scalable oversight in our property acquisitions, Vance, not wild west operations. What exactly are we looking at here?”
He wasn’t filming a TikTok. He was doing a live virtual tour. He was pitching a Zoom room full of Silicon Valley investors on his “streamlined, low-overhead” real estate flipping empire. And he had just broadcast a catastrophic, completely preventable workplace injury directly to the people holding the checkbook.
Vance’s camera-ready smile was completely gone, replaced by a pale, panicked sheen of sweat. “Gentlemen, please, it’s just a minor scrape,” Vance said into the phone, his voice pitching up an octave. “My crews are highly trained. Just a moment, let me put you on mute-”
He tapped the screen frantically, his eyes darting toward me with pure, unadulterated venom. He ripped the phone off the tripod mount and shoved it into his jacket pocket.
“Are you out of your mind?” Vance hissed at me, stepping forward, his voice a frantic whisper. “Do you know who that was? That’s two million dollars in seed funding for my next ten flips! You just ruined the entire pitch!”
“My guy has a hole in his leg!” I shouted, pointing back at Hector, who was pressing his entire body weight into the makeshift bandage. “Because you wouldn’t spend forty bucks on a safety harness!”
Vance’s face flushed dark red. He didn’t look at Hector. He didn’t care about the blood pooling on his client’s driveway. His empire was crumbling on a muted Zoom call, and his only instinct was to double down on the leverage he thought he had.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulled out the black burner phone.
He didn’t bother being subtle this time. He didn’t hide it against his chest. He tapped the screen, bringing up the glowing green call button with the ICE tip line ready to dial, and shoved the device aggressively into my face, mere inches from my nose.
“You get him in your truck, you drive away, and you don’t ever come back,” Vance spat, his finger hovering over the screen. “Or I hit this button right now, and you both get deported before the hospital even stitches him up. Do you understand me?”
I looked at the glowing screen. I looked at the smug, desperate cruelty in his eyes. I thought about the slick tarp, the rotting plywood, and the sound of Hector screaming.
I didn’t think. I just moved.
My arm snapped up. I slapped the phone with the open palm of my heavy, calloused hand, swinging as hard as I could.
The impact stung my skin. The black rectangle exploded out of Vance’s grip. It flew through the humid air in a high, erratic spin, bounced hard against the concrete curb, and skittered straight toward the flooded storm drain at the edge of the street.
Vance lunged for it, a pathetic, grasping scramble, but he was too late.
The phone slipped right through the thick iron grating. We both heard a hollow, definitive plop as it hit the standing storm water deep in the concrete basin.
Vance froze, kneeling on the wet asphalt, his empty hands hovering over the grate. The manicured suburban silence rushed back in, broken only by Hector’s heavy, ragged breathing behind us.