I never read past the header line. Doesn't matter whose job it is, doesn't matter if it's a wedding invite or a court filing, I slide the ruler down and I only look at what's above it. Ask the others at the shop, they'll tell you Denise never reads the body copy. Used to think it was funny, some of them. I want that on the record before I say anything else, because I know how the rest of this sounds.
I've worked the night proofing desk at Halloran Print on Cedar for six years, going on seven now I think, though I always lose count around March because that's when the anniversary bonus hits and I stop paying attention to the actual date. We do the boring stuff, mostly. Menus, funeral programs, the odd self-published novel some retired dentist paid to have bound. My sister has a dog, a beagle mix that howls at the recycling truck, and she says the truck comes on Thursdays but it's actually Wednesdays, I've told her twice. Anyway. Around March a man starts bringing in loose-leaf jobs, same time every visit, quarter to ten, always cash. No name on the account, just "J.T." on the slip.
The pages have a little mark in the corner, like a flattened figure-eight with a tail on it, printed in a mustard-yellow ink we don't even stock anymore. I remember thinking someone must've special-ordered that toner cartridge, because Halloran's hadn't carried that shade since before I started, and I started six years ago. Or seven.
I run the ruler down like always. Header, job number, page count. Feed the pages through the binder without letting my eyes drop below the line. I couldn't tell you where I picked up the habit. Something from proofing legal documents years back, where you're not supposed to read privileged material, and it just stuck to everything after that, even grocery lists, even the backs of postcards. It's not a decision I make every time. It's just what my hands do now.
The night it happens, Marcus is covering the front counter because I'm in the back running a wedding program with a misspelled bridesmaid's name. J.T.'s pages come in around the usual time. Marcus is new, doesn't know about the ruler thing, why would he, and he picks up the top sheet to check the job number and just keeps reading. I hear him say, out loud, to no one, "huh, that's a weird way to spell that," and then nothing else for eleven minutes. I know it's eleven because I checked the wall clock twice, thought he was ignoring me on purpose.
When I go up front he's still holding the page, or he was, except now it's sitting flat on the counter and his hands are empty. His eyes are moving side to side, small movements, like he's reading the same two lines over and over. I say his name. He doesn't blink. He doesn't blink for longer than a person should be able to not blink, and I stand there counting seconds instead of doing anything useful, which I still think about. I call 911. The woman on the line asks what's wrong with him and I don't have an answer that won't sound insane, so I tell her seizure, because that's a word that gets an ambulance moving.
They tell me now it wasn't a seizure. They tell me his brain activity that night looked like someone doing long division, over and over, for hours, and that it hasn't fully stopped, seven weeks later. I go visit him Tuesdays, sometimes Wednesdays if the buses are running late out of the depot. His eyes still move like that sometimes, side to side, and the nurses have started taping his eyelids down at night so he can sleep.
I kept the ruler. It's a cheap steel one, Halloran's has a whole box of them in the supply closet, nothing special about it at all. When I run it down a page now, my hand starts shaking before it even reaches the third line.