The donuts look guilty.
They sit on the craft-service table in the corner of Stage 14, glazed and sticky under plastic wrap, like they’re trying to pretend nothing bad happened here yesterday. The chemical smoke smell still clings to the rafters, faint but stubborn, riding on the cool breath of the AC.
I wrap both hands around a paper cup of coffee that tastes like burnt cardboard and sugar. The heat bleeds into my palms, grounding and a little punishing. I stand near the middle of the folding-chair sea, boxed in by grips, hair and makeup, background actors clutching their phones like life vests.
“Everyone in? Great. Sit, please,” the first AD calls from the front.
His voice bounces off the high ceiling. The lights feel extra bright, like they’re trying to pierce through our collective denial.
I drop into a chair. Metal squeals under my weight. Marcus hovers behind my row, too important for folding furniture, scrolling through his phone with his sunglasses pushed up on his head like a headband. The showrunner leans against a C-stand near the front, arms folded, performing concern.
“This is not optional,” the AD says. “You miss this meeting, you miss your call time later. Everybody clear?”
A low murmur of assent rolls through the room. Someone in the back keeps typing. A background actor near me sneaks a selfie with the donuts, angle tilted to catch the “Mandatory Safety Briefing” sign taped on the wall. The caption writes itself.
The AD flips a page on his clipboard. “Okay. Yesterday got away from us. That’s not acceptable. We’re extremely lucky no one was seriously injured.”
The words hit my chest in a dull thud. Lucky again.
He keeps going. “So I’m going to review some basics. This will be boring. I want it boring. You want this boring.”
A few people chuckle. I don’t.
He points to a laminated poster. “Number one: know your exits. If you don’t know how to get out of a set, ask. No shot, no line, no TikTok is worth your airway.”
I glance at the bay door that spat me back into daylight yesterday, then at the kitchen set where the flames climbed higher than they were supposed to. My fingers tighten around the cup. Coffee sloshes against the lip, scorching my skin.
“Number two: respect the chain of command,” he continues. “Stunts belong to the stunt team. Pyro belongs to pyro. Intimacy belongs to the intimacy coordinator. If someone tells you a sequence isn’t safe, it isn’t a debate.”
A PA in a faded band tee yawns into her sleeve. A camera operator picks some lint off his hoodie and checks his watch. Near the aisle, a young influencer guest star in full contour listens with a tilted head, eyes already rehearsing concern.
“Number three,” the AD says, “report hazards. Frayed wires. Blocked exits. Equipment that’s tagged out. You see something, you tell your department head, you tell me, you tell safety.”
My gaze jerks to the emergency stop panel by the kitchen entrance. The tape is gone now; the red button glows pristine under the fluorescents. If I didn’t have the sticky residue still under my fingernails, I could convince myself I hallucinated the cardboard.
“We do not just step around problems,” the AD says. “We don’t say, ‘It’s fine, it’s just for this shot.’ We log them, we fix them. That’s the only way we keep working and going home in one piece.”
A grip mutters, “Preach,” under his breath.
Next to me, a background actor taps out a message on their phone, thumbs quick and secretive: probably “Nora Hayes is sitting right next to me at the safety meeting omg.” Their lock screen wallpaper glows—a sun-drenched LA cityscape, palm trees and glass towers. My hometown river never made it to anyone’s phone case.
The AD sighs. “Look, I know for some of you this is your fifth safety meeting this month. For others, it’s your first. But I don’t want to do another one on this show because somebody got hurt. We clear?”
“Clear,” a few people answer.
“Okay. I want to introduce someone who’s going to be key to making that happen.” He gestures to the side. “Our new intimacy and stunt coordinator, Elle Park. She’s joining us from a string of shows that managed to light people on fire and crash cars without a single hospital visit. Elle?”
A woman steps forward.
She wears a black polo tucked into dark cargo pants, a laminated badge clipped near her collarbone. Her hair is pulled back in a low knot, exposing a clean jawline and small silver hoops. No makeup that I can see, just chapstick and maybe a swipe of concealer under eyes that look like they don’t sleep enough.
Elle Park. The name means nothing in the way it should. It lands in a different place: in the hazy part of my brain trained to scan call sheets, guest stars, Twitter mentions. I search it and get no hit. Still, something in my chest tightens, like a muscle remembering an old injury before I’ve moved.
“Thanks,” she says, taking the mic from the AD.
Her voice is low but carries. There’s no quaver, no overcompensation. The set noise shifts around it: the AC hum, the distant beep of a backing truck outside, someone’s bracelet clinking as they adjust in their seat.
“I coordinate stunts and intimacy here,” she says. “That means if bodies are moving in a way that could hurt, humiliate, or confuse anyone, I care about it.”
A few people snort softly at “humiliate.” It’s the word no one likes to admit belongs in the same sentence as work.
She continues. “I’m not here to be a cop. I’m here to be a brake pedal.”
The metaphor makes me picture the taped-over stop button again, stupidly. I swallow.
“Here’s how this works,” Elle says. “No surprises. You don’t get pushed, pulled, lifted, or grabbed out of nowhere. You don’t get new choreography shouted at you in the middle of action. You don’t get told to ‘just go for it’ with someone’s body. That applies to stunts and to kissing, arguing, wrestling on a bed, hugging your on-screen mom. Any of it.”
The influencer guest star raises an eyebrow, like she’s filing it under future podcast fodder. A couple of background actors lean forward. One grip shifts in his chair, crossing his arms tighter.
“If you’re not sure whether something is safe,” Elle says, “it isn’t. Bring it to me, bring it to the stunt team, bring it to the AD. We pause. We reassess. We protect you.”
There’s a small, reluctant murmur at “pause.” Time is money. Every stoppage is an invisible fine.
“I know schedules are tight,” she says. “I know the shot list is insane. I know half of you have kids to pick up and second jobs to get to. I do not care about that as much as I care about your ribs not cracking, your lungs not filling with smoke, and your spine staying aligned enough that you can keep paying rent next year.”
She says it like she’s said some version of it a thousand times. The words are polished but not slick.
Something in the way her mouth shapes “ribs not cracking” makes my skin crawl. A fast, unwanted image overlays her face: teenage Lila under fluorescent mill lights, lip split, eyes bright with fury.
I blink, and it’s gone. The woman in front of me is older than that memory, cheekbones sharper, hair darker and straighter, posture more contained. I tell myself that’s all I’m reacting to: a structural similarity, not a person.
“Also,” Elle adds, sweeping the room with her gaze, “consent isn’t just for sex scenes. It’s for every point of contact. If you feel pressured, coerced, tricked, or ignored around physical stuff, talk to me. I will not share it without your permission unless someone’s in immediate danger.”
The word tricked lands in the space between my ribs. My fingers loosen on the coffee cup.
Down the row, a camera assistant mutters, “Wish she’d been on my last show,” and someone snorts in agreement.
Elle’s eyes move across the rows, scanning faces, checking engagement. When they pass over me, something catches—just for a heartbeat. Her gaze pauses, sharpens, like she’s adjusting focus on a lens.
I hold her eyes on reflex. For a moment, the room dulls at the edges. The fluorescent hum drops out, replaced by river wind and the distant echo of a siren in my head.
Then she blinks. The moment breaks. She looks away.
Maybe I imagined it. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.
“Last thing,” she says, tone softening. “There is no shot worth your body. None. If someone tells you otherwise, tell me, and I’ll be the bad guy.”
She hands the mic back to the AD. A small ripple of applause moves through the chairs, more polite than enthusiastic. The influencers clap a little too loudly. A couple of stunt performers give small, appreciative nods. The showrunner smiles like he created her in a lab.
I take a shallow breath. My heart is beating too fast for a meeting with donuts.
“Questions?” the AD asks. “Concerns? Now is a great time.”
Silence stretches. People glance at each other, at their phones, at the door. Questions take time. Concerns are work.
My hand goes up before I talk myself out of it.
“Yeah,” I say. “I have one.”
The movement ripples the room faster than any safety rule. Heads swivel. Marcus’s posture stiffens behind me. I can practically feel his thoughts reorganizing into damage control bullet points.
The AD nods. “Nora.”
“Yesterday,” I say, clearing my throat, “when the flames went past the boundary and the exit got blocked—”
“We are very grateful you and Jordan are okay,” the showrunner cuts in quickly, already smoothing. “And that our team responded quickly.”
“Yes,” I say, because I’m not trying to fight the entire stage. “I’m grateful, too. But after, I checked the emergency stop by the kitchen entrance.”
I point at the panel. Every eye follows.
“It was taped over,” I say. “Fresh gaffer, cardboard sign. ‘Out of order.’”
A low murmur runs through the crew. The pyro tech looks like he might be sick.
“By the time anyone realized it wasn’t responding,” I continue, “we were still inside. So I just want to understand who decided to cover the fastest way to cut the gas during a fire stunt.”
The AD’s jaw tightens. He flips through his clipboard, buying himself seconds. Elle’s eyes are on me again, expression smooth, giving nothing away.
“Our understanding,” the AD says carefully, “is that button was malfunctioning and tagged out pending repair. We had backup shutoffs, which worked, as evidenced by you standing here.”
“Malfunctioning buttons don’t usually get taped over after a drill that used them,” I say. “The tape was clean. The adhesive was fresh.”
I sound more certain than I feel. But I remember the tacky pull against my fingertip, the way the cardboard darkened under the sprinkler water.
Marcus steps forward before the AD can answer. “Nora, you’ve had a hell of a twenty-four hours,” he says, pitching his voice for the room. Warm. Protective. Reasonable. “The sandbag, the fire gag, the travel back home. It’s a lot. I don’t think anyone here doubts there were mistakes yesterday. The studio’s already bringing in an external safety auditor. Right, Tom?”
He looks at the showrunner, who nods immediately. “Already in motion.”
“Great,” Marcus says. “So let’s let the professionals do their job instead of turning this into a whodunnit. I don’t want us all jumping at shadows.”
“I’m not jumping at shadows,” I say.
My coffee cup crinkles in my grip. I loosen my fingers deliberately, feeling the warmth seep out.
“There was also the sandbag,” I add. “Rope cut clean. Now a taped-over emergency stop. Those are hands on things, not random failures.”
The word hands tastes like rust.
The showrunner lifts his palms in a calming gesture. “We’re all rattled,” he says. “I hear you. We’re taking it seriously. But language matters. ‘Sabotage’ is a big word. We start throwing that around, rumors fly, people panic, the trades start sniffing around for drama instead of trusting that we’re handling a technical issue.”
Behind me, someone shifts in their chair, uncomfortable. A stunt performer stares at the floor. A PA meets my eyes for a second, sympathy flickering, then looks away.
“If something is wrong with our safety systems,” I say, “I don’t care what the trades think.”
Marcus exhales like I’m being noble and unreasonable at the same time. “Of course you don’t,” he says. “That’s why I love you.”
Laughter ripples through the crowd, a little forced. The word love does what it’s supposed to: softens me into a story about an overprotective manager and his passionate star.
Marcus turns to the room. “Look, you all heard Elle. The whole point of today is making sure everyone knows how to report concerns properly. If you see anything weird—tape over a button, equipment misplaced—you go to her, or the AD, or me. No one’s asking you to swallow it. We’re asking you not to turn every scary moment into a conspiracy theory. Deal?”
People nod. Nodding is easy. Nodding doesn’t get you blacklisted.
I feel my determination thin, stretched between my teeth like gum.
“I’m not talking about conspiracy theories,” I say, quieter now. “I’m talking about patterns.”
“And I’m telling you,” the showrunner says, still smiling, “we are on it. We’re going to overcorrect so hard you’ll get bored, I promise. Right now, I want to keep everyone focused on doing their jobs, not hunting a hypothetical saboteur in the lighting grid.”
The room relaxes a fraction at hypothetical. No one wants to believe the danger is deliberate. Accidents are tragic; saboteurs are terrifying. You can’t charm a saboteur over coffee and a carefully worded apology.
“Anything you want to add, Elle?” the AD asks.
She takes the mic again, eyes flicking from him to me. That tiny pause stretches.
“I’ll echo what’s been said,” she says. “If you see anything that doesn’t look right, tell me. You don’t have to decide whether it’s sabotage or an honest mistake. That’s not your job. Your job is to notice. Mine is to pull the brake.”
Her gaze catches mine on brake. My pulse spikes.
“And Nora,” she adds, voice steady, “thanks for speaking up.”
The words are neutral on the surface, but they land oddly sharp. There’s no smile attached, no softening around her eyes. It feels less like gratitude and more like a marker placed on a map: noted.
“Okay,” the AD says briskly. “Let’s wrap this. Department heads, hang back for five. Everyone else, get thirty, then we’re back on for scene sixteen.”
Chairs scrape. Conversations explode in small pockets: jokes, complaints, speculation. Someone opens the donuts; the sugary smell rides over the residue of smoke.
I stay seated for a second longer, coffee going cold in my hands, watching the flow of bodies. Influencers drift toward craft service. Crew clusters in practical knots. The invisible labor, the visible faces, all shuffling back into place.
When I finally stand, Marcus is there, hand already on my elbow.
“We’ll talk with legal,” he murmurs. “Quietly. You don’t need to carry this in public, okay?”
I pull my arm free. “I just almost got cooked for coverage.”
His mouth tightens. “And we’re fixing it. But the more you say ‘sabotage’ out loud, the more you make that your narrative. Think long-term, not just about proving a point in a room full of people who post everything.”
He’s not wrong. That’s the worst part.
Over his shoulder, I see Elle wrapping up with the AD, speaking low. She nods once, then turns to scan the room again, assessing exits, bodies, hazards. Her silhouette cuts clean lines against the cluttered stage: competent, rational, the person everyone wants on their side when things catch fire.
She starts toward the aisle. The crowd parts around her without quite realizing they do. When she passes my row, she glances at me, just once, quick and direct.
For a heartbeat, I swear I see a girl in damp denim, hair stringy from river fog, lip split, staring at me over a hospital sheet.
My throat closes. Air turns heavy, like mill humidity slipped into the refrigerated stage.
Then Elle looks away. She walks on, a stranger in a black polo, badge flashing her name in block letters I can’t stop reading.
Park.
The word bites inside my skull, catching on something buried. I reach for the rest of the memory and come up with a handful of glass shards: a poster, a missing credit, a fan screenshot with a grainy face half in shadow.
I know I’ve seen that last name before.
I just don’t know yet whether I’m standing in front of the woman whose life I helped erase—or the only person on this set who might believe me when I say someone here is trying to burn us down on purpose.