How was she supposed to do her job if that was the case? It was frustrating, and she wasn’t sure what the answer was. If there even was an answer. Half of her realized that this was all a big mess, and, having moved to town three months ago, she should have another job in her pocket already; yet it had taken her six weeks to find this one. Her sigh came out as a moan this time.
Using her security code to enter her floor, she walked in and headed to her back office in the dungeon level, grateful to find it empty. She normally shared it with two other women, who should arrive shortly. Joy dropped her sweater over the back of her chair, slipped her purse in her bottom drawer, sat down, and logged on to her computer. Except that, as soon as she brought up her screen, the log-in screen wasn’t there, suggesting she was still logged in. As if she hadn’t logged out on Friday.
She sank back in her chair, staring at the computer screen in horror. It was possible she hadn’t logged out, but it certainly wasn’t her normal procedure. Because that was against the security policy of the company. And the last thing she wanted to do was get fired, and, right now, this screen was not what she wanted to see.
She wasn’t terribly techie oriented, but she figured there had to be a way to see if anybody had been on her computer over the weekend. But, when she tried to bring up documents, it seemed like only her own documents surfaced, just as she had last seen them. She brought up a web browser, but a lot of the pages were blocked normally anyway. She checked the browser history, but nothing seemed to be any different. Feeling relieved, but, at the same time, a little worried, she checked her email, but nothing terribly important was coming in either.
Still, it left her with an odd feeling. Like someone was checking up on her. She rose and headed to the break room to grab some coffee, hoping that some was made, because there wasn’t always, and she ended up putting on a pot 90 percent of the time. But, of course, this early in the day on a Monday, there wasn’t any made yet. As she stood here and looked out the small windows placed high in the wall—like a basement window in a house—she could see several other vehicles coming in. A couple hundred people worked at the company in various locations. They were developing drugs, and, although they supposedly weren’t doing any tests on animals, it wasn’t odd for Joy to travel to and from her parking spot and see a steady stream of animals coming through the main lab building, just down the block, getting treatments—special cases where owners were willing to test a new drug in order to save their furry family member. And, if Joy had been in that situation, then she’d try anything too.
Even if she were a human cancer patient, with some rare form of the disease, and somebody had a medical trial running, she would do everything she could to get that last chance too. It was hard to blame anybody who wanted to get their pets and other animals, much less their family, in on a special deal. How strange to think about that here, in the context of her new job in a new state. When she first took this job, she had hoped to never deal with death in any way.
She was technically an ER nurse but had burned-out almost eighteen months ago now. After some of her friends had come in after a car crash one night, she had done everything she could to save them, but they both had passed away within twenty-four hours. She realized that all her nights of overtime and covering shifts on her days off had gradually resulted in her frequently working seven days a week, with long and highly stressful shifts. She had walked away and gone to jobs that didn’t have the same emotional devastation.
The hospital had tried to get her to stay, but it had been almost impossible for her to even talk to her boss about the inciting event. When he realized she was too traumatized, he’d set her up with a therapist and had explained that he was completely okay with her doing whatever she needed to do to deal with this. She had thanked him and had attended the therapy sessions, initially doubting what they could do.
Yet, one of the best things she had done for her own soul and sanity was pick up a paintbrush through her art therapy appointments. It had taken her a long time to get out of the darker colors, and her therapist had been quite delighted with her progress, explaining that the dark colors were just evidence of the depression, dealing with the death that she had witnessed over and over and over again.
The words of her therapist rang in her ears. Remember. Not everybody deals with death on a daily basis. As an ER nurse, you certainly did. You dealt with it more than most people do. Those sessions had gone a long way to getting Joy back on her feet. She finally had to admit that, sometimes, death wins—even when Joy had done all she possibly could.
Her medical knowledge had given her a step up into this position in the pharmaceutical world. And here she was, after a year off, after finally landing this job, finding herself sitting here, looking down the barrel of a position that wasn’t what she thought it would be.
If she hadn’t discovered a missing case of ketamine in her paperwork, it wouldn’t have been any big deal. She’d found other drugs unaccounted for as well, but it was like a bottle here or a syringe there. And stuff like that went missing from hospitals all the time. The administrators tried not to have missing inventory to explain, but it was almost impossible to keep track of every little thing, especially in the hectic ER environment. Saving the patient was paramount. Doing the paperwork? Not important on many levels.
But a whole case of ketamine? That bothered her. When the coffee was done, she poured herself a cup and slowly made her way back to her office. A few people had arrived, but not everybody all at once, and she was surprised at that. James, her boss, appeared at the front door to her office, just as she was passing through.
“Did you have a good weekend?” he asked with a smile.
“Excellent, thank you,” she said in a cheerful voice.
He looked around as he took off his jacket and threw it over his shoulder. “Hardly anybody’s here yet. What’s up with that?”
“I know a lot of heavy traffic is downtown,” she said, “so, depending on what route they’re traveling, this one could be bad for anybody getting in on time.”
His expression clearly said he doubted that suggestion, but he nodded. “That could be it. Otherwise it’s lazy Monday attendees, and we’ve gone a long way to stop that from happening.” With a frown, he turned and left.
She rushed to her desk, grateful that he didn’t know she had walked in a couple minutes behind schedule too. She didn’t want to make a bad impression because this could turn out to be a great job. And maybe the problem was her. After all that time off getting her shit together, it didn’t seem like she was together, and this job was looking to be more onerous than she had thought. She was looking for something stress-free, where she could show up and put in her hours, get a paycheck, and go home with none of this on her mind.
Just as Joy sat down, one of the other women came rushing in, as if she were late.
Doris looked at the clock on the wall across the room. “No matter how hard I try,” she said, “I’m always five minutes late.”
Joy looked back at the clock to see it was 8:05 a.m. “Sorry,” she said.
“And you’re always early,” the woman replied.
“I thought I was a couple minutes late this morning,” she said. “At least I thought the other clock said so.”