Page 14 of The Business Trip

“Yeah, I thought so too, unless I missed a memo or something,” I said, walking back to my desk to make sure that wasn’t the case. But no, the last correspondence from Steph was a “yes” response to an election meeting I had set up. It had come late Wednesday afternoon. She had probably done it from the Denver airport on the layover.

Picking up my phone, I called her. It went immediately to voicemail. I tried texting again.

Everything OK? We’re getting a little worried. People are asking about you. Aren’t you supposed to be back today?

Nothing.

In the meantime, I had a newsroom to run. Reporters and photojournalists had to be assigned; producers had to know what to put in their shows. The nine a.m. newsroom meeting was coming right up.

I pushed any thoughts of something terrible out of my head and went to work, running the meeting as well as I could in my still-foggy, not-prepared-to-do-this mode.

I told the team Steph was coming in later; after all, no need to worry them too. We got reporters out the door on their stories, and I was just considering whether to alert our GM about the situation when my phone pinged with a text.

It was her!

I pounced at it, eager to see what excuse she had. I really couldn’t imagine a good one unless she told me she was in the hospital with appendicitis.

Hi, sorry for the late notice. Something very unexpected happened at the conference and it required me to go to Atlanta. I will need to be off this entire week. Maybe more but I’ll keep you posted. Thank you in advance.

I had to read the text three times. She was in Atlanta and asking for the entire week off? Maybe more? And she was springing this on me now? I must have had a shocked look on my face because Nora came over to me.

“Did you find out something? Is she all right?”

“She’s in Atlanta,” I said in a low voice so no one would hear. “For a week… or more.” I passed her my phone and her eyes skimmed the words.

“What theheck?” she asked. “What do you think happened at the conference?”

“I don’t know.” I felt myself running my hands through my hair in a nervous habit that always annoyed Ellen. My mind was already racing ahead to the week—we had the election planning meeting she had RSVP’d for, a reporter-candidate interview, and I was supposed to be off Thursday and Friday. Now would I even be able to do that?

“Well, answer her and maybe she’ll tell you more,” Nora whispered. We were both trying not to bring attention to our situation. The rest of the newsroom was in normal busy mode, though, and no one seemed to be paying attention to us. I took my phone back and quickly typed.

This is really sudden news, Stephanie. Can you tellme more? I can run the newsroom but we have a lot on our plates this week and I’m off Thursday and Friday, remember? Did you want to reschedule the election meeting too?

I watched as the typing bubbles were going.

Don’t worry, I’m fine. I know it’s sudden but sometimes things pop up. Please reschedule the meeting.

Taking a deep breath, I wrote back.

OK. Do you have a second to talk on the phone? If you’re going to be out all week there are some things we should touch base on.

It took twenty minutes before she responded. This time it wasn’t a text but a voice memo. I hit play, and her voice said:

“No, I really don’t have a moment. Please don’t check in with me until next week. I will be very busy.”

Now the anger surged. This was how she was going to treat me? I wasn’t sure what else to say.

My fingers hovered over the phone as my mind whirred for a proper reaction to my direct supervisor. In the end, I just hit the thumbs-up button because I felt anything else I tried would be either too nice or too snarky for the moment. I needed to collect my thoughts.

After I passed Nora the phone, she read the rest of the text exchange and listened to the voice memo.

“Well, that’s just a shitty thing for her to do,” she said. “She had better have a damn good reason.”

“I know,” I responded. “I just don’t know what it could be.”

The only thing I could think of was that maybe she was looking for a new job. Perhaps someone at the conference had started courting her to move to Atlanta, and she was down there interviewing. That made the most sense, but I had never heard of a job interview going an entire week.

One thing was for sure, the general manager of our station needed to know that his news director was out. I sent him a direct message on our Teams platform asking to see him, and he told me to come right down.

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