Page 36 of How to Walk Away

At the door, Ian stopped at the patient whiteboard. Under my name was an empty box. Other patients’ boxes had stars and smileys and hearts in them, but Ian marked mine with a solemn blackX.

Which was about how I felt.

Nine

BACK AT THEroom, a nurse I’d never seen before scolded us. “Ian, she was supposed to be back forty-five minutes ago.”

I was? I narrowed my eyes at Ian, but he pretended to ignore me.

“She didn’t want to quit,” he said. “She’s a machine.”

“I need her now.”

“She’s all yours.”

Just then, the new cell phone my mother had brought me rang. I’d never heard its ringtone—so loud and screechy—and it startled all of us. Ian picked it up off the side table and handed it to me.

“Hello?” I said.

A guy’s voice. “Margaret Jacobsen?”

“Yes?”

“Neil Putnam from HR at Simtex.”

My new job! Oh, God—I had forgotten all about it. Should I explain what happened? Did they already know? That interview felt like a hundred years ago in somebody else’s life.

“I remember,” I said, after a pause. Neil Putnam was the guy who’d told me that I unofficially had the job. “How are you?”

“Doing just great.” His voice was overly bright, but I didn’t notice at first. “Hey,” he went on, like he’d just thought of something. “I’ve been asked to call and let you know that the guys upstairs have made an official decision about the position.”

I held my breath. It was an impossible problem. I was twenty-eight and just out of business school, and I’d landed a dream job that nobody with my lack of experience had any right to, and it really was the offer of a lifetime, and at this moment, given that I couldn’t even pee without help, it seemed unlikely I could make the most of it. What would I do if they wanted me to start next week?

I’d never in my life faced a challenge and given up. The non-quitter part of me could not imagine doing anything other than wrestling myself into an Ann Taylor suit and hauling my ass out to their corporate campus the minute they saidgo. But a much more vocal part of me—the part, shall we say, with the catheter sticking out—could not imagine ever even leaving this hospital room, much less dedicating my thoughts to “strategic and higher operational level engagement with the logistics environment.”

My only hope was to delay. Maybe I could wrangle a start date later in the summer. How long was it going to take me to get myself back to normal? Two months, maybe? Four?

But as I opened my mouth to suggest it, Neil Putnam said, “They’re going with another candidate.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Someone with more experience.”

“But you said I had it!”

“Unofficially. But then a better candidate came along.”

I closed my eyes.

“They’ll send an official letter, but we wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“I see,” I said at last. “Of course.” Had they somehow heard about the crash? Did they know what I was up against?

“We wish you the best of luck, and hope you are up and around again soon.”

Guess they did.

I pressedENDand let out a long sigh comprised entirely of the word “Fuuuuuuuuuck.”

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