I exhaled and closed my eyes once again as the glare grew to be too much to bear in that instant. While I rested my head, I heard a pair of footsteps squeak as they approached until they’d drawn to within a foot or so of me, when they ceased.
“Fiona,” the voice of an older woman whispered.
As she finished speaking, I opened my eyes once again.
“Oh. Oh good,” she began. “You’re awake.”
My eyes darted around the room as I attempted to get my bearings in the unfamiliar surroundings.
“Do you know where you are, Fiona?”
I blinked as I felt awareness begin to return.
“Fiona?”
“Hmm?” I replied as I looked up in her direction. An instinct to move overwhelmed me, but as I tried to sit upright, the woman bent at the waist and pressed her palm flat into my shoulder, holding me against the couch.
“Fiona,” she said once more. “I need you to lie still and answer my question, dear. Do you know where you are?”
After a second or two I exhaled and managed a reply. “Yes um, my job. Hawkins Biotech.”
After that, the woman, who revealed herself to me as the company nurse, explained I’d lost consciousness in the lab. However, before I collapsed in a heap to the hardness of the linoleum floor, Amanda and Melissa grabbed me.
The nurse also said she’d checked me over for serious medical conditions and hadn’t found any. Instead after helping me into a seated position, she began to ask me a series of questions. I answered ‘‘no’ to all of them except the last one which forced a lie to tumble from my lips.
“Have you been under a lot of stress recently?”
Hmm, let’s see. My grandmother is battling a life-threatening illness. I’ve finally landed a job I’ve been after for most of the past ten years of my life. I’m more than half a million dollars in debt and my boss may or may not be hitting on me, which could or could not cost me the aforementioned dream job.
No.
Stress? What’s that?
“No,” I said with a slow shake of my head. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Hmm,” the nurse began. “Well, I’m going to recommend you take the rest of the day off. I’ll notify Mr. Doyle.”
“No!” I replied with a half-shout as I attempted to stand. But as I did, I felt the sting of dizziness return. My knees wobbled and before I realized it, I collapsed back into the couch.
“Fiona, please,” the woman said, as she reached down and helped to steady me. “You mustn’t make any sudden movements right now.”
I closed my eyes, leaning my head back into the cool leather of the couch. As I did, the nurse walked across the room and a few seconds later, I heard sound of liquid gurgling from a water cooler. After she finished, she crossed the room in my direction once again and offered it to me.
“Here, drink this,” she said, extending a cone-shaped paper cup to me.
I thanked her as I took it. The coolness of the liquid through the paper of the cup felt good in my palm and even better going down, as I took a healthy swig. I gulped it down she continued to speak.
“I’ll notify Mr. Doyle right away and…”
Wiping my lips dry, I interrupted her.
“No, really. I’m feeling much better. I should get back.”
I had to go back.
I’d only just started to work here. What would everyone think of me now? At a minimum, they’d conclude I was unreliable or even worse, couldn’t handle the pressure. Just then, an even more horrifying thought occurred to me.
Gabe.
If I went home Gabe would surely find out, if he hadn’t already. It was bad enough I was in the infirmary. Once he discovered it, I had little doubt he’d conclude it had something to do with him. It did, of course, but if he were to find out, he’d be relentless in teasing me about it. The nurse looked down at me for a moment before crossing her arms at her chest.
It wasn’t like I could tell her any of that.
“Really, I’m fine.” I said, now desperate to be dismissed. Borderline begging at this point, I continued, “I promise that if I feel any symptoms come on, I’ll do as you recommend and go home. Please let me go back to the lab. Please.”
“Hmm,” the nurse hummed. “All right. But, if you wind up back here again, you’ll leave me with no choice. Understand?”
“Yes. I do. Thank you so much.”
GABE
A couple of hours after my visit to the lab, I was sitting in my office when Holly buzzed in over the intercom with word Colin needed to speak with me about an urgent matter.
Clearing my throat, I picked up the receiver. “Colin, what’s up?”
“Gabe, I’ve got a situation in the lab that you need to be aware of.”