I returned the smile and walked down the hall into my office. Before I reached it, I had stopped at the conference room I had officially met Chris in. My mind ran back to that day and I abruptly snapped back to reality. My office was cold and a mess. Apparently a temp had been hired to work while I was out and it made me a tad bit upset. These people didn’t have the slightest decency to clean up before I returned? But then again, it didn’t baffle me too much given who was in charge. Disaster and uncertainty thy name is Frank Hudson. I threw my bag on the floor beside my desk and then threw myself into my chair. It felt so good to be back at work and as I smiled and cut on my desktop, I noticed a stamped document with Gary Stapleton’s signature on it. A laugh came out and I tossed it aside. That’s when the knock came at my door. It was Frank.
“Good morning, Frank.” I greeted, still smiling. Frank nodded and walked in, closed the door and sighed.
“First, how are you feeling?” he started softly and slowly.
“First? What is this, the number game? I’m good, have an appointment with a psychiatrist this afternoon.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear you are getting help.”
“Yes, yes I am. Did you need something? I thought there was a ‘second’?”
Frank sighed again and then pulled out some papers from his back pocket.
“Second, before you get too comfortable, it came to our attention that you don’t have a degree in law.”
I leaned forward on my desk with the most confused look on my face.
“You knew that when you hired me.”
“Well, HR is cracking down on us to have the proper documents for our employees.”
“Proper docu- wait, are you firing me?”
I stood up and walked over to face Frank.
“Kenny, we can’t afford any type of liability.”
“You mean to tell me that for the week I was off, you found someone to do my job and because I tried to commit suicide with a failed attempt obviously, you don’t want that ‘liability’ that I may do it again. Let me guess, Gary put this in your mind?”
“This has nothing to do with your job performance or Gary at all.”
“Really?” I blurted out, walking to my desk and holding up the document I found, “Then why was he in my office?”
Frank didn’t speak. He just walked to my desk and placed the papers down he was holding and took a pen from his chest pocket and placed it on top. I stared at the papers that read, ‘Termination of Employment’. Frank was saying something to me; some bull about it has nothing to do with my life. I just stared of the papers and got a glimpse of Gary slowly walking by my office. Anger rose in my blood and I completely stopped hearing Frank. Abruptly I took the pen, signed all the papers, picked up my bag and walked out the office. Margaret was on the phone when I stormed passed and she looked like someone just killed her dog. When I got on the elevator, I was alone. I had to go down a few floors, so I dropped my bag, hugged myself and cried.
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