Chapter 3 - Sophie’s Sticky Note
I spent twelve days in the hospital.
Recovery was humiliating in small ways nobody puts in inspirational stories.
I needed help showering.
I got winded walking fifty feet.
Coughing hurt because Nathan’s compressions had fractured two ribs.
I was grateful for every fracture.
Sophie taped a yellow sticky note to my hospital tray.
DON’T LET THE BORING PEOPLE WIN.
It was the same note she had left on my coffee cup the morning I collapsed.
I cried when I saw it.
“Why are you crying?” she asked.
“Because I almost didn’t get to read another one.”
Sophie became very still.
That was when I realized my cardiac arrest had happened to her too.
I arranged counseling before I arranged anything at work.
My employment lawyer was next.
Her name was Monica Reyes.
“Your health event and your accounting concerns need to remain legally separate unless evidence connects them,” she said.
“Martin connected them.”
“Then we document that.”
Stanton had already hired outside counsel to investigate the emergency response.
Separately, the audit committee had agreed to review my inventory concerns because my presentation materials were now impossible to dismiss quietly.
Nathan visited me that afternoon.
He was twenty-nine and usually looked too young for the accountant title printed under his email signature.
He looked older now.
“I’m sorry I waited.”
“You moved before anyone else.”
“Not fast enough.”
“Nathan.”
He looked down.
“My brother died at Stanton.”
I stopped.
“What?”
“Three years ago. West Jefferson warehouse.”
I vaguely remembered an employee death.
Cardiac event during a night shift.
The company had sent an all-staff email and held a moment of silence.
“His name was Evan Price.”
“I’m sorry.”
Nathan nodded.
“He collapsed at work too.”
Something in his voice made me sit straighter.
“Was there an AED?”
“I was told no.”
“By whom?”
Nathan looked through the hospital window.
May you like
“Martin Hale.”
That was the first moment I wondered whether what happened to me had happened before.
