When really I didn’t know what was normal. I was nervous to bring any of this up with my doctors, because I knew how it all sounded. All my checkups had gone really well, and they said hopefully any lingering effects from my injuries would clear up over time, even the headaches. And if they didn’t, well, that was inconvenient but certainly in the realm of expected outcomes. The internet was full of coma stories—I’d pored over them as much as I could, until I started getting that pain behind my eyes again and just couldn’t take any more. People reporting things they saw and heard while in that state, weird coincidences, the things that brought people back to consciousness. But none of it resonated with me, or explained what I’d gone through.
The phone at the front desk was ringing, had maybe been ringing for a while. It was the most delusional thing, butsometimes I thought Eamonn might call. Especially times like this, when I’d been thinking about him and looking up stuff about Ireland. I just got a tingling premonition sense, like one day I’d pick up the phone and hear that lilting accent on the other line.
I minimized my browser and answered the phone. I gave my usual greeting, asking how I could direct the call, my voice admirably under control, I thought. Perfect receptionist voice. The call was for one of the head partners, a man who would bite my head off if I interrupted his work and who would bite my head off if I didn’t immediately let him know one of his clients had called.
“Just one moment, sir,” I said into the phone, deciding to take my chances. I clicked over to the partner’s office, apologizing for bothering him but announcing the call. I was silent while he berated me for interrupting, although I knew that he would still want to talk to this client, had in fact been waiting for his call. When he finally finished I said, “You’ll have him when I hang up.”
One of our associates, Caroline, had come out to the lobby to greet an attorney from another firm who was there for a meeting, and I politely asked if I could get them anything to drink. Caroline demurred but turned to the other attorney to check with him.
“Oh, hot water would be perfect,” he said.
I couldn’t have heard that right. “Hot water?”
Caroline had already gone back to talking, and seemed annoyed that this interaction was taking longer than she thought it should. I generally liked Caroline—she could be a little sharp at times, but I always figured she must be under a lot ofpressure, being one of only a few women attorneys at the firm and one of the youngest associates. She was at least five years younger than me, I was pretty sure. But she could also be single-minded to the point of ruthlessness, and I guessed this little lobby chat fell under that umbrella.
“Yes,” she snapped. “Can you get it, please?”
Maybe the attorney just liked hot water. That was a thing, right? Usually with a bit of lemon, so maybe I’d see if I could find one to include on the side just in case. I got a glass mug branded with the law firm’s logo down from a cabinet in the break room, putting it under the Keurig.I’ll make you some tea, Eamonn had said. It had been one of the last things he’d said to me. I leaned my forehead against the wall, watching the Keurig fill with hot water.
I carried the mug carefully back out to the lobby, and Caroline reached for it, like she didn’t trust me with the handoff to the other attorney. I tried to warn her about the glass, but she’d already taken it, and I knew a split second before she dropped it what was about to happen. My reflexive attempt to catch it only resulting in scalding water splashing on my wrist, the mug still crashing to the ground, exploding in shards of broken glass.
“Jess!” she exclaimed. “That water was hot!”
“I’m so sorry about that,” the other attorney said congenially, tapping his briefcase. “I bring my own chamomile tea.”
I almost wanted to laugh. Instead, I made him another mug of hot water, setting this one directly down on the conference room table, where he and Caroline had retired for their meeting. Caroline did give me a bit of a look that might have beenmeant as an apology, a kind of sheepishI didn’t knowmixed with anOkay, now get out of here. I swept the glass off the lobby floor, wiped up the water, held my wrist under the cold tap, and tried to settle back in at my desk.
The office manager leaned around the corner in a way that told me she’d been waiting for me to return. “Jessica?”
She was the only one who used my full name, and I really didn’t like it. So funny how different it had been, hearing Eamonn call meJessica. Then, I’d suddenly felt like the namewasspecial, actually, like it had the potential to be the most beautiful name in the world. I had to stop thinking about it. It wasn’t doing me any good.
“Yes?”
She hesitated, like she knew she was about to bring up a sensitive topic. It was hergentle reminderopening, which I hated, because I didn’t need a gentle reminder. A regular reminder was fine. Matter-of-fact, to the point. And often I didn’t need a reminder at all, had to bend over backward to pretend her micromanaging wasn’t making my job infinitely harder.
“I noticed you’ve been naming files with year, dash, month, dash, day. But remember, it should be dots, not dashes. So year, dot, month, dot, day. Then the name of the file.”
“The IT guy instructed us all to do dashes,” I said.Two years ago. “He said the dots can lead to corrupted files when people do it wrong, since there’s a dot before the file extension name.”
“Well, if you do it correctly then the files don’t get corrupted,” the office manager said. “Okay?”
Mari was right. I was thirty-seven years old, and I was alive. And she’d been right for a while—this job fucking sucked. “You know what?” I said. “I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about something, if you have a minute.”
“Youquit?”
Mari’s eyes were wide and dancing, and she let out a whoop as she hung her purse on the back of her chair. We’d picked a new place and it was busier than expected, so we’d grabbed the only two open spots at the end of the bar. I’d told Mari we had something to celebrate and she’d said fine, as long as I wasn’t going to make her drive across town to that strip mall Thai place again.
I’d only done that twice. And if it had worked, and we’d found Niall that way, it would’ve all been worth it.
“I did agree to an end date a month out, and to train my replacement if they could find one by then,” I said.
Mari tilted her head back and forth, likeeh. “Well, nadie es perfecto,” she said. “Still, I’m glad you’re getting out. It’s about time. Do you have any idea what you’re going to do?”
I knew Mari meant specifically for my job, but that part I was still thinking about. I had enough savings to get me by for a while, but I also didn’t want to blow through it all. There were always legal assistant openings, and I knew I had enough experience and knowledge to try for one of those, even if technically on paper I’d been a receptionist for the last ten years. I would love to find a way to do something with my art degree,to get back to painting, but I had to think about what that would even look like.
“There’s a watercolor workshop at the library I want to sign up for.” I bit my lip, my instinct to hide how excited I was about the idea, even though I didn’t know why. If anyone would be thrilled for me, it was Mari. “I thought about what you said. I do want to travel, even if little day trips around the state. I do want to have more fun. I was thinking I’d like to start going dancing sometimes, if you’d be up for it.”
“Oh, you knowme,” Mari said. “But canyouhandle it, that’s the question.”
