Slowly, and with a new and ever-fouler swear word at each step, Markie limped her way into the family room, trapped the dog in her crate, and retrieved her purse and keys from the kitchen. At the last second, she grabbed the broom, too, and used it as a crutch to help her hobble to the kitchen window. Coffee hour was still in full swing. If she limped out to her driveway now, they would see her through the screen and come running over.
So she waited, fighting her tears and watching her ankle get bigger and purpler until finally, after what felt like an entire day, the group on the porch stood, collected their dishes, and made their way inside. It was a shorter walk to the car from the side door, but that route was in plain view of Mrs. Saint’s house, so Markie snuck out through the front, taking her broom-crutch with her. Thanking God the break was in her left ankle and not her right, she tossed the broom and her purse into the car, lowered herself in, and drove as fast as she could to the hospital.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Her ankle wasn’t broken, but that wasn’t much consolation. With a sprain so extreme, the treatment was almost the same: crutches, a splint, a prescription for painkillers, and orders to stay off her feet as much as possible for the next several weeks. Markie slept the rest of the day in a pharmaceutically enhanced daze. When she woke, it was dusk, and Jesse was sitting on the floor at her feet, a basket beside him.
Inside was a get-well card, signed by everyone next door.
“Lola drew you a picture, too,” he said. “It’s on the fridge. And Ronda sent over a casserole. She wants me to take her back a list of your favorite meals, and she’ll make those next, starting tomorrow.” He rummaged in the basket for a notepad and a pen and handed them to Markie.
She pushed them aside. “I can manage to get from the freezer to the microwave to zap pizza.”
He brought a large bell out of the depths of the basket and set it beside her. “From Mrs. Saint. She says as long as you keep the kitchen window open, she’ll be able to hear if you ring this, and someone’ll come right over.” Markie tried to push the bell away, too, but he shoved it back. “Come on, Mom. I’m gone all day. What if there’s an emergency?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I don’t want to sit in school wondering about it, either. Just keep this handy, and ring it if something comes up.” She made a face, and he made her promise.
“Patty says she can come over and walk Angel in the mornings,” he said, and before Markie could protest, he added, “but I told her I’d take that over. Already set my phone alarm.”
He slept through his chiming phone on eight of the next nine weekdays, though, so Markie spent the better part of two weeks trying to figure out how to maneuver on crutches with a thick plastic boot strapped around her left ankle, how to balance her pain medication so it was enough to keep her leg from throbbing but not so much that it would prevent her from working, and how to bribe an underexercised dog into lying quietly so Markie could maintain her A-player status at Global and the paycheck that went with it.
She succeeded at none of these, which was why on the following Friday, her last file-swap trip of October, she was hobbling feebly on her crutches toward the exit doors on the fortieth floor, praying she would make it out without running into Gregory. She was halfway down the hall when she heard his voice from deep in the middle of the cube prairie.
“Markie?” She quickened her pace. “Wait! Was that Markie?” she heard him ask.
She couldn’t fathom whom he was talking to, since she had managed, in her three months of employment, to avoid interacting with a single coworker outside of Gregory, the Log Sheet Lady, and the two guys in the loading bay.
“Hey, Markie, hold up there a minute!”
He was at the end of the hallway now, behind her. She was so close to the exit doors she could feel the cool metal handle against her palm. If her numbers for the past two weeks hadn’t been so pathetic, she might have kept going. Even with crutches and a splint, she could be safely behind the closed elevator doors by the time he made his way the length of the hallway. She couldn’t abide a pep talk from this man.
But she couldn’t afford to get on his bad side, either, so she stopped, closed her eyes, and prayed it would be over fast.
“How’re you doing, Gregory?” she asked, as he puffed his way closer.
He held up a hand to indicate he couldn’t respond just yet, as all of his energies were going into moving his heft the final twenty feet. Reaching her, he took several gasping breaths and said, “I’m good. You? How’s that ankle coming along?”
“Good,” she said. “Better every day.”
“So . . . ,” he said, and when no other words came to him, he rocked on his heels and balled up his fists, holding them a foot or so apart. Stepping forward, he took what she believed was meant to be a golf swing. “I’ve been looking at your numbers from the past two weeks,” he said.
He looked past her, pretending to watch his invisible ball land, then flattened a palm and used it as a visor to shield his eyes from the imaginary sun.
“Ah, there it is,” he said. “Right near the, uh, cup . . . thing. With the, um, flag.”
He pointed. Markie refused to turn and look. She didn’t want to be rude, though, so she smiled and nodded as though she were impressed with his shot.
“So, yeah, anyway,” he said, “I’ve been looking at them, and I just wanted to ask, well . . .”
He put his hand on the side of her arm. Gregory was big on human-resources training, and somewhere he had learned that side-of-the-arm touching was the safest.
“I’m worried about you, is all. You’ve been my star for the past three months. Your numbers have pushed my team stats into the, you know”—he pointed to the ceiling—“up there. Makes me look good. Makes us all look good. But now . . .” He sighed. “I just want to know what we can do—what I can do—to get you back on track. I mean, can you think of any deliverable I could offer to assist with this derailment? Short of curing your ankle, that is. I can’t do that, though, and you’ve said it’ll be a good six weeks until it’s better, so we need to come up with, you know, something else.”
She expected he thought there might be a poster he could send her for her wall to help her motivation, maybe a close-up of a weight lifter struggling under a loaded barbell, with KEEP PUSHING! written in bold yellow underneath.
“I’m here to help,” he said. “And I’m also here to listen.” He patted her arm once, then again. “In fact, why don’t we take this into my office right now? Huddle around the whiteboard for a full-on brainstorming session. List all the possible obstacles to your productivity, and talk about how we can, you know . . .”