He got a free trip to Hawaii for nearly killing our department.
One week after Gary Thorne dragged his mucus-dripping self through our office like a human biohazard, half the team was sick, deadlines were in free fall, and I was curled up on my couch with a fever and a laptop, trying to save the biggest account our company had ever pitched.
The man didn’t just ignore every common sense protocol — he weaponized his illness as some twisted badge of honor, then vanished the moment the damage was done, leaving the rest of us to clean up the wreckage.
By the time I rebuilt his half-baked data and presented the client pitch while coughing through a Zoom call, I was too sick to even be angry.
But when the boss announced Gary’s reward — an all-expenses-paid vacation for his “dedication” — I saw red.
And that was the moment I decided: Gary wasn’t walking away from this lie untouched. Not with me still standing.
The Gathering Storm Clouds: That Awful Overture
The first cough echoed through the Monday morning quiet of Sterling Marketing like a gunshot in a library. It wasn’t just any cough. It was a deep, wet, phlegmy explosion, the kind that makes you instinctively check if you’ve been spattered.
I knew that cough. Gary Thorne.
He shuffled past my cubicle, a man whose martyr complex had its own frequent flyer miles. He wasn’t wearing a mask. Of course, he wasn’t.
Masks were for the weak, the undedicated. Gary was a trooper.
“Morning, Laura,” he rasped, his voice sounding like gravel gargled with mucus. He paused by my desk, leaning in conspiratorially, as if sharing a vital secret instead of a cloud of potential pathogens.
“Big week, huh? Henderson account. All hands on deck.”
His breath, warm and vaguely medicinal, washed over me. I subtly leaned back, my hand hovering near the hand sanitizer I kept religiously stocked.
“Morning, Gary,” I managed, trying to keep my tone neutral. “Feeling okay?”
A ridiculous question, given the auditory evidence.
He waved a dismissive hand, nearly knocking over my framed photo of Tom and Michael at the lake last summer. “Just a tickle. Nothing a real worker can’t handle.”
“Gotta push through, right? This Henderson deal is make-or-break for us. Mr. Henderson himself said it’s our Q4 game-changer.”
He was already moving towards his own den of contagion, leaving behind an invisible miasma of… well, Gary. I watched him go, a knot tightening in my stomach. The Henderson account.
It was massive, the biggest client pitch our department had handled in years. I was lead project manager on it. The pressure was already immense without adding a biological crisis to the mix.
My computer screen glowed with the project timeline, a complex web of dependencies and deadlines. It was tight, aggressive, but doable if everyone pulled their weight and, crucially, stayed healthy. A big if, apparently.
I took a long sip of my rapidly cooling coffee. The first cough was the overture. I had a sinking feeling the full symphony of sickness was about to begin, and I had a front-row seat whether I wanted one or not.
The air already felt thicker.
“Just A Little Something I Picked Up”
By mid-morning, Gary was a one-man germ orchestra. His cubicle, unfortunately situated just across the aisle and one down from mine, became Ground Zero. Every few minutes, another hacking eruption would shatter the illusion of productive calm.
Sneezes followed, wet and uncontained. He’d punctuate these with loud nose-blows that sounded like a walrus in distress.
During a brief lull, Susan from Accounting poked her head over her cubicle wall, her eyes wide. She mouthed, “Is he serious?”
I just shrugged, a gesture meant to convey ‘what can you do?’ mixed with ‘I know, it’s awful.’
Later, I saw him at the communal coffee machine, looking even worse. His face was pale, except for two feverish spots high on his cheeks. His eyes were bloodshot.
He was, naturally, maskless, refilling his “World’s Okayest Employee” mug.
“You know, Gary,” I said, keeping my distance as I waited for the microwave to heat my lunch – a sad salad I was already losing my appetite for. “There’s really no shame in taking a sick day. We can cover for a bit.”
It was a lie, mostly. Covering for anyone on the Henderson project right now would be a nightmare, but his presence was an active threat.
He turned, a theatrical sigh escaping his chapped lips. “Laura, some of us understand commitment. Deadlines don’t care if you’ve got the sniffles.”
“This is just a little something I picked up. Probably from my kid’s school. You know how it is.”
I didn’t, actually. My Michael was ten, and if he was even remotely as sick as Gary currently appeared, he’d be home, quarantined with Netflix and chicken soup. He certainly wouldn’t be sent to inflict his germs on his classmates.
“Right,” I said, my voice flatter than I intended. “But if it’s something contagious, you could take out half the team. Especially with the Henderson pressure.”
He actually scoffed. “Oh, please. It’s a cold.”
“People are too soft these days. Back in my day at MacroCorp, you came in unless you were literally on a stretcher. Builds character.”
He took a noisy slurp of his coffee, wincing slightly as it went down. “Besides, Mr. Henderson is counting on me for my input on the creative. Can’t let him down.”
His “input on the creative” usually involved him suggesting slightly different shades of blue for PowerPoint backgrounds. The man was delusional about his indispensability, and dangerously cavalier about everyone else’s health. My microwave dinged.
Salvation.
Brews, Blues, and Bad Attitudes
The breakroom felt smaller with Gary in it, not just physically, but emotionally. His martyrdom seemed to suck the air out of the place. I grabbed my salad, acutely aware of him watching me.
“You really think I should go home?” he asked, his tone daring me to say yes. It was a test.
He wanted to be told he was too valuable, too essential to leave.
I decided to meet the challenge, but not in the way he hoped. “Honestly, Gary? Yes. I think you should.”
“For your own sake, so you can actually get better, and for everyone else’s. We’re all under the gun with Henderson. The last thing we need is an office-wide flu.”
I kept my voice calm, reasonable. Like I was explaining why the sky was blue to a particularly stubborn toddler.
He bristled. His pallid skin seemed to flush a little.
“See, that’s the difference between some of us and others, Laura. Some of us see a challenge and we rise to it. We don’t run for the hills at the first sign of a cough.”
“This company needs dedication, especially now. Mr. Henderson values dedication.” He tapped his chest.
“Work ethic. That’s what gets big projects like Henderson landed.”
The unspoken accusation hung in the air: You don’t have it. You’re suggesting I leave, therefore you’re weak. It was infuriating.
My work ethic had me at my desk by 7:30 AM most days and frequently working late to ensure every detail of projects like Henderson was nailed down. I just didn’t believe in performative suffering.
“My work ethic includes not wanting to infect my colleagues, Gary,” I said, my voice a little tighter now. “It’s about team well-being ensuring we can deliver, not just one person grandstanding while everyone else gets sick.”
He just shook his head, a smug little smile playing on his lips. “Agree to disagree, I guess. Some of us are built tougher.”
He coughed again, a rattling sound that seemed to shake his thin frame, directly into his hand, which he then used to open the breakroom door. I watched him walk out, a trail of invisible viral breadcrumbs in his wake.
I stood there for a moment, my salad forgotten. The sheer, unadulterated selfishness of it was breathtaking. He wasn’t just sick; he was proud of being sick and present.
He was weaponizing his illness as a badge of honor. And the Henderson account, our critical project, was squarely in his line of fire. I suddenly felt a desperate need to douse my hands, my desk, my entire life, in industrial-strength disinfectant.
The First Domino
Back at my desk, the air seemed to crackle with unspoken anxieties. Every sniffle from a nearby cubicle, every throat clear, made me jump. I found myself tracking Gary’s movements, his coughs acting as a morbid form of sonar.
He was making his rounds, “collaborating,” as he’d call it, leaning over shoulders, pointing at screens, sharing his unique brand of airborne generosity.
I was deep into reviewing the media buy spreadsheet for the Henderson pitch, my brow furrowed in concentration, when a new sound pierced the usual office hum. It wasn’t Gary. It was a sneeze – a loud, Achoo!-Hoo-Hoo! kind of sneeze, the kind that can’t be easily stifled.
I looked up. Two cubes down, in the direction Gary had last patrolled, sat Amelia from Graphic Design. Her head was in her hands.
She sneezed again, a smaller, more defeated sound this time.
My blood ran cold. Amelia was a rock. Never sick.
Always cheerful. And her cubicle was directly in the fallout zone of Gary’s earlier “consultation” about font choices for the Henderson presentation.
She looked up, caught my eye, and gave a weak, apologetic smile. “Wow,” she said, her voice already thick. “Where did that come from?”
I knew where. We all knew where. It was unspoken, but the knowledge hung heavy in the air, as tangible as the scent of stale coffee and fear.
Gary, oblivious or perhaps choosing to be, continued to tap loudly on his keyboard, occasionally punctuated by his signature cough.
The first domino had fallen.
I stared at the Henderson project plan on my screen, a complex Gantt chart of tasks and milestones. Each colored bar represented a critical step, a piece of the puzzle that needed to be perfect. Now, overlaid on that meticulously planned structure, I could almost see a new, invisible layer.
It was a rapidly spreading stain of illness, threatening to swamp the entire thing.
My stress levels, already high, ratcheted up another notch. This wasn’t just about avoiding a cold anymore. This was about saving a multi-million dollar account from being derailed by one man’s pathological need to be seen as a hero.
He seemed determined to do so, even if he had to create the disaster himself.
The day was barely done, and the siege had already begun.
The Viral Tide: Empty Chairs and Anxious Air
Tuesday morning, Amelia’s chair was vacant. An email from her sat in my inbox, timestamped 6:15 AM: “Feeling awful. Woke up with a fever.”
“So sorry, but I won’t be in. Laura, I left the latest Henderson mock-ups on the shared drive in the ‘For Review’ folder.”
My heart sank a little further. Amelia was crucial for the visual elements of the Henderson presentation. Her absence was a blow.
Gary, however, was present and accounted for. He looked even more spectral than the day before. If anything, he seemed to view Amelia’s absence as a personal victory, a testament to his superior constitution.
“Shame about Amelia,” he croaked to Mark from Sales, who was unwise enough to stop by Gary’s cubicle. “Guess some folks just don’t have the stamina. Good thing some of us are still holding down the fort for Henderson, eh?”
He actually winked, then devolved into a coughing fit that made Mark visibly recoil and invent an urgent need to be elsewhere.
The office atmosphere was palpably different. The usual Tuesday buzz was muted, replaced by a nervous quiet. Every cough, every sneeze from anyone now drew furtive glances.
Hand sanitizer bottles appeared on more desks. The tissue box in the breakroom, usually full for a week, was half empty by 10 AM.
I tried to focus on the Henderson account, diving into Amelia’s mock-ups. They were good, as always, but needed a few tweaks she would normally handle in an hour. Now, it would fall to someone else, or more likely, to me.
This added another task to my already overflowing plate.
Mr. Henderson, our boss, a man whose moods could dictate the entire office climate, strode through mid-morning. He was all smiles and pep, clearly oblivious to the undercurrent of viral dread. “Team Henderson!” he boomed, clapping me on the shoulder a little too hard.
“Looking strong! Client meeting is set for next Monday. Let’s knock their socks off!”
He glanced at Amelia’s empty chair. “Amelia out today?”
“Yes, Mr. Henderson,” I said. “She’s not feeling well.”
“Hmm, unfortunate. Well, make sure her deliverables are covered. This pitch needs to be flawless, Laura.”
“Flawless.” He gave another hearty clap and moved on, leaving a wake of expensive cologne and heightened anxiety. Flawless.
Right. While a plague rat roamed free.
The Contagion Spreads
By Wednesday morning, the office looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie where the only survivors were really dedicated (or foolish) office workers. Mark from Sales was out. Two people from IT.
Susan from Accounting, who had looked so worried on Monday, sent a terse email: “Fever. Chills. Staying home.”
The empty chairs were like missing teeth in a once-bright smile. The remaining few of us exchanged grim looks. There was an unspoken camaraderie, the kind forged in shared adversity.
We were the survivors, for now.
Gary, miraculously or perhaps perversely, was still there. He looked like death on a cracker, his skin a pasty grey, his eyes sunk deep into their sockets. He moved slower, his coughs more ragged.
But he was there.
He even attempted a joke when he saw me looking his way. “Still standing, Laura! Someone’s gotta keep the lights on for Henderson, right?”
He tried a grin, which turned into a grimace, then a wet, hacking cough into his bare hand. He wiped it on his trousers.
I just stared at him, a cold fury mixing with a strange sort of pity. What was he trying to prove? And to whom?
Did he genuinely believe this display of self-destruction was impressive?
Later that morning, Mr. Henderson called an impromptu “Henderson Huddle.” It was in the small conference room with the few of us still standing: me, Gary, a very nervous-looking intern named Ben, and Priya. Priya was a quiet data analyst who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else.
“Alright team,” Henderson began, pacing the small room. “Obviously, we’ve had a few… absences. Unfortunate timing.”
“But the Henderson account waits for no one. Laura, how are we looking on the main presentation deck? Gary, your competitive analysis section – is that finalized?”
Gary, propped against the wall as if standing unsupported was too much effort, actually managed to puff out his chest slightly. “Nearly there, Mr. Henderson. Just polishing.”
“Wouldn’t dream of letting a little bug slow me down when something this critical is on the line.” He punctuated this with a cough he tried to stifle, which only made it sound more alarming.
Henderson, to my utter disbelief, beamed at him. “That’s the spirit, Gary! Dedication!”
“Love to see it.” He then turned to me. “Laura, I trust you’re reallocating tasks from those who are out?”
“We can’t afford any slippage.”
“Yes, Mr. Henderson,” I said, my voice tight. “I’m integrating Amelia’s design work and coordinating with IT remotely for the tech specs Mark was handling.”
My own to-do list was now a terrifying scroll.
“Excellent.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s keep pushing.”
“This is our moment.”
As we filed out, Gary brushed past me, a faint, sickly-sweet odor clinging to him. “See?” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Told you.”
“Work ethic.”
I didn’t dignify that with a response. I just felt a growing dread. And, if I was honest with myself, the tiniest, most unwelcome tickle at the back of my own throat.
That Damnable Itch
The tickle started subtly on Wednesday afternoon. A faint scratchiness, like a tiny feather duster had taken up residence in my esophagus. I tried to ignore it.
I drank more water. I popped a throat lozenge from the emergency stash in my desk drawer. It’s just stress, I told myself.
Or maybe the dry office air.
But by the time I was packing up to leave, the tickle had become a persistent itch. My head felt a little fuzzy, my eyes a bit too warm. Denying it was becoming increasingly difficult.
Driving home, I replayed the last few days in my mind. Gary’s coughs. His proximity.
The shared air of the breakroom, the conference room. It was like watching a slow-motion car crash you couldn’t prevent. I’d been so focused on everyone else, on the project, I hadn’t seriously considered that I’d be next.
“You okay, hon?” Tom asked as I walked in the door. He took one look at my face and his smile faltered. “You look… rough.”
“Just tired,” I lied, not wanting to worry him, or perhaps not wanting to admit it to myself. “Long day. Henderson account is a beast.”
Michael came running for his usual hug. “Mommy!” I hugged him, but a little voice in my head screamed, Germs!
I quickly steered him towards washing his hands before dinner, using it as an excuse to scrub my own for an extra-long time.
Dinner was a quiet affair. I picked at my food, the itch in my throat now accompanied by a dull ache in my sinuses. Tom kept shooting me concerned glances.
“Seriously, Laura, are you coming down with something?” he finally asked as we cleared the table. “You’ve barely said two words.”
I sighed, leaning against the counter. The energy to maintain the pretense was gone. “I think… I think I might be.”
“Gary Thorne came into work Monday sick as a dog, coughing everywhere. Half the office is out now. And I’ve had this scratchy throat all afternoon.”
Tom’s expression darkened. He knew about Gary, the office martyr. I’d complained about his performative workaholism before.
“That idiot,” he muttered. “He’s going to take the whole damn company down with him. You should call in sick tomorrow.”
“I can’t,” I said, the words tasting like ash. “The Henderson presentation is next Monday. Gary was supposed to handle a huge chunk of it, and he’s clearly not up to it, even if he was in the office.”
“Amelia’s out. Mark’s out. If I go down, the whole thing could collapse.”
The weight of it felt crushing.
“So let it collapse,” Tom said, his voice firm. “It’s not your fault if that moron infects everyone. Your health is more important than some damn project, Laura.”
I knew he was right, logically. Ethically. But the project manager in me, the part that prided herself on delivering no matter what, recoiled at the thought.
“I just… I need to see how I feel in the morning,” I prevaricated. But deep down, as the ache behind my eyes intensified, I knew. The viral tide was coming for me.
Project Lifeline, Fraying Fast
Thursday morning. The itch was no longer an itch. It was a full-blown assault.
My throat felt like I’d swallowed sandpaper. My head throbbed with a relentless, dull pulse. Every joint in my body ached.
Getting out of bed felt like climbing Everest.
“Nope,” Tom said, taking one look at me as I stumbled towards the bathroom. “You are not going to work. Call Henderson.”
“Tell him you’re sick. Tell him Gary Thorne is a public health hazard.”
“I can’t just…” I started, my voice a pathetic croak, then coughed, a dry, racking sound that sent daggers through my chest. Okay, maybe he had a point.
I checked my work email on my phone from the sofa, wrapped in a blanket despite the mild October weather. More out-of-office replies. An email from Priya, the data analyst, saying she’d woken up with a fever.
Even Gary had finally succumbed. An email from his personal account, brief and misspelled: “Not feLing gud. Won’t be in.”
“Henderson stuff on my desktop.”
His desktop. Which was at the office. And probably coated in a fine layer of his DNA.
Fantastic.
The sheer, infuriating irresponsibility of it all made my head pound harder. He’d come in, a walking biohazard, for two and a half days, spewing germs and rhetoric about “work ethic,” infecting half the department, and then decided he was too sick to even email his files properly.
An email pinged from Mr. Henderson, addressed to the “Henderson Project Team Remainder” – which, at this point, felt like just me and perhaps the intern, Ben, if he hadn’t wisely fled the county.
“Team,” it read, in his usual upbeat tone that now grated like nails on a chalkboard. “Hope everyone who’s under the weather is resting up! Just a reminder, the client pre-brief is still scheduled for this Friday afternoon via Zoom – they want a sneak peek of the core campaign concept.”
“And the main presentation is Monday AM sharp. Laura, I assume you have everything under control? Let me know if there are any red flags.”
“We need this win!”
Red flags? I thought, staring at the email through blurry eyes. The entire field was a giant, waving, crimson banner of red flags. I was sick.
Key team members were sick. The supposed “dedicated” one had crashed and burned, leaving his work in limbo.
I coughed again, a deep, painful spasm. “Under control,” I croaked to the empty living room. My own work ethic, the one that Tom often said was both my superpower and my kryptonite, was warring with the undeniable reality of my failing body.
But Henderson’s email, the looming deadlines, the thought of all that work going down the drain because of Gary’s selfishness… it lit a small, desperate fire under me.
Somehow, some way, I had to salvage this. The project lifeline was fraying fast, and it felt like I was the only one left holding onto the strands.
The Fever Dream Finish: Couch Command Center
My living room couch became my command center. Laptop perched precariously on a stack of cushions, a mountain range of used tissues growing on the coffee table beside a battalion of medications: cough syrup, decongestants, painkillers, throat lozenges. Tom set me up with a thermos of hot tea and a worried frown before he left for work, after making me promise to call him if I felt worse.
Michael, looking concerned, gave me an extra-long hug before school, his small hand patting my back. “Feel better, Mommy.”
The first order of business was Gary’s “competitive analysis.” I managed to get Ben, the intern, to help. Thankfully, he still seemed healthy, wisely working from a remote corner of the office.
He had to go to Gary’s desk, brave the biohazard zone, and email me whatever files he could find.
What arrived was… a mess. It was a half-finished PowerPoint with placeholder text, a few random links to competitor websites, and a spreadsheet with questionable data. The data looked like it had been compiled by a drunken chimpanzee.
There was no analysis, no insight. It was just a jumble of raw, undigested information.
His “polishing” claim to Henderson had been a bald-faced lie.
A wave of fury, so potent it momentarily cleared my sinuses, washed over me. This man, this purveyor of pestilence and platitudes, hadn’t just made us all sick; he’d also completely dropped the ball on his actual responsibilities. His “work ethic” was a sham, a noisy distraction from his incompetence.
I started to cough, a hacking, relentless barrage that left me breathless and aching. My head throbbed in time with each spasm. This was going to be so much harder than I thought.
I had to reconstruct his entire section from scratch, on top of managing my own deliverables, Amelia’s design integration, and Mark’s IT coordination. All while battling a fever that made the room occasionally tilt.
“Okay, Laura,” I muttered to myself, my voice a raspy whisper. “One thing at a time.”
I took a large, painful swallow of tea and opened a fresh document. The Henderson account wasn’t just a project anymore; it was a personal Everest I had to conquer, if only to spite Gary Thorne.
The hours crawled by in a blur of shivering, sweating, and staring intently at the glowing screen. Each keystroke felt like an effort. My focus waxed and waned with the waves of fever.
Sometimes the words on the screen swam before my eyes. I’d close them for a moment, take a deep, shuddering breath, and force myself back.
Delirium and Data Points
Thursday afternoon bled into Thursday evening. Tom came home, took one look at me, and his face creased with worry. “Laura, you look terrible.”
“You need to rest.”
“Almost there,” I mumbled, not looking up from a particularly convoluted spreadsheet I was trying to decipher for Gary’s section. It was supposed to show market share, but the formulas were all wrong. They referenced cells that didn’t even exist.
It was like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube designed by a sadist.
He gently took the laptop from me. “No. Dinner.”
“Then bed. Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.”
I was too exhausted to argue. He helped me to the table, and I managed a few bites of soup. Every swallow was agony.
The conversation was minimal; I just didn’t have the energy. Michael looked at me with wide, anxious eyes, which made me feel even worse.
Sleep, when it came, was fitful and filled with bizarre, fever-induced dreams. I was trapped in a giant PowerPoint presentation, pursued by giant, coughing microbes with Gary’s face, all while Mr. Henderson shouted “Flawless! Flawless!” from a distant mountain peak made of discarded tissues.
I woke up Friday morning feeling like I’d been run over by a truck, then backed over for good measure. But the Friday afternoon client pre-brief loomed. I had to have the core campaign concept slides ready.
Dragging myself back to the couch command center, I powered up the laptop. The screen felt too bright, the hum of the machine too loud. My body screamed for rest.
But the deadline was a siren call I couldn’t ignore.
I worked through the morning in a state of grim, aching determination. The data points for Gary’s competitive analysis started to make a twisted kind of sense, or maybe my delirium was just filling in the gaps. I found Amelia’s beautiful mock-ups and managed to integrate them into the main deck.
I resized images with trembling fingers and chose fonts through a haze of fatigue.
I Skyped with Ben, my voice a hoarse whisper, to confirm some technical details Mark would have known. Ben, bless his intern heart, was patient and helpful.
Around noon, a coughing fit seized me. It was so violent and prolonged I thought I might actually cough up a lung. I was left gasping, tears streaming down my face, utterly spent.
For a moment, I just sat there, head in my hands. The sheer unfairness and misery of it all washed over me.
Gary did this. His selfishness, his fake bravado, had led to this – me, sick as a dog, trying to salvage his mess and everyone else’s, all for a project he’d probably try to take credit for if it succeeded.
A new kind of anger, cold and sharp, cut through the fever fog. No. He wouldn’t.
I would finish this. I would make it brilliant. And then… then I would figure out what came next.
But first, the work.
The One-Woman (Flu-Ridden) Army
The Friday afternoon Zoom pre-brief with the Henderson execs was an out-of-body experience. I propped myself up with pillows. I aimed a small desk lamp at my face to counteract the ghoulish pallor my webcam would otherwise broadcast, and plastered on what I hoped was a confident, capable smile.
My voice was still raspy. I pitched it low and spoke slowly. I hoped it sounded thoughtful rather than diseased.
“Laura, you sound a little under the weather,” Mr. Henderson said at the start of the call, his face a little too close to his own webcam.
“Just a bit of a cold, Mr. Henderson,” I managed, the lie tasting like a combination of cough drops and self-loathing. “Nothing to worry about. We’re all very excited to share our initial concepts for the Henderson campaign.”
For the next hour, I walked them through the core strategy, the key messaging, and Amelia’s stunning visuals. I even managed to present the competitive analysis – the section I’d rebuilt from Gary’s digital rubble. Its coherence surprised even myself.
The clients asked sharp questions.
I answered them, my brain working on overdrive despite the cotton wool feeling that enveloped it. Adrenaline, or perhaps just sheer desperation, was a powerful drug.
By the end of the call, they seemed impressed. “This is very strong, Laura,” the lead Henderson client said. “Really captures what we were hoping for.”
“Looking forward to the full presentation on Monday.”
Mr. Henderson was beaming. “Excellent work, Laura! Knew you had it under control!”
As soon as the call ended, my carefully constructed facade crumbled. I sagged against the pillows, every muscle screaming, my throat on fire. “Under control,” I whispered, then coughed until I saw spots.
The rest of Friday, and all of Saturday, became a blur of finalizing the full presentation. I wove in the data Priya had managed to send before she succumbed. I tweaked transitions.
I wrote speaker notes, anticipating questions. I was a one-woman army, fueled by DayQuil, tea, and a burning resentment towards Gary Thorne. Tom hovered.
He brought me food I barely touched and refilled my water, his face a constant mask of concern.
Michael drew me “get well soon” pictures filled with surprisingly accurate depictions of my laptop and tissue boxes.
I wasn’t just doing my job anymore. I was finishing Gary’s. I was covering for Amelia and Mark and Priya.
I was holding the Henderson account together with sheer, bloody-minded willpower and a rapidly dwindling supply of acetaminophen. The ethical voice in my head screamed this was wrong. It said I should be resting, that the company didn’t deserve this level of sacrifice.
But that voice grew fainter, drowned out by the roar of the approaching deadline.
Sent. And Oblivion.
Sunday. The final push. My body felt like a badly tuned engine, sputtering and threatening to stall at any moment.
The fever had mercifully broken, but it left behind a bone-deep weariness, a cough that rattled my ribs, and a head that felt three sizes too big.
Every slide was a victory. Every polished bullet point a tiny act of defiance. I reviewed the entire deck – all seventy-three slides of it – checking for typos, alignment issues, broken links.
My eyes burned. My back ached from hours hunched over the laptop.
Gary’s section, now a robust and insightful analysis of the competitive landscape, bore no resemblance to the train wreck he’d abandoned. Amelia’s designs sang. The strategy flowed logically.
It was, if I allowed myself a moment of bleary-eyed pride, a damned good presentation. It was Henderson-worthy.
Late Sunday afternoon, with the autumn sun casting long shadows into my dim living room, I performed the final ritual. Save. Save As PDF.
Open email. Attach file. Subject: HENDERSON ACCOUNT – FINAL PRESENTATION.
My finger hovered over the “Send” button. This was it. Days of feverish work, of pushing my body to its absolute limit, of shouldering the responsibilities of half a department, all culminating in this single click.
A wave of dizziness washed over me. The screen blurred. For a horrifying second, I thought I might pass out before I could send it.
I squeezed my eyes shut, took a ragged breath, and clicked.
The email vanished from my outbox. Sent.
A strange sort of anti-climax settled over me. There were no trumpets, no confetti. Just the quiet hum of the laptop and the echo of my own harsh cough in the silent room.
I closed the laptop. The click of the lid felt incredibly final. I tried to stand, but my legs were shaky.
I made it as far as the couch, half-stumbling, and collapsed onto the cushions. A profound exhaustion, heavier than anything I’d ever experienced, pulled me down.
Was it good enough? Did I miss anything critical in my flu-induced haze? Would Mr. Henderson be happy?
Would the clients be wowed?
I didn’t know. And in that moment, I found I barely cared. I had done all I could.
More than I should have.
The last thought that drifted through my mind before a deep, dark unconsciousness claimed me was a blurry image of Gary Thorne’s smug face, overlaid with the word “Hawaii.” Just a random, fever-dream fragment. Or so I hoped.
Then, nothing.
The Bitter Taste of Victory: The Lingering Haze
Waking up on Monday morning was like emerging from a deep dive, senses slowly returning, the pressure in my head gradually subsiding. The acute misery of the flu had passed, leaving behind a lingering exhaustion and a cough that still sounded like a rusty engine trying to turn over. My body felt like it had run a marathon I hadn’t trained for.
Which, in a way, it had.
The Henderson presentation was happening this morning, in person, at the client’s downtown office. Mr. Henderson would be leading it, using the deck I’d emailed. There was nothing more for me to do on that front.
The thought brought a strange mixture of relief and hollowness.
Tom had already left for work, and Michael for school. A note on the kitchen counter read: “Rest up. Proud of you.”
“Call if you need anything. ❤️ T.”
I made myself some tea, the hot liquid soothing my still-raw throat. The house was quiet. Too quiet.
For days, my world had revolved around the urgent, relentless demands of the Henderson project, the feverish push to the deadline. Now, silence.
I should have felt victorious. I’d pulled it off. Against the odds, against the biological warfare waged by Gary, against my own failing health, I’d delivered.
But instead of triumph, there was just a vast, echoing weariness and a simmering resentment that hadn’t quite faded with the fever.
I spent the morning drifting. I showered, the hot water a blessed relief on aching muscles. I tidied the wreckage of my couch command center.
I bagged up mountains of tissues and stacked empty medicine boxes.
It felt like clearing a battlefield.
Around lunchtime, my phone buzzed. A text from Mr. Henderson: “They LOVED it! Absolutely knocked it out of the park.”
“Henderson is ours! You’re a star, Laura! More details soon.”
“Celebrate!”
A small, tired smile touched my lips. “A star,” I murmured. It was good to hear.
It was what I’d worked for. But the word felt… distant. As if he were talking about someone else.
The effort had cost me too much to feel the pure elation I normally would. The victory felt tainted, somehow, by the memory of Gary’s coughs and my own fevered delirium. Still, we’d won.
That had to count for something.
An Email You Don’t Expect
I decided to log into my work laptop late Monday afternoon. I wasn’t planning on doing any actual work, just wanted to clear out my inbox, maybe get a sense of who else was back among the living. The thought of returning to the office tomorrow, to the scene of the viral crime, filled me with a vague trepidation.
My inbox was surprisingly light. A few out-of-office replies still trickling in. An email from Amelia, sounding much better, asking if I needed any follow-up design tweaks.
Good old Amelia.
Then I saw it. An email from Mr. Henderson, sent to the entire department. Subject: HUGE NEWS & A WELL-DESERVED REWARD!
My heart gave a little flutter. This was probably the official announcement about landing the Henderson account. Maybe a departmental lunch, or even a small bonus if Henderson was feeling particularly generous.
After the hell of the last week, any acknowledgment would be welcome.
I clicked it open, a sense of tired anticipation building.
“Team Sterling!” it began, his trademark ebullience practically leaping off the screen. “I am absolutely THRILLED to officially announce that we have WON the Henderson account! This is a landmark victory for our agency, a testament to the incredible talent and dedication within these walls.”
“The client was blown away by our pitch and the strategic thinking behind it.”
So far, so good. Standard corporate rah-rah.
“This success was a true team effort,” it continued, “but as you know, major wins often have key players who go above and beyond, who exemplify the commitment and drive that make Sterling Marketing a leader in our field.”
My eyes scanned down, looking for my name. Or Amelia’s. Or even Mark’s or Priya’s, for the parts they’d managed before being felled.
“To recognize such outstanding dedication, and to celebrate this monumental achievement,” Henderson’s email went on, the font seeming to get larger, more festive with each word, “I am incredibly excited to announce that I will be taking Gary Thorne and his family on an all-expenses-paid, week-long trip to Hawaii next month!”
I blinked. Reread the sentence. Gary Thorne?
Hawaii?
My blood turned to ice water.
Sunshine, Lies, and Utter Betrayal
The email continued, each word a fresh stab of disbelief. “Gary’s commitment to seeing the Henderson project through, especially while battling illness himself at the start of the crucial push, was truly inspiring. He came in, he pushed hard, he set an example of dedication for the whole team.”
“He was instrumental in shaping the competitive analysis that so impressed the Henderson execs. This trip is a small token of our immense appreciation for a real team player who truly embodies the Sterling spirit!”
There was even a picture embedded in the email. It was a candid shot from last year’s summer picnic – Mr. Henderson with his arm slung chummily around Gary’s shoulders. Both of them were grinning inanely at the camera, sun-drenched and carefree.
Gary, looking deceptively healthy and competent in the photo, a stark contrast to the wheezing, germ-spewing menace he’d actually been.
Instrumental in shaping the competitive analysis? The one I’d built from the ashes of his incompetence, fueled by fever and fury? Battling illness himself at the start?
He was the illness! He was patient zero, the super-spreader who’d brought half the department to its knees!
A strangled sound escaped my throat, a mixture of a laugh and a sob. My hands were shaking. I could feel the blood pounding in my temples, a furious, hot rhythm.
Hawaii. All-expenses-paid. For Gary Thorne.
For his “dedication.”
The sheer, unmitigated gall of it. The breathtaking injustice. It was like being punched in the gut, then kicked when I was down.
All that work. All those miserable, feverish hours. My health sacrificed, my family worried, my colleagues sickened.
And he was getting the reward? Because he’d performed a convincing charade of a dedicated employee while actively sabotaging the entire team?
I thought back to my brief, fever-dream image of Gary and Hawaii. It hadn’t been a random fragment. It had been a premonition of this grotesque, unbelievable reality.
The carefully constructed calm I’d cultivated since my recovery shattered into a million pieces. In its place was a rage so pure, so potent, it felt like it could burn the building down. This wasn’t just unfair.
This was a perversion of everything work, dedication, and simple human decency were supposed to mean.
The Silence of the Lambs (and Lions)
I stared at the screen, at Henderson’s beaming face in the photo next to Gary’s equally smug one, the cheerful, oblivious text of the email mocking me. The rage didn’t subside; it settled, deep and cold, in my chest. A dangerous, quiet fury.
What did Henderson know? Or, more to the point, what did he not know, or choose not to know? Had Gary, upon his miraculous recovery, spun some elaborate tale of his solo heroism, conveniently omitting the part where he’d been a walking biohazard and had offloaded his actual work onto me while I was battling the very plague he’d unleashed?
It seemed entirely plausible. Gary was a master of self-aggrandizing fiction.
Or was Henderson just that blind? That easily swayed by superficial displays of “commitment” over actual, grueling, project-saving labor? Did showing up sick and coughing theatrically count for more than quietly, competently, and sick-as-a-dog-edly delivering the entire damn project from a quarantine couch?
The silence from the rest of the department was deafening. Surely Amelia, Mark, Priya, anyone else who’d suffered through Gary’s Germ Warfare and then picked up the pieces, would see this for the outrage it was. Would anyone say anything?
Or would they, like me, be stunned into a furious, impotent silence?
The email ended with another cheerful exhortation: “Let’s all congratulate Gary on this well-deserved recognition! And let’s gear up to make the Henderson account our biggest success story yet!”
Congratulate Gary.
I felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to type a reply-all. A scorching, no-holds-barred account of what had really happened. To lay bare the hypocrisy, the injustice, the sheer, idiotic unfairness of it all.
To tell Mr. Henderson exactly what kind of “team player” Gary Thorne truly was.
But my fingers hovered over the keyboard, frozen. What would be the point? Would Henderson believe me over his chosen hero?
Would I be labeled a sore loser, not a team player, bitter and jealous? The corporate world had its own narratives, its own convenient truths. Gary, the sick-but-still-working martyr, was a much better story.
He was better than Laura, the competent-but-quiet project manager who just did her job, even when it nearly broke her.
The image of Gary in Hawaii, tanned and triumphant, his “dedication” rewarded with sunshine and mai tais, while I was left with the lingering cough and the bitter ashes of my monumental effort, seared itself into my brain.
He hadn’t just made me sick. He hadn’t just burdened me with his work. He’d stolen my victory, my recognition, and he’d been lauded as a hero for it.
And our boss, the man in charge, had either been duped or was a willing accomplice in the farce.
The rage was a living thing inside me now, cold and sharp and demanding an outlet. But what? What could I possibly do or say that would change anything?
The email was sent. The decision was made. The die was cast.
Gary was going to Hawaii. And I was left here, in the quiet of my living room, with nothing but the taste of ashes and the burning, unbearable knowledge of the truth
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