Hell, I don’t even have the energy to translateScrew you, Kyleinto corporate-ese. As 5 P.M. strikes, I just sigh and watch everyone else file out of the office while I stay chained to my desk.
Now, with the sun long gone beneath the surface of Lake Michigan, I sit alone in the twentieth-floor offices of Hale Hospitality, bathed in the cold glow of my computer monitor.
My eyeballs hurt. That normally wouldn’t feel like a five-alarm fire—after all, I’ve been nostrils-deep in a spreadsheet all day—but with this morning’s bombshell, every single floater and blink is a disaster in the making. I can’t help but panic.
Is this it? Is this when the lights go out?
I grit my teeth and send the report to the printer at the far end of the floor. Then, while I wait for it to print, I minimize the spreadsheet and open up a new tab.
Leber congenital amaurosis—that’s what Dr. Haggerty called it.“It’s extraordinarily rare for it to manifest this late,”he said.“You’re actually quite the medical anomaly.”
Great. Just what every twenty-seven-year-old wants to hear. Hey, at least I am special.
The office is tomb-quiet. Everyone else, all those happy normies, have gone home to their normal lives with their normal problems and their normally functioning retinas.
Twenty floors below me, downtown Chicago goes about its Thursday night business. But up here, it is just me, the hum of the HVAC system, and the weight of my impending doom.
I push back from my desk. Kyle’s stupid report can wait. Googling the gruesome particularities of my future can wait. It can all wait, can’t it? In the grand scheme of things, does any of this matter?
Standing up, I close my eyes.
The darkness is immediate and absolute. My heart rate kicks up a notch, but I force myself to keep them shut. If this is going to be my reality in T-minus ninety days, I might as well start practicing now.
Baby steps first. I know this office like the back of my hand—or at least, I think I do. Three steps forward ought to put me at the edge of my cubicle. I shuffle forward, hands extended like a zombie in a B-movie, and immediately bang my hip on the corner of my desk.
“Okay, correction: two steps forward, not three.”
The sound of my scared, nasally voice makes me cringe. I am talking to myself in an empty office while playing blind woman’s bluff.
If this isn’t rock bottom, it’s at least basement-adjacent.
I try again. This time, I successfully navigate out of my cubicle and into the main hallway. My bruised hip is very grateful.
Ten steps to the break room. I count them out, running my fingers along the wall for guidance. The texture changes from painted drywall to the smooth surface of the glass partition?—
“Shit!”
I accidentally kick a waiting bench outside a VP’s office, in the exact same spot I stubbed my toe at Dr. Haggerty’s this morning. The pain makes me want to quit. It’d be so nice to just assume the fetal position on the ground and cry ‘til the cows come home.
But I do not quit, or cry, or tuck my head between my legs like a frightened little baby.
I keep going.
Because that’s what Eliana Hunter does. She keeps going—when her dad abandons the family, when she has to work three jobs to put herself through community college, when everyone says she’ll never make it past reception at a cutthroat company like Hale Hospitality with a cutthroat boss like Bastian Hale.
And she keeps going now…
… even if she can’t see where she’s headed.
The break room is easier. I know where the coffee maker is by smell alone (mostly because nobody ever cleans it properly). I successfully avoid both the refrigerator and the microwave that someone has definitely used to reheat fish again, despite my endless guerrilla campaign of passive-aggressive sticky notes.
Emboldened by my success, I decide to venture further. The executive wing is just down the hall. It’s usually off-limits after hours unless you are working directly with one of the C-suite.
But what are they going to do, fire me?
Well, that’s certainly an option. God knows Mr. Hale has fired enough people for far more minor infractions. There’s practically a trail of tears permanently inked into the carpet leading out from his office.
I glide my fingers along the wall, counting doorways. Conference Room A, Conference Room B, the supply closet where I once caught two sales associates in a decidedly non-professional embrace, and then?—
