No. I can't face that recognition in her eyes. Can't handle the gentle disappointment, the careful suggestions about "getting help," the underlying assumption that this breakdown was inevitable because I am, at my core, just like her.
I pull the blanket tighter around my head and wait.
After what feels like an hour but is probably only minutes, I hear Easton sigh. "She's not going to answer."
"This isn't like her," Brynn says, and there's frustration mixed with the worry now. "Even when she's hurt, she fights. She doesn't just... disappear."
But that's exactly what I've done. Disappeared. Not just from their concern, but from everything. I've deleted my LinkedIn profile, blocked news alerts, muted every group chat that might remind me of the professional world I used to inhabit. I am lost in the ruins of my own ambition.
"Tomorrow," Easton says finally. "If she doesn't answer tomorrow, we're getting the building manager to let us in."
The threat should motivate me to respond, to give them some sign of life before they stage an intervention. Instead, it just adds another layer to my exhaustion. Tomorrow, I'll have to force a mask of normalcy. Pretend I'm healing when really I'm just hollow.
Their footsteps retreat down the hallway, leaving me alone again with the silence and the weight of my failure.
I drift.
The afternoon light fades to evening gray, then to the artificial orange glow of streetlights filtering through windows I haven't bothered to cover. Somewhere in the building, a door slams. A car alarm wails briefly before cutting off. The normal sounds of people living normal lives, pursuingnormal dreams that won't detonate in boardrooms full of men who mistake cruelty for strength.
My phone sits facedown on the coffee table where I abandoned it yesterday, its silence now less merciful than ominous. No doubt there are messages accumulating—job recruiters with opportunities that pay half what I was making, former colleagues offering hollow condolences, maybe even media requests from outlets that want to turn my destruction into content.
I should check it. Should start the grim process of rebuilding from the ashes. Should prove to Easton and Brynn that I'm not completely broken.
Instead, I close my eyes and give in to the darkness again.
When awareness returns, it's to the sharp buzz of my phone vibrating against the wooden table. The sound cuts through my numb state like a fire alarm, jarring and impossible to ignore. I check the time through bleary eyes—4:47 a.m. Nothing good happens at 4:47 a.m. Medical emergencies. Family crises. The kind of catastrophes that make losing a job seem like a minor inconvenience.
With sluggish effort, I reach for the phone and flip it over. The screen blazes with an intensity that makes my adjusted eyes water. One new text message, from a number I don't recognize.
For a moment, I consider deleting it without reading. Whatever new problem this represents—another reporter digging, another job recruiter, another reminder of how far I've fallen—I don't have the strength to process it.
But something about the timestamp stops me. What kind of crisis makes someone text a stranger at 4:47 in the morning?
I open the message.
The photo loads first, and my heart stops.
Maya. Ten years old, gap-toothed grin bright enough to power the city. She's holding up a report card—straight A's marching across the page in perfect formation. But it's what she's wearing that resonates deep in my chest: a Minnesota Mammoths jersey, number 19, hanging loose on her small frame. Garrett's number.
555-237-9862
Hi Sloane, this is Emily, Maya's mom. Just wanted to reach out before I head into work—Maya was so excited this morning she made me promise to text you right away. She got all A's on her report card! She keeps saying it's because hockey taught her discipline and focus, and she wanted to make sure you knew. Thank you for believing in her. It's made all the difference.
I stare at the screen until my eyes blur with tears I didn't know I still had. Maya. Sweet, brilliant Maya whose mother works double shifts to afford equipment, whose dreams of working in hockey seemed impossible until I helped design programs specifically for kids like her. Maya, who still believes I matter. Who still sees me as someone worth thanking.
While I've been buried in despair, convinced my career is over, Maya has been out there living the vision I created. Proving that what I built had value beyond corporate politics and poisonous colleagues.
The analytical part of my brain—dormant for days—begins to stir. I sit up slowly, pushing the blanket away from my face, and read the message again. Then again. Each wordlands with increasing weight as the heavy despair finally begins to recede.
Thank you for believing in her.
But Maya doesn't know that I've been fired. Doesn't know that the programs she's benefiting from are being dismantled by executives who see community outreach as an expense rather than an investment. In her world, I'm still the woman who believed kids like her deserved opportunities. I'm still the architect of her success.
And suddenly, with sharp clarity, I understand my fundamental mistake.
I've been fighting the wrong battle.
For three days, I've been consumed with the injustice of my termination, the corruption of the system, the unfairness of Vivian's sabotage campaign. I appealed to Frank Miller's sense of ethics, presented evidence of wrongdoing, demanded accountability from an organization that had never once prioritized integrity over image.
