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It was an intervention. I knew this because there had been lots of interventions in my life, mostly from my mom who worried that I was going to kill myself with work-induced stress, and that she’d never dance at my wedding or celebrate a grandchild.

“You need to eat something besides this crap.” Malik held up the metal trash can that contained crumpled fast-food bags, an empty pizza box, and countless energy drink cans and coffee cups.

“When is the last time you saw your friends? Went to the gym?” Daniella asked.

“I just saw Jordan last night,” I protested. As for the gym…I wasn’t quite the workout queen that Willa and Stephanie were. The gym was torture. Necessary torture given that my job involved mostly sitting at a computer, and also given my affinity for greasy burgers and street tacos. Still, Daniella was right. I hadn’t been to the gym in over a week. At a minimum, I should at least attend a thirty-minute yoga class.

“You saw Jordan and the pair of you watched the Tusks’ game.” Daniella jabbed an accusing index finger at me. “I’d bet good money that you were sharing pics, commenting on posts, and tweeting the whole time.”

I winced.

“Go home.” Malik “Shower. Eat. Sleep.”

“I can’t. The team will be back….” Oh no. “Now. Oh my God, they’re probably pulling in now!”

Daniella sighed. “Their ETA is eight thirty, so you’ve got half an hour.

Crap. I started to dig through a box of jerseys, pulled out a medium, and gave my pits a quick sniff. “Head out and stage where we should be to get the best video angles of the team coming off the bus. I want to hype up tonight’s game and see if we can’t generate some last-minute ticket sales. Oh, and grab any of the open comp-seats and start calling around to fill those spots. Kids. Or seniors. Get signed releases so we can feature pictures and videos post-game.”

I yanked off my dirty, wrinkled shirt, not thinking about the fact that Daniella and Malik were still in the room. Sheesh, sometimes it was as if my mind went so fast that social convention went right out the window. At least my back was to the pair so all they saw was my bra band. Either way, I’d be lucky if I didn’t end up with a Human Resources complaint after this.

“Will do, boss!”

Malik’s voice sounded like he was close to the door, and I heard the click of it shutting as I pulled the jersey over my head. The box I’d been searching had been full of the women’s tees, so the medium clung to me like a second skin - another reminder that I hadn’t been to the gym in a while and had been eating too much fast food. I didn’t have time to find a larger size, so I left my office feeling more like a waitress at Hooters than a marketing manager.

Racing through the huge stadium, I wished that I’d planned this arrival better. I’d hoped to have a large crowd of fans to welcome the Tusks home, but they’d left Buffalo, New York late last night, and I hadn’t been sure exactly when they would arrive to arrange a welcome party. Plus there was the fact that most people worked on Friday, so efforts to bring them to the stadium in the morning hours wouldn’t have yielded the best results. After debating it all inside my brain, I’d finally decided to save my social media blitzes for things I was sure would result in an optimal experience for the fans, as well as a successful campaign. It was a good call given that most people were already at work at eight-thirty in the morning.

Dashing through the street entrance to the parking lot, I thought about grabbing random passerby and paying them to form a small crowd, but there really weren’t enough people within sight, and it wasn’t worth my scant budget. A crowd of five wouldn’t send the message I wanted, anyway.

“Why did you turn on the parking lot lights?” Daniella asked after I’d arrived, out of breath and flustered to where she and Malik had set up the cameras.

“Shadows,” I gasped out, waving up at the sun still low on the horizon and peeking through a gap in two buildings. “Need to have good lighting on the team coming off the bus.”

“I’ve got the close-up camera ready,” Malik called out. “Daniella is going to get the side-view, and we’ve got the two other cameras recording for the distance shots.”

I nodded, pulling my phone from my pocket. “I’ll grab any other footage and we’ll match up the resolution with editing software before we post the videos.”

These candid, informal pictures and videos were anything but informal or candid. I adored the fan content, but it presented a much different style and image than I wanted our official posts to carry. Some companies might brand themselves with a home-town, amateur-like style, but this was a NHL hockey team, and I needed even our impromptu shots to be polished and targeted to deliver the message I wanted to send.

And now it was a hurry-up-and-wait scenario. There three of us were silent aside from slurp noises as we drank our coffees. Now that I wasn’t running through the stadium or around the parking lot, I’d begun to shiver. With my usual absentmindedness, I’d left my jacket in my office, and was now standing outside in the pants I’d been wearing for over twenty-four hours and a jersey that was so tight a deep breath threatened to rip it apart at the seams.

A familiar car pulled into the parking lot and parked. Jordan jumped out and waved to me. Like the rest of us, she held a cup of coffee in her hand. Unlike me, she was appropriately dressed with a long-sleeve shirt, a fleece vest, and an adorable knit hat.

“Here to see Ozar?” I asked as she came up to me. Duh. Of course she was here to see Ozar. It wasn’t like she’d be late to her dentistry practice for any other reason than the sexy orc she was so deeply in love with.

“Yes.” She glanced at her watch. “They should be pulling in any minute now.”

Sure enough, I saw the bus make the turn at the edge of the lot and head towards us. Stepping away from Jordan, I filmed the approach, then a few clips of Jordan watching the bus with a huge smile on her face. This would be great. Her and Ozar’s romance had already started to create buzz, and now that I knew the pair had overcome their bump in the road, I fully intended on capitalizing on the love.

My phone buzzed just as the bus pulled into the parking lot. Normally I would have just ignored it, but something made me glance at the screen. Mom.

I immediately answered the call because my mother only called twice a month on Sunday evening. Not early Friday morning.

“Hey. Is everything okay?” I turned my back on the bus and took a few steps away from my crew.

“Everything is fine, sweetie. I just wanted to give you a head’s up that I’m heading in for a biopsy this morning. There was something that showed up last week on my mammogram, so they’re just going to take a little sample and see what it is. It’s probably a cyst or some scar tissue or something, but I wanted to let you know.”

That was not “everything is fine”. Fear stole my breath and it felt like ages before I was able to speak. “Mom, they don’t do biopsies for a little cyst or scar tissue. How big is this ‘something’? When will they have the biopsy results? What does your doctor think about this ‘something’?”