"I know." I push a soft-boiled egg around my bowl. All morning long, my appetite has wavered somewhere between nonexistent and actively hostile. "I just don't understand what I did wrong."
"You didn't do anything wrong, babe. That's the point." Mitchy scowls at me fiercely. She's been my best friend since I started at Simon, the only other woman in our department full of frat bros in Patagonia vests who pop Zyns like it's a full-time job, the only one who understands what it's like to work twice as hard for half the recognition.
"You know what this is? This is him putting you back in your place because you saw him vulnerable."
"He was just shirtless, not vulnerable. And given the way his abs look, he's not exactly—you know what, I'm getting off track here."
"Rica, the man runs this company like Seal Team Six. You've seen his calendar. You've seen his clothes. You've seen his whole, y'know, aura. And yet you caught him off-guard. That probably scared the shit out of
him."
I want to argue, but something about what she's saying feels kinda right. The Andrew from last night was a completely different person from this morning's ice sculpture with an attitude.
"It doesn't matter anyway," I say, forcing myself to take a bite of noodles. They taste like cardboard, but that's not the ramen's fault. Everything has tasted like cardboard since Dr. Andy's life-ruiner of a prognosis.
"He made it very clear where I stand. Just another employee."
"Fuck. That," Mitchy declares. "You want to know where you stand? You're the woman who walked into that building six years ago with a community college degree and holes in her shoes, and worked your way upto senior project manager through sheer fucking brilliance. You're a fuckin' rock star, Ri."
"Somehow, I don't think he sees it that way."
"So then quit! Screw him! He needs you way more than you need him. You'd find another job like that—" She snaps her fingers. "—because you're great and he sucks and them's the facts, girl."
Quit. God, that's a terrifying word. I've been thinking it all morning, this wild, reckless idea that keeps sticking a toe in the deep end of my mind.
Quit. Walk away. Use these precious ninety days—eighty-eight and a half now—for something more fulfilling than dealing with Andrew Simon's temper tantrums.
"I can't quit," I whisper into my bowl.
"Why the hell not?"
"Health insurance, for one. Plus, y'know, like, rent, food, the radical idea that I need money to live."
"You're brilliant, Rica. Anyone in this industry who knows anything would be licking their lips at the thought of stealing you away from the blue-eyed bastard."
"Yeah, sure. I mean, maybe. But I—" Mitchy puts her hand on mine. "Look, I've watched you kill yourself for this man," she continues, softer now. "Always first in, last out. You do the most and you never ask for the easy way out. And for what? So some trust fund sociopath can humiliate you for being kind? For caring? Nuh-uh. Again, I say unto you: Fuck. that."
My eyes burn again, but this time, it's not from humiliation. It's from the God-it's-so-much of it all—the diagnosis, the exhaustion, the sudden clarity that I've been so focused on climbing the ladder that I never stopped to ask if it was leaning against the right wall.
"There's something else," I say. Mitchy's frown deepens. She knows me well enough to recognize when something's really wrong.
"What is it? Rica…?"
"I'm sick." I hate how that sounds, so I hurry to add, "Not cancer or anything; don't freak out; but my eyes… I'm… I'm going blind, Yas. In ninety days. That's what the doctor said. Three months before it all goes dark."
The restaurant noise continues around us—the clink of bowls, the hiss of the kitchen, someone laughing at the next table—but Mitchy has gone completely still.
"… What?" she asks at last.
"It's called Leber congenital amaurosis. It's genetic, apparently. Super rare for it to show up this late, which makes me a unicorn in all the wrong ways." I try for a laugh, but it comes out cracked and miserable. "So yeah, that's why I was practicing walking around with my eyes closed last night.That's why I ran into shirtless Andrew. And that's why I brought everyone pastries this morning—because I wanted to do something good while I still can, and look how that turned out."
Mitchy reaches across the table with her other hand and sandwiches both of
mine in her palms. "Ri, oh my God."
"Please don't cry," I beg, because if she cries, then I'll cry, and I've already used up my bathroom breakdown quota for the day.
"Me? Cry? Never." She wipes tears from her eyes and sniffles. "Is there treatment? Surgery? Anything?"
"Nope. Just a big ol' fuck you from the universe." I squeeze her hand back.
"Which, yeah, is another reason I can't quit. I need the health insurance for all the fun adaptive equipment I'm going to need. Screen readers, mobility training, the works."
"Forget the insurance." Mitchy is scowling again, my fierce little tigress. "You have three months of sight left, and you want to spend them letting Andrew Simon make you feel like shit? Fixing Sila's dumbass spreadsheets? No. I refuse to let you waste away in that gray cubicle all by your lonesome."
When she puts it like that, it sounds insane.
"But—"
"No buts. You know what you should be doing? Seeing the Aurora Borealis. Walking through the Louvre. Watching every damn sunset and reading every book you've been putting off. Looking at the faces of people you love." Her speech stumbles on the last one before she recovers and finishes, "Not wasting precious days being Andrew Simon's verbal punching bag. I won't let you."
I look away so she can't see my eyes studding with tears. As I do, I see my phone light up through the open mouth of my purse. Email notification. I almost ignore it, but the subject line makes my stomach drop.