![]() It was a rare moment during which we had somehow scanned and duplicated each contract, updated the statuses of all our business deals, triple-checked for signatures on every line. When he left his cubicle to attend a meeting, we took the ball, formed a circle, and rolled it back and forth to each other. John replaced his chair with the stability ball the following day. “I should exercise more,” John continued. “Cardiovascular problems run in my family,” John said. “Mark was three years from retirement,” John said. He paced our floor and muttered to himself, his bald head sweating. John, in the accounts payable department next to ours, took the news harder than we did. Julie had taken to wearing her stringy blond hair into a top bun like Amanda’s, while Wes had adopted the same smirk Amanda used when someone asked for help on their projects. ![]() She was older than us and yet young enough for us to feel comfortable inviting her to lunch, complaining to her about our department, and asking her for dating advice. At the end of the day, she told us how relieved she was to have completed a huge campaign. Her heels made the same measured clack across the floor her smile held the same welcoming broadness. Amanda, meanwhile, had been with the company for seven years and was unphased by anything that happened in the office. We fidgeted at our desks and spoke in soft tones, worried that raising our voices would further our insensitivity. We knew our morbid excitement over the email had marked us as immature and unprofessional to ourselves and to each other. There had been a wall of EMTs and HR representatives surrounding Mark as if he were the eye of a storm, as if they were shielding us from witnessing something unsightly. We asked Amanda what she had seen, but she told us that she hadn’t gotten a good look at him as he was wheeled out of the building. We gave our condolences whenever we passed anyone from the communications team in the hallways. “That’s a marketing question,” Mark had replied via email.įor the rest of the day, we heard whispers about how this man we’d never met had collapsed at his desk. The only time any of us had contacted Mark was when our boss told Julie to check with the communications department on a stipulation involving a client and a third party. We were young and promising and ready to go over terms and clauses. Yasmina had been here almost a year, the longest of us new hires. ![]() Ellison had only been at his position for three months. No one in the contracts department knew Mark that well. We could have missed it had we not been waiting for it. It blended in with the rest of our inboxes. Navy blue font, no orange exclamation point. ![]() It looked just like the HR emails that reminded us of upcoming holidays and that skin cancer screenings were available on the top floor. A grief therapist will be available tomorrow in the conference space next to the break room for anyone who would like her services.” Mark has been with the company for 24 years. “We regret to inform you,” the email stated, “that Mark Lawson, senior director of communications, passed away this morning. ![]() We received the email from HR after lunch. We heard from Amanda in sales that a gurney had been sent up to the third floor this morning. ![]()
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