He Bet My Life and Lost Me Instead novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Lobby

Nina walks into the Monday all-hands and plays Marco's recording to fifty staff; Dylan and Lydia call it edited, and security arrives with a psychiatric hold.

On Monday morning my badge turned the reader red.

The lobby of Mercer Freight is two stories of glass and pale stone, and I had walked through it every day for six years.

The guard at the desk looked at his screen and then at the floor.

"Ms. Doyle, I'm sorry. I've been told not to let you up."

"Who told you?" I asked.

"The finance director. Last night."

I had a portable oxygen tank over my shoulder and my grandmother's old cardigan on, because everything I owned was still in Dylan's closet.

Behind me, Marco shifted his feet.

"The all-hands is at nine," I said. "I run the operations team. They'll be waiting for my report."

"Ma'am, I can't."

"Then call up and ask Dylan to come down," I said. "I'll wait."

The guard hesitated. He had known me for six years. Every winter I had brought him a coffee when the lobby doors froze.

He picked up the phone.

It rang twice upstairs. I heard a voice say something short.

The guard hung up and, without meeting my eyes, tapped his own badge against the turnstile.

"Go ahead," he said. "I didn't see you."

The elevator was full of people who stopped talking when I stepped in.

Nobody asked how I was.

Eleven floors up, the conference room was packed. Fifty people from every department were standing along the walls, holding coffee and tablets.

Dylan stood at the head of the long table in his charcoal suit.

Lydia sat at his right hand with a notebook, in the chair that used to be mine.

The finance director was on his left.

They all turned when I came through the door.

Dylan did not look surprised. He looked tired, and pained, and kind.

"Nina," he said softly. "I'm glad you came. We were just talking about how to support you."

"I'm here to give my report," I said.

"You've been placed on leave," the finance director said. "Please don't make this harder."

"Harder for who?"

Nobody answered.

I walked to the front of the room. Marco had followed me in, and nobody had stopped him either. He stood by the door with his phone in both hands.

"On Saturday," I said, "there was a fire at the retreat. Most of you were there."

Heads dipped. A woman from sales studied her coffee cup.

"My inhaler was filled with smoke. I couldn't breathe. Some of you watched me crawl."

"Nina," Dylan said.

"Marco, would you play it?"

Marco's hand shook, but he held the phone up to the speaker on the conference table and pressed the screen.

Dylan's voice filled the room.

I switched what was in the canister. Lydia said a couple of hits of smoke would help desensitize her.

Marco's voice, young and frantic. What?

It's a trauma response. The more you panic, the more she'll feel she needs rescuing.

A woman in the back put her hand over her mouth.

I'll make you shakshuka tomorrow, your favorite. Okay?

She's not faking it. Sir, she's not...

The recording ended.

The room was so quiet I could hear the air system.

Lydia put down her pen. She looked at Dylan, and then she looked at me.

"I'm so sorry," she said, in her kind voice. "I wasn't going to say anything, but I'm worried. That recording has been edited. You can hear the splices."

"There are no splices," Marco said.

"You're the catering boy," the finance director said coldly. "You'd say anything for a tip."

"I'm studying at culinary school," Marco said. "I've never taken a tip in my life that I didn't earn."

A few people laughed, then stopped when nobody else did.

Dylan raised his hand.

"Everyone, please," he said. "Thank you for your patience. Nina is clearly in distress, and it's my fault for not seeing how far it had gone. Someone can use a recording to prove anything these days."

"I know your voice, Dylan," I said. "So does everyone in this room."

"We know how convincing these tools have become," Lydia said gently. "Dylan has a lawyer looking at it."

A few of the vice presidents nodded.

The ones who had stepped backward on Saturday were nodding the hardest.

My chest was tightening.

I touched the tank at my shoulder and took a long, careful breath through the cannula.

"Look at me," I told them. "Not at him. Me. You saw me in that grass."

Nobody did.

"Nina," Dylan said, almost whispering. "Please. Let us help you."

He lifted two fingers.

The door opened behind me, and two security guards in grey jackets came in. One of them was holding a clipboard.

"Ms. Doyle," said the guard with the clipboard. "We have an application for a seventy-two hour psychiatric hold. We're going to need you to come with us."

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