Accidental Pregnancy (Rewriting Soon)

3 - finding out

She was gone..

Sitting in the meeting, Harry still couldn't believe it. Even after having close to two hours to absorb the news, he was still not able to truly comprehend what he had been told. It was all he could think about. He was not able to even pay attention to this meeting that he had called for. He couldn't bring himself to care. His mind was still on that moment two hours ago.

When he had visited the accounts department on some pretext that he had forgotten, he knew something was wrong when he saw her desk empty. He knew what that meant, an empty desk and he had been hoping he was wrong. But his supposition was confirmed when he had casually noted the empty desk to the head of the team, Jessica. Initially, he had been confused when she told him, assured him quite effusively, that it had been done. When probed about what the "it" was, he had been faced with bafflement but she had told him. That was when his stomach had dropped to his feet.

Elena was fired?

What? Why? How? He hadn't seen any reports on her. Not in the past few days. Although the human resource department is usually in charge of everything related to the personnel, he had to be aware of the potential firing of personnel. There were steps and procedures to rectify the performance or attitude and the final step was to be endorsed by him. So he was puzzled as to why he was not aware of this.

He was also puzzled by the reason that he had been told. He had seen that Jessica was also perplexed even though she had shown a confident front. He knew she was quite close to Elena. She had recommended her for many projects although her recommendations had not always been taken into consideration but he did understand why.

He knew Elena was a hard worker. She often stayed late into the night. He had noticed that when he had looked into her file. Her computer was always switched off at nine, ten on the some occasions and eleven on some rare moment. Her other team members all left at eight, nine at the latest. And her work were good, exemplary even. He had noticed the lack of any notes or writeups in her file. Not even during her first years of working in the company as a fresh graduate. So, no, he was not able to accept the flimsy reason for dismissing her.

The more he thought about it, the more it inflamed his need to get to the bottom of this. His hands gripping the arms of the chair tightly, he had to strongly tamp the urge to go to his office and investigate the chains of events, the starting point to the processing of her dismissal. It had to be recorded somewhere and usually, it would be noted in the employee's file. But when he had last checked her file this morning, there had been nothing. The only other way this could have had any weight was if one of the upper management had initiated it. Kept it off the records. That would have made the immediate supervisors not check for his approval. And this was troubling.

His gaze boring into the table, Harry knew it had only been purely happenstance that he had even visited the office that had just dismissed one of their employees. Dismissed Elena. She must have been on the way out when she had passed him her box. But wait- Tensing slightly, his gaze went to where the inner pocket of his suit jacket was. The pocket he had slipped the photo frame when he had chased after Elena. Ater she has passed him her box. Which brought to mind the question:

Since she was leaving, why did she pass him her box?

After knowing what he knew now, he was aware that his initial conjecture was wrong. She did not recognise him and dropping the box into his arms was not a bid to get his attention. She must have been heading out, leaving without his knowledge, when he had happened to be heading her way. He would have even passed her without recognising her since he always looked out for her when he came across her office. Even though her office was at the other side of the floor, he always managed to find a reason to walk by it.

And now, she's gone.

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Heading to his office once the meeting was over, Harry was still trying to figure out why Elena had given him the box, which now that he thought about it, had contained all of her stuff. The only reason he had not made the connection had been the small amount of items in the box. For someone who had worked for more than five years with the company, she had very little personal effects. Recalling the few bits of paper and the cactus, the only, truly personal item was the photo frame in his possession.