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Wednesday 15th
She remembered working in an office where the atmosphere of tension had become so severe and pervasive that she could barely see more than a few feet in any direction. She remembered her colleagues, her friends. But what she couldn't remember was ever reading between the lines of her fallout with Cohen Wellington.
She couldn't deny how much more crystal everything had become since detective Harrington's confession on her kitchen chair. Cohen had sent the notes, both of them. He'd slipped one on her desk in her absence, he'd slipped one outside her apartment door. She'd wanted to know where he'd gotten her address from, but then she'd realized not only was he the owner of the firm, but but named parter as well, he could easily have derived her address from the employee payroll.
With each click and clank of her Brian Atwood heels, against Wellington & Turner's lobby floors, her heart on overdrive in her chest and highly sensitive skin tingling as a gust of from the firms air conditioning wafted across the room, Christina knew she couldn't slip her identity card underneath her fingers and gain access to her floor anymore. But she needed to see Cohen. She needed to know that Barron Harrington was indeed on to something. It's the reason she'd come without him, she'd needed to know for herself.
Barron would have liked to be there, she'd known this and even still, slithered away like a guilty serpent. Her sin was an overcoat, one that clung to her caramel melanin skin.
"Good morning, Miss Gresham," Grinned Margret, a blue eyed, receptionist with a not-so-secret fondness for sugary sweets. Christina stalled by the front desk, placing her Yves Saint Laurent handbag on the polished surface.
"I need to see Cohen, is there anyway you can... just let me up there?" Christina knew word of her unemployment would have travelled. It must have started as a rumor, hushed whispers amongst her colleagues the same day she'd wormed knowingly into her father's arraignment. The fall in Margrets naturally preppy face was enough of a response. And Even still, Christina dawdled for the words that would sting like a honeybee.
"You know I would love to help you out Christina, you've not only been a great addition to this firm but a great friend to all of us..." These were stories, quotes to butter her up. "... But it's not in my jurisdiction to let you into the fifth floor. And you know Cohen is having a meeting with the partners. He's trying to pick up the firm since loosing you." She wanted to say the tingling in her belly could be traced to how touched she was that her absence had affected the firm so much. She liked to believe the lightness in her head was an idea that was going to sneak her up to the fifth floor. It wasn't.
Christina Gresham didn't want anyone at her office to know about her disease. It's the reason she'd thrown on a mushroom wig, one she was sure had to be reducing the circulation of blood to her head. It's the reason why with trembling hands, breath hitched, short and forced, Christina clutched onto the edges of Margret's desk and dared to bring her forehead together with the brisk imported pinewood desk.
"Christina? Are you alright? Did you hurry over here without eating again?" She could hear the concern in Margret, a woman who was forced to forgo her maternal instincts when her newborn had died in her arms just hours after crying on her chest. Christina had hoped her friend had recovered, but hearing the piercing screech Margret had eluded when she'd lost her grip on the ends and edges of the table, Christina knew even though everything was slowly fading, that Margret had never forgotten the day her life changed less than ten months ago.
She couldn't deny her disease was indeed a journey, one that was gradually teaching her that cancer could be hidden, overlooked, but it was a burden that demanded to be felt, noticed by not one, by the world, an overwhelming force.
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