16. The Seizure #2
Big, wet tears threatened to spill and he stopped laughing. "I was supposed to catch a ride with Randall. He's staying late, waiting for the Canadian controller to finish their numbers, and offered me a ride. When I finished with you, I was going to wait in his office until he's ready. Oh, no."
"It's okay. We'll call him. Is his number in your phone? Let me have it."
Noah pulled to the curb while Claire dug through her purse, then found Randall's number in her contacts. He plucked the phone from her hands and put it to his ear.
"Claire! I'll be ready in about twenty-five minutes. Are you on your way down now?" Randall asked.
"Hey, Randall, it's Noah. Claire and I finished early.
She's pretty beat and I told her I'd give her a ride home now, so she didn't have to wait on the spoiled Canadian.
" The scuttlebutt from Houston's accounting team was that the Canadian controller was demanding and regularly tested their patience.
Noah used the knowledge to distract Randall from asking after Claire.
"Hi, Noah. And OMG, yes! Spoiled is exactly right. Anyway, tell Miss Claire I'll catch up with her tomorrow. Thanks for taking care of her. Ta-ta."
Noah handed the phone back to Claire, who watched him steadily. He looked over his shoulder, then pulled back into the street and continued on their way.
Five minutes later, Claire directed him into a private garage, where she held up a fob and pushed a button to open the gate. Noah pulled into a visitor's spot and put the car in park. He sat back, watching Claire as she unbuckled her belt and carefully gathered her belongings.
"You're still shaky. Let me walk you up." He unbuckled his seat belt and reached for his door handle.
"No!" She winced. "I mean, no thank you. I'll be okay. The elevator's close, and it's not far from my front door. Really."
He paused, hand hovering over the handle. "You're sure?" He felt ungentlemanly just dropping her off after such a traumatic event. But perhaps she wasn't as rattled by what had happened as he was.
She looked at him, her smile soft but tired. "Yes, Noah. This is normal for me."
When she echoed his thoughts, he relaxed.
"Okay." He wasn't ready to let her go yet and asked the first thing that popped into his head.
"Why do you ride the bus? Do you not have a car?
" What the hell, man? Talk about inappropriate.
He tried to cover. "I thought all Texans had cars.
You know, because the state is so enormous. And you have to drive everywhere."
Lame as it was, the joke earned him a grin.
But her smile slid away. "No license." She hesitated, and he waited.
"Many states won't let you drive after a seizure.
In Texas, you must be seizure-free for at least six months.
" She shrugged. "Most days I take the bus, but when the weather cooperates, I ride my bike. "
"And that's why you wanted to live downtown," he said. He'd wondered at her choice of accommodations. One of the executives lived in the downtown area, but most of his peers considered it too expensive. Of course, with no car payment, more of your earnings could go toward rent.
"Yeah, Houston's transit system isn't anything like the northeast. Or Europe's, from what I'm told. I thought I'd make it easier on myself." She moved to open the door. "Thanks for taking care of me. And again, I am so sorry."
"Shh. I told you, no apologies. Do you want me to pick you up in the morning?"
He guessed her answer from the horrified look on her face, but it still made him grin when she spewed it out. "God, no! I mean, th-thank you for the offer, but… I already feel kind of helpless, ya know? Tomorrow, I'll be back to normal. Fingers crossed."
What? Noah's brow furrowed. "Seriously, will you be okay by tomorrow morning?"
Her shoulders fell. "Yes. I just need a good night's sleep. I tried to make a joke, but I see it fell flat. Sor?—"
"Do not say you're sorry!"
"Okay, okay! Thanks, Noah. The gate should open automatically for you." She pointed to the closed exit gate.
"Give me your phone. I'm going to put my number in it, so you can call me." He held his hand out, waiting for her phone.
She went still. "Um, I already have your number."
"You do?" His brows shot up. He blinked, caught off guard. His heart gave an extra thump.
Red creeped up her face. "Yeah, I got the core team's numbers from the directory when we first started working together. You know, just in case." She ducked her head and her hair fell forward, hiding her face.
Noah stared a beat longer than he should have, a slow smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Just in case, huh?
Though hidden by her hair, he heard the yawn that escaped her.
Right. She was exhausted. "Okay. So now you can call me tomorrow morning if you need a ride, yes?
" When she didn't answer, he reached over and gently brushed her hair aside, making eye contact.
"Claire? You'll call me if you need me, yes? "
"Yes," she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. As she reached for the car door, her jaw cracked open in another long, unrestrained yawn. She moved slowly, like every motion took effort. "Thank you for the ride," she added, blinking heavily. "Good night."
"Good night. Get some sleep and I'll see you tomorrow.
" He backed out and waited for the gate to open.
He watched her walk into the building in his rearview mirror, then turned onto the street and headed home.
Driving away took everything he had. He wanted to walk her up to make sure she got home safely, but the independent jut to her chin told him she needed space.
Claire kept waiting for the boot to kick. Wait, that wasn't right. What's the saying? She searched her brain. Waiting for the shoe to drop. That's it. Geez, the word-fishing showed up in strange ways.
She'd expected Noah to mention the seizure or remark about driving her home in the weekly meeting yesterday, but so far?
Nothing. Thinking he'd surely said something to the team at their usual poker night, she'd been on pins and needles all week waiting for Larry to say something snarky about it, but it never came.
And today was the last workday before she and Noah left for England next week.
She'd made it to Friday, and no one had mentioned it.
Something unfurled in her belly at the realization that he'd kept the incident between them.
She really needed to stop comparing him to The Jerkwad.
Today, she sat in the war room with the other developers.
Now that the site codes were figured out, the developers were reviewing both the planned modifications, and those already completed.
Nobody wanted a bug based on out-of-date specs.
Claire was tickled because they were actually including her as a bona fide developer.
The projector displayed Rick's spreadsheet on the screen and everyone followed along as he assigned names to items on the list.
"Okay, can I just say I love this report code solution?" Srini asked, typing away at his keyboard. He stopped and squinted at the screen before continuing.
"Yeah, far easier to use native functionality than try to reinvent the wheel," Delbert agreed. "Hours of time saved. My aching fingers thank you, Claire." He held his hands up and wiggled his fingers.
Claire giggled. "I hadn't realized you were so dramatic, Delbert."
Srini snorted. Rick added more names to the assigned column on the list. She noticed the guys typically worked in distinct areas and asked Rick about it.
"Yeah, we've all kind of settled into our lanes over time. Del and I have bounced around most of the modules, and Srini's been getting pulled into payroll more and more—despite his preference not to be the payroll expert."
"Humph," Delbert huffed, then grinned. "Better him than me."
"I hate payroll. It's so complicated and always changing. And it varies from state to state," Srini griped.
"Uh-huh. Keep in mind," Rick said, without looking up from his computer, "things which change frequently mean job security in the consulting world."
The group laughed and Claire wondered how many times they'd sat together like this over the years, giving each other grief while working on a client's system.
"Claire," Rick continued, "are you comfortable enough with our code-commit-push process to tackle some of the bigger modules?"
She nodded. "Yep. I appreciate you letting me familiarize myself over the last month with the smaller coding tasks while I learned your process. Where I was before, they actually held formal training on how to check out, mark up, etcetera, to make sure we all did it the same way."
"Yeah, I'm not worried about Claire commenting properly. Her attention to detail has already come to light. I'm hoping she can teach Srini what a freaking REM statement is." Delbert picked up a rubber ball he'd been playing with earlier and threw it across the table at Srini.
Claire laughed. She'd seen Srini's code and Delbert was right. Most coders used REM statements to explain their code and Srini's was noticeably lacking in documentation.
"Hey, I comment!" Srini caught the ball and returned it as he protested.
Rick chimed in, dry as ever. "Only when someone's twisting your arm or looking over your shoulder."
The camaraderie continued and something inside her relaxed. She was back in the saddle and where she belonged, working and playing with her fellow coders.