13. Revelations and Apologies
Revelations and Apologies
"Okay, before we go any further, we need to have a safety moment." Simon's announcement was followed by groans and mumbled complaints. "Yeah, yeah… quit your whining. We're technically supposed to do this at every meeting, so be happy I only do them once a month."
"He does?" Claire whispered to Jenny. "I've been here almost two months and this is the first time I've heard about it." Jenny giggled and elbowed her.
They sat up straight as Simon paused and glared around the room. "And don't tell anyone I said that unless you want more of them."
There was some grumbling, but everyone nodded in agreement before he continued.
"Okay. Today's safety topic is what to do when someone has a seizure."
Claire froze. What the heck? She had disclosed her condition when hired, but never thought to be put on the spot like this. When she glared at Simon, however, he wasn't looking at her. Instead, he was studying a brochure in his hands. Okay, maybe this wasn't about her.
He briefly ran down the first aid procedures listed on the card. Time the seizure. Keep them safe from harm. Turn them on their side. Don't put anything in their mouth.
"Any questions?" he asked.
"I thought you had to do something to keep them from swallowing their tongue," Larry said.
Claire opened her mouth to speak and quickly shut it again. Don't say anything. Keep your mouth shut.
"Yeah, and what about calling 911?"
Simon looked over the list. "It says nothing about swallowing your tongue, just no objects in their mouth. It does say to call 911 if the seizure lasts longer than five minutes or they don't return to their normal state."
The questions kept coming until Claire couldn't contain herself and spoke up. "Look, people don't swallow their tongues. And if you put your fingers in their mouth, they might bite them off, okay? Or if you use a spoon, they might chip their teeth on it when they spasm."
The room got quiet, and she continued, "The biggest thing is, don't let me hit my head.
The most common injuries with seizures occur when the person falls, specifically head injuries.
And seizures are usually over quickly—like under a minute—so an ambulance is rarely needed.
Do you know how expensive an ambulance ride is? "
Her breath hitched, and she bit her lip to cut off her rant. Well, hairy horse feathers . Way to stay out of the spotlight, Claire. She lowered her head and examined her hands clenched tightly in her lap.
"You said 'me,'" Jenny said.
"What?" Claire looked up.
"When you described someone having a seizure, you said 'don't let me hit my head.' You know about this personally, Claire?"
Claire crumpled in her chair. Ugh. She'd never intended to share her condition with anyone but her bosses. She swallowed under the scrutiny of her colleagues. Oh well. It was probably best they knew, since the team spent so much time together. And the Norway trip was coming up.
She straightened her spine and cleared her throat.
"Um, yes. I have a seizure disorder so it's probably good for y'all to know about it.
But it's well controlled through medication, and I haven't had one in a while.
As long as I'm taking my medication and dealing properly with my stress, it shouldn't be a problem.
" Claire crossed her fingers under the table, hoping she wasn't telling a big fat lie.
When no one said anything further, Simon cleared his throat and spoke again.
"Okay. Thanks for sharing, Claire. I'll forward this brochure on seizure first aid, so everyone has a copy.
Unless anyone has further questions, we're done with our safety moment.
What's the status on the development sandbox? Rick?"
The meeting continued as normal, with everyone giving their weekly updates. Claire was happy to sit in the background and let everyone talk around her. She'd had enough exposure today, thank you very much.
When the developers began briefing the team, Claire shook herself and sat up straight as her turn approached. When Simon called on her, she was ready.
"To update extended team members on the call, we got approval to use the report codes for the sites." A round of cheers went up, and Claire waited for everyone to settle before continuing. "I've set up a template for us to populate as we create them. Once we're done, we can simply upload the file."
Simon looked up from his computer. "I don't see the template in the repository. What folder did you save it in?"
Claire frowned. "I saved it in the site codes folder. Let me look." She opened the app, giving the universe a silent thank you when her password worked properly. She browsed through the directory.
The file was gone. Her pulse spiked. No, no, no. She skimmed through the other directories, hoping she'd mistakenly saved it elsewhere. Her heart thudded in her chest as her mind flashed back to NanoTechwise—files disappearing, code overwritten, her credibility chipped away one "mistake" at a time.
"I'm not sure what's going on," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "I've been working on it in the shared directory. It was there this morning."
Simon glanced at Vicki. "Are you aware of any other issues with the repository? Have we lost any other files?"
Vicki shrugged. "Not as far as I know."
Biting her lip, Claire looked at Simon. Between the technical issues and her epilepsy being exposed, she felt like she was losing ground with the team. But she could get it back. Thank goodness she'd learned her lesson with The Jerkwad at NanoTechwise.
She straightened her shoulders. "The good news is I have a backup.
I made a local copy of the final spreadsheet.
I'll upload it right now, so Noah can review it once we're done here.
" She caught Noah's eye. "It contains the key fields, but there may others you'd like to add.
It would be best if we finalize the format before we start filling it in. "
Noah nodded at her and made a note on his notepad.
"That's my update." Claire exhaled slowly and rolled her shoulders, then stretched her neck from side to side, trying to shake off the tension.
When Simon moved on to the next team member, she quietly uploaded the master site template again.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a beat longer than necessary.
Files didn't just vanish. She made a note to check if she could access the activity logs.
Something wasn't right. All her work would have been down the drain if not for her habit of backing everything up.
As they wound down, Rick reminded everyone they were running a complete database refresh on the development server over the weekend using Claire's upload method.
They'd been using it for minor data refreshes, and this would be the first time they'd used it to reset the development data to match production.
"And we're comfortable with the new process?" Simon asked.
Delbert surprised Claire by answering. "Yeah, Claire's process has worked great on quick refreshes and those are usually more complicated than an entire reset, so it shouldn't be an issue at all."
Claire beamed. She loved how they referred to it as her process and how quick everyone was to brag about it.
"Good. The leadership team was happy we came up with a secure solution for extracting our data after the situation with Wesley exposed our security weakness." Simon gathered his papers and prepared to close the meeting.
When Claire realized he wasn't going to expand, she asked, "Who's Wesley? And what security weakness did he expose?"
Silence descended, and the team exchanged wary looks. Claire's heart raced at the sudden tension in the room. What had she stepped into?
Shoot, shoot, shoot. Worst team meeting ever! Do not recommend.
She stumbled as she made her way blindly back to her office. She'd listened to Simon explain the events prior to her hiring. No wonder the team had treated her coldly. They'd hired her as a solution to a failure among their ranks. Once again, she was an outcast.
Her breath hitched at the thought. No, I refuse to be in that position again. And I've made progress here. She reached her office and shut the door.
After Stephan made her life miserable at work, simply because she'd refused to go out with him, she swore she would never again let herself wind up in a position where she was ostracized for something beyond her control.
She took a few shaky breaths and focused on the painting hanging on her wall.
Her dad had given it to her one year for Christmas, claiming the colors of the West Texas sunset matched the fire in her hair.
Breathe in through the nose, hold for four counts, breathe out through the mouth.
Breathe in, hold, breathe out. It was the mantra Dr. Jane had taught her to help manage stress.
The last thing she needed right now was a seizure.
A strangled laugh escaped her. Especially after she'd just reassured everyone that her condition was under control. Wouldn't that be fun?
Once her heartbeat was calmer, she reviewed what she'd learned.
This was a different scenario. Caprock's intrusion problem occurred before she was on the scene.
She didn't cause this. She cringed, hearing Lucinda's voice saying she didn't cause the mess with The Jerkwad, either.
And Simon's words made sense to a degree.
Hiring an in-house developer at some point was a given.
They were going to need in-house support eventually; they just moved it up in the timeline.
Okay, you can handle this. Now you know why they were hostile. But you've proven yourself, so they can go suck a lemon if they continue to be jerks about it.
The knock at her door interrupted her internal pep talk.
Noah slowed as he approached Claire's office. Through the vertical window alongside her closed door, he saw her sitting in her desk chair, her back to the door and her shoulders curled in as if protecting herself. He knocked three times and watched as she brought her hands up to her face.
Well, hell. She's crying . She'd remained quiet while Simon had given the history behind her hiring, but the consensus after she left was that she was upset. Noah wasn't sure how he got corralled into being the team rep, but here he was checking on her.
She called for him to come in and turned her chair to face forward. Her eyebrows rose when she saw it was him.
"Hey," Noah said as he took the guest chair facing her desk.
"Hey." She sniffed.
She looked so forlorn. His gut reaction was to gather her up and hold her close.
What the hell? Get a grip, Raines. Shoving that thought ruthlessly aside, he gripped the chair's armrests and cleared his throat.
"Look, I just wanted to let you know we think you're good at your job.
It took a while for us to clue in, but we know you're a positive addition to our team.
" While he spoke, his gaze bounced around, touching on the objects decorating her office, before coming to rest on her.
She stared back at him, her eyes narrowing. "You've been the most hostile to me," she said.
Yes, he had. He looked down at his hands. "I'm sorry about that. I was worried for my friends, and I shouldn't have taken it out on you."
"You move away from me as if I'm carrying a disease."
Noah flinched and scrubbed his face with his hands. Did she expect him to act on the attraction? "I don't get involved with coworkers."
"What?" Claire's voice raised three octaves on the delivery. The color drained from her face and she clenched the edge of her desk, her knuckles going white.
Noah took in her defensive posture, his eyes probing hers.
Something was wrong with her reaction. Was it possible she didn't feel the chemistry between them?
Was he the only one affected? God, he felt like an idiot.
"Never mind." He dismissed the topic with a wave of his hand and shook his head to clear his thoughts.
"We should have told you about the security breach.
It's important that you know why we do things the way we do. We're sorry. I'm sorry."
"I get it now. Why everyone was so cold at first?
I mean, Simon made it all sound legitimate, like y'all were going to fill this position eventually, but then the timetable moved forward.
But if I were in your position, I would have felt like they were bringing in a babysitter or something.
" Claire snorted. "And since my dad works here, y'all probably thought I was some kind of token hire. Great."
Noah cocked his head to the left. "Your father works here?" he asked.
"Yeah. My dad is the US-Mid regional manager. Don Broussard?"
Noah's eyebrows shot up. "Huh. I know Don. He's a good man. He's out in West Texas, right?"
She nodded, and he waited until Claire met his gaze.
"Nobody's mentioned that your dad worked here.
Also, I'm not sure it would matter at this company.
Caprock has many second- and even third-generation employees who got their start here because of their parents.
" He tried to tease a smile out of her, but she was pretty glum-looking still.
"Look, we had our doubts, but not because of you personally.
And you've proven your chops by helping make our lives easier with your slick upload process. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Right." He stood to leave, but hesitated at the door. Her agreement had seemed reluctant, and she still wasn't looking at him. "You good?"
"Yeah." Her gaze flicked up to meet his. "Thanks for checking on me, Noah."
Noah smiled. "No worries. You want this open or closed?"
"You can leave it open. Thanks."
"Sure. Later." He walked away, wondering about this apparently unreciprocated attraction. To be honest, he was a little taken aback. He felt it every time he looked at her. Why didn't she?