A Potential Suitor

AMELIA

I was walking into work with my coffee in hand, gliding in with my usual chilled persona. Running ten minutes late, but who was keeping tabs?

I opened the door to the main office and nearly got knocked off my feet. People were rushing around, files in hand, phones going. “What the hell is going on?” I asked the nearest person to me.

“Some trouble with the firm. They are being sued or something, the press is calling, we’ve been given files to collect and review, and we’ve all been called into an emergency meeting.”

In the meeting, it was described as a few complaints about a couple of the staff members of the financial and investment firm I worked for.

I was a psychologist along with a few others, and it sounded like our notes and sessions would need to be scrutinized. After all, who would they tell all their issues to if not us?

As therapists, we had always been guided as to what we could and couldn’t put in the notes. Anything that might bring disrepute to the firm had to be passed to a senior, not noted in session documents.

This was always a verbal agreement that we were all well aware of. Of course, shit went down in this place, people screwed people over, and those were a lot of the issues staff presented us with.

The guilt eating away at the higher members of staff and the crap of taking it from the lower ones. It was a job where emotion was a weakness, and as they came through, they were trained to be emotionless and brutal.

I saw Jane gliding past in her exceptionally high New York heels. “Psst,” I hissed, she turned and looked at me.

“What are we, undercover or something? What the fuck’s with the psst?”

“I just wanted your take on all this. You work up on the main floor place, the place where all the magic happens.”

“Amelia, do you even know what we do here?”

“Do I need to?”

“No, but how the hell do you keep getting requested for your services? Do you even listen to their shit?”

“Not usually, but I have a good listening face.”

“Well, you’d better start listening, girl. They are gunning for the notes of any employee’s sessions. There are hundreds and we need you guys to help out with the lawyers to decipher them.”

At that moment, I was glad I had one thing I was always good at, and that was my notes!

A few days went by, and I was still no clearer on what was happening.

I was asked to go to the boss’s office. I had never been called into the office other than for annual appraisals and whatnot, but this was different. It seemed urgent.

“Amelia,” the older male boss said, as I walked into his large office. There was a box placed on the floor by the chair. As I sat down, I noticed more boxes piled up by his window.

He advised me about the session notes and the case. He pointed to the boxes he said housed all the notes the lawyers needed to go through.

He went on to tell me that over the next few weeks, I would be taking them over to Harrington, Epstein, and Walker, which was a very prestigious law firm situated a block away.

I had passed it many times and always admired the tall, exquisite building. The people coming and going from it all wore power suits and intimidated the hell out of me.

He asked if I could take the first box over today. Apparently, I had to stay with the notes as they were “company property.”

However, they could look over them with me there. Kind of like supervised visitation for a child, and I was the supervisor.

When he had finished droning on, I lifted the large box and headed out of the office. As soon as I got out, I set the box down. Did the old dude really expect me to carry this a block?

I saw John, the domestic worker who was always so helpful, and asked him if he could carry it to the door of their building. Luckily, he liked me, so he didn’t refuse.

The box was now sorted, but I looked like shit. I was wearing navy trousers, flats, and a blouse—nothing like the power suits the women at the law firm wore.

I was smart(ish) for a workday, but my hair I had just scraped up into a pony this morning, and I hadn’t even had time to put makeup on.