4: 4
He toed at the contract on the floor. “So either you play stubborn and call the cops, or you sign and take the money to save her. Your choice.”
I stared at the countdown on my phone screen, my head full of my mother's failing face in the ICU, my lips trembling so hard I could barely stand.
Call the police, and my mother would never last that long. Sign the contract, and my whole life was over.
Both roads were dead ends.
I flung the labor contract away, stumbled to the computer, frantically pulled up the resignation form and slapped it onto the desk.
“Then I quit! I'm quitting right now! The fifty thousand severance, I'll only take half.”
“Just transfer the money right now to save my mom. She can't afford to lose another second!”
My voice was hoarse, close to sobbing.
“You can quit, of course.” Mr. Fox let out a scoffing laugh and pointed at my work computer again.
“But per your non-compete agreement, before you leave you have to manually delete every client file and project archive on that machine. Eighty gigabytes total, sixty pages of categories. Every last one gone, nothing left behind! To keep you from leaking trade secrets.”
I looked at the wall of folders packed across the screen.
Just clicking through them once would take two hours, never mind wiping them clean.
But the hospital had left my mother only ten minutes.
“I'll come back tomorrow and delete all of it! Just send the severance to the hospital first, please? My mom really can't wait!”
I screamed it, breaking apart, my voice all desperation.
“No way! Who's going to guarantee you don't sell off our secrets tonight?”
Mr. Fox just folded his arms and watched me, deliberately raising his wrist to check his watch. “Eight minutes left. Take your time deleting. Wouldn't want to hold you up from saving anyone.”
Gail sneered from the side.
“Joyce, you've built up quite a lot of projects for the company these ten years. Hard work deleting all that. Better hurry.”
Looking at the gloating on both their faces, my vision went black, and all the despair I'd been holding in tore straight past reason.
I snatched up the computer and slammed it down against the floor.
A deafening crash, the case burst open, and shards flew out and struck Gail's face.
She touched the cut bleeding open on her cheek and shrieked in terror.
Mr. Fox backed up step after step, staring at me in disbelief. “Have you lost your mind? Joyce.”
I said nothing, bent down, picked up the broken graphics card and snapped it in two, then lifted my eyes and stared him down, my voice gone numb.
“Mr. Fox, all the electronic data is destroyed. There's no leak risk anymore.”
“Now, can you transfer my severance?”
My phone rang out sharply. The whole lobby went dead silent in an instant, every eye on me.
I stiffly pressed answer. The doctor's exhausted voice came through, carrying across the entire lobby.
“Miss Harding, I'm sorry. Two minutes ago your mother's heart stopped. We did everything we could, but it was too late. Right before she went, she kept saying your name over and over, saying you'd surely come to save her...”
