Single Player (15 page)

“Yeah, sure.” Caleb smiled. “That sounds cool. I'm happy to help however you need. How about Friday after work?”

“Sure, that sounds great.” Matthew paused before launching into the next statement. “I probably won't be alone, if that's okay. The guy I'm seeing is the one who designed the equipment, and he wants to be along for the process.” The words “the guy I'm seeing” slipped out without prior thought, and shit, that's really what Silas was becoming, wasn't he? They were slipping past “nothing serious” territory with each new encounter that moved beyond the bedroom. He didn't feel the expected panic at the thought, though. Maybe Isabel was wrong; maybe he wasn't averse to commitment. Maybe he just didn't have any experience in it.

“Oh yeah? Is this the guy you told us about at lunch?” Caleb's smile broadened. “You're seeing him now?”

“Sort of. It's complicated.” Complicated in that they hadn't defined anything, and he wasn't sure either of them
wanted
anything serious. He, for sure, had never been the serious type before now. “Let's say Friday, and I'll let you know if anything changes.”

Caleb nodded. “Sounds like a plan. And let me know if you need any specific equipment that you can't find. I have a lot of stuff.” He took a Post-it note and scrawled something on it before handing it over. “That's the address. I rent an air-conditioned storage unit at Storage Castle and I work out of there. We can check in later this week about times.”

“Got it.” Matthew tucked the note into his wallet. “Thanks.” He headed back to his desk, turning over the phrase “guy I'm seeing” in his mind and the oddly warm feeling it gave him.

Silas was the first
person in the building on Monday morning, which wasn't surprising, since most of his coworkers like to drag themselves in a little late on the first day of their workweek. With his own tendency to work weekends, it was hard to assess what the first day of his workweek actually
was.
It generally felt like one continuous workweek. The security guard waved him through, showing the same normal lax level security on any morning, and he rode the elevator up to his lab with an air of anticipation. He had a lot to do today, but he was frazzled and hadn't slept much the night before, so he felt a little scattered and out of control facing down all of the tasks he had to complete. He wanted them done, and yet he didn't know what to do when they were done. It was a frustrating cycle.

After dinner with Dee on Saturday, he'd taken her advice and had a day of relaxation on Sunday, which for him meant catching up on journal articles and planning for the week's work. It wasn't all that relaxing. He kept thinking about everything he wasn't accomplishing and had his projects in mind all evening, and hadn't slept much as a result. Now he felt the aftereffects of only a few hours of sleep. His family wouldn't have accepted lack of sleep as an excuse, though. His mother would have told him that laziness was no excuse to miss work, and that he was wasting his mental gifts. Her voice echoed in his head as the doors dinged open on his floor. Funny how even all these years after her death, this was what he remembered of her. He didn't know how to feel about that.

He had two hours of work time before anyone else showed up, two glorious, uninterrupted hours. He settled right in to the spot in front of his computer and started working on construction for his current project.

Only an hour into his peaceful time, though, he saw a shadow in the doorway, and it was Elliot Turner. Elliot's penchant for showing up in doorways was starting to bother him. “Hi, Silas. You're here early.”

“Yes. I'm getting a little extra time in right away this week. I thought I would take advantage of the quiet lab before everyone showed up.” He didn't even look up, hoping Elliot would take the hint and go away. Unlike on Saturday, eventually Elliot did leave.

Despite the early start, his day rapidly went downhill, with none of his work coming together as planned. He snapped at Travis and Pauline throughout the morning, annoyed that he wasn't succeeding at his tasks. He couldn't seem to do anything right, and above all, he felt an ominous sense that something terrible was about to happen.

That terrible thing turned out to be Elliot coming up to him, a grave look on his face, about an hour before lunchtime. “Silas, Maria would like to see you in her office.”

This wasn't good. Silas left his workstation, the sick sensation in his stomach all he could feel, dreading this meeting and dreading it even more as Elliot followed him in. Fantastic; he was going to have an audience for whatever this was.

Maria Baez was not known for suffering fools gladly. She had a frown on her face when Silas and Elliot entered her office, and that wasn't even noteworthy, since she had a frown on her face all the time. “Ah. Why don't you two have a seat.” She gestured to the chairs in front of her. “Silas, Elliot has brought some concerns to my attention. Elliot, why don't you address them with him?”

“All right, Maria. Thank you.” Elliot shifted in his chair. Oh wonderful. Elliot was delivering the terrible news, and Maria was the one here as a witness. This didn't make Silas feel any better about the conversation. “Silas, you've been with Wayscorp for several years now, right?”

“Five years,” Silas replied. He couldn't be getting fired. He hadn't done anything wrong. An upsurge of panic in his stomach accompanied his attempt to run down all the possibly fireable offenses he'd committed, but he came up empty.

Elliot nodded and continued. “You've been a model employee during that time. You have all the qualities we value in an engineer: you're creative, you complete tasks efficiently, you seldom complain, and your team members remark on your commitment to quality and your dedication.”

So far, this wasn't bad. None of these were negative traits.

“I reviewed building access records for the past few months.” Elliot made direct eye contact with Silas. “It looks like with the exception of one or two days, you've come in to work every single day of the week in the last six months.”

Silas scanned through his memories, and that statistic seemed accurate. “Yes, that's right.”

“And before that, you were only taking Sundays off. You've been here six days a week or more for . . .” Elliot started leafing through the stack of papers in his hand. “Nearly a year now. Is that correct?”

“Yes, that's also right.” Silas looked from Elliot to Maria. “I was unaware of any rule against putting in extra hours. I'm on salary, so I'm not claiming overtime. I'm just working to get these projects complete.” Which he should be doing now, actually, he wanted to add pointedly, but he knew that wasn't going to be well received.

“There isn't any rule against it, no, but we're very concerned about the health and well-being of our engineers here.” Maria folded her hands on her desk. “Elliot also told me that you haven't taken any vacation or personal time in over a year.”

“That's also correct.” Silas nodded.

“And before that, you only took a day or two off the year before for sick leave.” Elliot was far at the back of his pack of papers. “You took three weeks off once, but that was almost four years ago. Bereavement leave.”

Silas swallowed. “Yes. My parents were killed in a car accident. I took a few weeks off to clear my head.”

“I'm sorry for your loss.” Elliot sounded genuine in his support. “Since then, we've seen a steadily increasing number of work hours leading to almost a continuous work schedule for the past three months.” Elliot closed his folder. “Silas, let me be blunt. You're a smart guy. I'm concerned that you're going to burn out. I told you this on Saturday. Normally, you'd be free to come in as often as you'd like, but not when this schedule has resulted in a decline in the quality of your work. You're acting irrationally, you're snapping at me and at your coworkers, and the last few sets of plans you've submitted have shown careless errors.”

Silas felt like someone had slapped him. He was aware of most of this information, but not the careless errors part. He prided himself on being unfailingly meticulous in his work, always. “Careless errors?”

Elliot opened up his laptop and clicked through a few times, finally getting to what he wanted to show, and then turning the screen around. “I've corrected these basic arithmetic errors in the last three sets of plans you've sent me.”

Silas's knee-jerk reaction was to deny these claims, but he was too logical to dismiss them outright. Instead, he considered the screen. The truth was right in front of him. The arithmetic errors were obvious. He knew he hadn't been himself lately. He was aware of his increasing struggles to focus at work and succeed at his tasks. “I think there's some merit to what you're saying, yes,” he was forced to concede.

“Now I don't want you to worry. We have no intention of letting you go.” Maria pulled out a folder from a stack of neatly arranged and color-coded file folders on the right side of her desk. The one she withdrew was a red folder. Red, the color of blood. “You're a valuable employee and we don't want to lose you. We are, however, putting you on a four-week leave of absence for your mental health. Two weeks will be accumulated health leave, and the other two weeks are from the short-term disability account. Your personal time and vacation time remain untouched because we want you to take all of that, too, before the end of the year.” She slid a sheet over to him from the red folder, and it already had this information typed up, including the reasons for his leave and the date when he was allowed to return.

“So I'm not allowed to work for four weeks?” Silas felt the return of his panic, which was as severe as when he'd been worried about getting fired. “I didn't realize this was so significant. Can't I just agree to stop coming in on weekends?”

“No, this is more serious than that.” Elliot's eyes were kind, but Silas had a hard time seeing anything but his own anger and panic in the reflection. “We fear that without a drastic intervention, this is going to be a perpetuating cycle.”

“But what will I tell my coworkers?” Silas could feel their perceptions of failure on all sides.

Elliot shrugged. “Tell them whatever you'd like. Tell them you're taking all your vacation time at once. Tell them you have a sick relative. Tell them you're exhausted and asked to take time off. Or tell them the truth and say that we're making you take time off so you don't burn out. That's up to you.”

Silas leaned back heavily in his chair. He felt uprooted, weightless, that same feeling like when he drank too much or had been stoned, like the way he felt when he was with Matthew. Oh, Matthew. He was going to have to deal with Matthew. “What's going to happen with my project? I'm not finished yet. I'm close, but I'm not finished. And people are depending on me for my part of the work. I don't want to let anyone down.” He was going to have to give all that up.

Elliot shifted in his chair to face Silas. His expression was downcast, too, his frown and averted eyes indicating his discomfort. Silas had known him for years. He thought past his own concerns to acknowledge that Elliot probably hated doing this. “We're going to have the rest of the team pick up where you left off. When you return, you'll just rejoin them wherever they are.”

It wouldn't be his project anymore, then. He had always been part of a team, and Elliot was the project manager, but he'd privately thought of it as his, with the other people in the team supporting his endeavors. That was all going to shift, now. “I'm not sure what to do.” That part sounded as empty and hollow as he now felt.

“Do something fun!” Maria flashed him a smile, but Silas could see the traces of pity in her eyes despite that broad, toothy grin. “Go away on vacation. Travel. Take up a new hobby. Spend some time with friends. Go on a cruise. Whatever rejuvenates you.”

What rejuvenated him was work, but he had a feeling he couldn't say as much to this audience.

“Also,” Elliot added, sounding hesitant, “there are numerous mental health resources available through Wayscorp. They're in the employee resources section of the website. This isn't mandated, but I would recommend you speak to a professional.”

Silas felt himself nodding automatically without thinking much about it. He knew the value of mental health professionals, but had never seen one himself. The thought of doing so now evoked an interesting range of emotional responses, none of which were probably healthy. “All right.” He looked from Maria to Elliot, still feeling unmoored. “Can I go now?”

“Sure thing. Stop by HR with this form and we'll make sure everything gets processed.” Maria tapped the sheet and Silas picked it up, his fingers clumsy.

“Can I finish out the rest of the day?” It was hard not to feel like he was getting fired. All that was missing was a security escort going to watch him pack up a box of his belongings and take the elevator out.

Maria and Elliot exchanged a look. Silas could see the nonverbal communication that went back and forth between them, clues in their facial expressions that he had always struggled to interpret when he was younger. Now, from the way they looked at each other and gave identical small head shakes almost immediately, he could guess that they were having a familiar conversation. They had probably met several times recently, and most likely about him. That was an unsettling feeling.

“We think it's best if you go right now.” Maria adjusted the stack of folders on her right, making the edges line up again. “We don't want you to think of this as a disciplinary action, Silas. You'll be given full pay for the entire time you're away, and we do want you to come back. This is a precautionary measure for your own mental health. We want you to have a long and fruitful future at Wayscorp, and that starts here.”

It was hard not to feel like his long and fruitful future at Wayscorp
finished
here, rather than started. Silas got to his feet with the single sheet of paper in his hands, held lightly so he didn't crinkle it. He tried to find something to say, but he couldn't figure out what it was. Goodbye? Thank you? Go to hell? That last one probably would get him fired. He settled for giving them each a curt nod and walking out of Maria's office.

He expected Elliot to follow him out and apologize as he accompanied him back to his workstation, but that didn't happen. Apparently he wasn't enough of a risk that they thought he'd “go postal,” as the expression went. He was sure, though, that his key card was already being deactivated. Once he walked out of this office, he was done for four weeks. Four weeks to spend on something that rejuvenated him, when he hadn't felt honestly rejuvenated in . . . he wasn't sure how long.