Thirty-nine: Not very reassuring

I walked into the building and rode the elevator to the floor our company rented.

"Good mor - Thunder balls. What happened to you?" Eleanor stopped amidst her morning greeting and rose in a hurry, brows drawn. Her face was lined and there were bags under her eyes. Perhaps she was stressed and hadn't slept well last night. I felt sorry for my tired looking team leader slash manager.

"This is what happens when glass explodes in your face," I said, feeling grumpy and not in the mood for niceties or smiling, "after you've looked death in the face and it's decided it doesn't like you. Never tell a sheet of glass to its face that you don't like the way it looks. It's unwise."

Eleanor released a belly of helpless laughter as if she hadn't laughed properly for a while and I had just happened to trigger her funny bone although I hadn't touched her. She followed me back to my desk. It was still very early morning and no one else had arrived for work yet.

"No, really," she said, putting a hand on my shoulder and forcing me to face her before I sat down. "What happened?"

"A sleepless night," I said, not looking at her and putting my bag away. Really, I just wanted to put my head down and sleep but was too scared of the images that might jump out at me. "Picking splinters out of my face."

"You're still wearing yesterday's clothes. Did you go back to the Compound at all?"

"No. I have no idea where I was or what happened. I don't know where the agents took me. All I know is that someone tried to kill me and I got glass in my face. I got shot at, blown up and shot at some more and somehow I'm still alive. There were Boskies and our government agents and conspiracies and I'm wondering when I started living in an action movie. Aren't I amazing?"

Eleanor looked at my trembling hands with me and couldn't join in with my weak laughter. Her forehead creased.

"The agents didn't do that to you on purpose, did they?"

"God only knows," I said, feeling my tummy growling and hoping Eleanor couldn't hear it. No dinner, no breakfast and I had no money for lunch today either. Lunch break wasn't long enough to run to the ATM, buy food, eat and come back again. Food time was going to be a long, long way away. "Someone obviously doesn't like my face or something. Every time I close my eyes, I can see that skull grinning at me before the glass exploded in my face. I can hear the bullets raining around me and I don't know whether I'm awake or asleep anymore. The agents told me I should be safe at work and that everything should have gone back to normal at the end of the day."

"That's not very reassuring," Eleanor turned me around on my swivel office chair, so that she could examine my face properly. "We need to clean you up a bit. You're still a bit of a mess," and she picked a shard of glass out from my collar. "Come to the toilets. I'll help you. Come on, Jean."

"Not that they've been very helpful in diverting the assassins in the past," I mumbled more to myself than to her, continuing my earlier rant as if I hadn't heard her, but letting her pull me along by the hand. I think I was losing my head and sense of propriety. "The Boskies seem to be fighting each other over my life and death and I just can't figure out why I'm so important. I don't know anything or any names. I don't know any secrets. I'm just an ordinary working girl that some stalking Bosky spy has decided to frame in order to try and throw our government and the other Boskies factions off his tail. Why do I have to be caught up in all this cloak and dagger business? Can't they let a girl try to survive the war?"

She gave me a squeeze around the shoulders. I didn't dare think to believe it, but could it be… could it be that she actually still cared about me? Even a little? I thought she'd long since decided that we couldn't be friends anymore after the Invasion. Could I have been wrong? I wanted to ask her. Really wanted to hear some sort of affirmation that somebody cared about my life or death besides my family that were so close and yet so far away… but felt it would be inappropriate. So I kept my mouth shut.

A stranger in the mirror looked back at me through red rimmed eyes and a shock of messy hair. She was right. I did look a mess. There were flecks of blood and dirt on my shirt too. We shook out the rest of the glass from my clothes, washed out the blood and dabbed my face clean using wet paper towels. I put on a jacket I'd left in the office instead of my shirt. Checked myself in the mirror. Looked okay. There were bags under my eyes and my hair just would not stay down, even with all the water we had used to try and comb it down.

"You should get some sleep," Eleanor said, looking at me through the bathroom mirror with concern.

"I don't think I'd be able to," I said, now that I had woken up more and had adrenaline coursing through my veins again. In a few minutes, caffeine would be the one coursing through me and keeping me awake. A door somewhere outside the bathroom slammed and I jumped, skittering a little against the washbasin. Eleanor reached out to reassure me and I hoped she couldn't feel how hard I was shaking. "Really," I said. "I don't think I can sleep right now. Okay if I work?"

"Yes," Eleanor said, quirking her lips to one side and frowning. She shrugged with a tiny gesture of the shoulders. "All right. Just let me know if you need anything or need to take a nap. I'll find you a nice, quiet place if you need."

"I'll do that," I said, walking out the echoey bathroom with her, "but now, I can hear the coffee calling my name."