Last normal day
There’s an odd sense of anxiety in the air that infiltrates the room the way a thick bank of fog creeps in over a valley and smothers everything in its path. Everyone’s a little on edge. You can hear the whispers as you pass through the hallways on the way to the team meeting. How far the virus has spread in other areas. How maybe the company will shut down. How you should start making preparations just in case.
You’ve never been one to keep up with current events. It doesn’t seem so bad when you look straight ahead and hurry straight down the hall to your meeting. Later, you might lament that you didn’t take your time. That you didn’t stop by the front desk to congratulate the receptionist for her nephew’s birth, that you didn’t poke your head in to greet your coworker as he shuffled in after his lunch break with a bag of Chipotle, that you didn’t sneak by the kitchen to grab a coffee and pocket a couple of chocolates from the candy jar. But you didn’t know that this might be the last day you would be able to slink into the conference room five minutes late, so you make it to the meeting, coffee-less and on time.
The team leader happens to be your best friend and roommate. He’s always been the image of perpetual calmness, and today is no different. Seeing him act the same way as usual sets your mind at ease. Within the soundproof bubble of the conference room, the virus doesn’t exist and you can talk freely about future plans to contact so-and-so and schedule as many pointless meetings as you want.
It’s not until everyone else leaves that your best friend sinks into his chair and rests his head in his hands.
“I’m really worried,” he confides in you, and suddenly you can’t pretend anymore. You want to comfort him in the way that he often does for you, but all of the usual words roll around uncertain on your tongue.
“Me too,” you say instead, and you sit there with him in silence until the hour changes and you need to go back to your desk.
It’s hard to focus on your work. You alternate between checking your email, Twitter, and newsfeed every fifteen minutes. You’re feeling antsy in your seat, so you get up to stretch a bit. Every day around 3:45, you take an eye-break from staring at your monitor and make rounds around the office. You hope that the light exercise will help settle your nervous energy, but instead it seems to build as you feed off the buzzing apprehension radiating from your coworkers.
The email you’ve both been waiting for and hoping never comes arrives in your inbox only a half hour before closing. Like an iceberg finally calving into the sea, suddenly everyone is rushing about, trying to figure out what needs to be taken home in order to continue on the project, if the project is even still running.
You stuff some files into your backpack. Files from today, files for tomorrow, files you’d been planning to get to next week. You then pack your work laptop, but hesitate holding your wireless mouse. It technically belongs to the company, but you’ve always preferred using a mouse to the trackpad. The mouse ends up tucked into a pocket. You can return it when you get back you figure.
The last part is tricky though. You have two potted plants on your desk, but can only carry one of them in your arms. If you leave one at the office, it would surely dry out and die.
Your best friend saves you once again by offering to carry the other plant.
You breathe a sigh of relief.
“At least you’ll be with me,” you say, and he gives you an exhausted smile.
The two of you exit the building and hop on the bus like you would on any other day, but with two potted plants sitting on your laps. The neighborhood has a different feel when you finally get off the bus. These waters are familiar, and yet, uncertain
June 2020
