One minute, you’re fine. The next, you’re doubled over with tears spilling down your face while an aching black hole in your heart threatens to drag you into oblivion.

Grief’s funny like that.

Aggie Shaw, my old friend and mentor, had died of a sudden illness at home. She’d lived alone. Who found her? How? I didn’t know and never would. There was so much I’d never gotten a chance to tell her. She would’ve listened to me vent the frustrations and resentments I’d been burying over the years for sanity’s sake. She would’ve known what to do.

God, I missed her.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the brass expected Tech Support to go right back to business as usual. Maybe the rest of them wanted to bury their heads in casework. I didn’t. Between this, the horrible winter commute, and the promotion I’d never asked for, going back to the office felt impossible.

My boss wouldn’t let me use sick time. He really should’ve; the grief had hit me like a goddamn truck. Good thing the start of the new year a while back had refreshed my stack of paid time off. I started burning it from both ends.

When I wasn’t flat on my back or nursing a migraine, I was stumbling around my tiny apartment with half a brain cell, attending to the bare minimum of survival. Eat this. Drink that. Where’d I leave my smokes? In the rare times I could think, my thoughts were plagued with darkness. I didn’t know if I’d ever make it out of that mess.

Then, Megan called.

It was nearing noon that day. I was lying in bed, peering out my window at a dull gray sky and falling snow. I’d let everything else dump to voicemail, but when she rang, I answered with the urgency of a drowning victim grabbing a buoy.

“Hey,” she greeted, her voice subdued. “I heard about what happened. I’m really sorry.”

There was so much tumbling through my head, but none of it wanted to tumble out. “Thanks,” I managed.

“How are you?”

“Lousy.”

“Wanna meet up somewhere that isn’t work?” she asked. “The Apex Tower has a big indoor courtyard. I eat lunch there sometimes. If we go around 10 in the morning, we’d probably have it to ourselves.”

Something in me leapt at the offer. “I’d like that. Tomorrow?” I would still be on vacation-in-name-only.

“Sure,” Megan replied. “See you then!”

I had something to look forward to. Part of my emotional burden lifted right then and there.

It was a little easier to get out of bed the next morning. I took the bus to an unfamiliar spot of downtown, crossed a slush-covered plaza, and entered a skyscraper. The warm ground-floor courtyard boasted marble floors and immense windows for walls. Potted trees and flowers lined the perimeter. Huh, I’d forgotten those even existed.

Megan was already seated at a metal table flanked by two chairs. When she spotted me, she jumped to her feet and waved, a knowing and sympathetic look on her face. She waited until I reached the chair across from her to say, “You look like you could use a hug.”

I froze with surprise, one hand on my hat in the process of removing it. A hug? My puzzled brain tried to figure out just when I’d been hugged last. I had no idea. My body wasn’t waiting around for an answer. It was already turning toward her, arms raised.

Megan silently walked into my embrace and hugged back firmly.

Tears spilled down my face. My heart ached. And yet, another part of my invisible burden suddenly lifted. Something in me had been dying for this, for my pain to be seen.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

We parted. While I doffed my coat and hat, Megan returned to her chair, sitting back down across from me. “Whatever you need to get off your chest, go for it,” she offered.

I sat myself down, sniffled, blotted my eyes on my sleeve, then glanced high and low to confirm something I already knew: we were alone in that big empty joint. Still, I hesitated. At first, I wasn’t even sure I remembered how to string words together to form a sentence. But then it started gushing out of me like a busted water main. “You ever hear of rubber-duck debugging?”

Megan blinked. “No.”

Surprising. Most developers had, but she was fresh out of college. “A programmer came up with it way-back-when,” I explained. “Whenever you’re coding something and get real stuck on a bug or error, you find yourself a rubber duck. Go line by line in your code and explain to the duck, out loud, what you want the code to do. Eventually, you and the duck will find the point where your intentions and reality don’t match up.”

She smiled. “I like that.”

“Aggie had a rubber duck in her cube she called RD,” I continued. “Whenever she was stuck with a support issue or even a personal problem, didn’t know where to go next, she’d tell RD about it. He’d help her figure out what to do or ask next.

“When I first got hired, Aggie showed me the ropes. She always said, the best way to troubleshoot is to be the duck yourself. Get people, or hardware, or software to explain what they’re trying to do. You’ll figure out how to proceed.

“Some people are so upset at the problem that they take it out on the nearest target: the support rep who comes to help. Aggie could charm even the angriest people into cooperating with her. She was the best. She was the best, and all she got for her trouble was more work. Now that she’s no longer of any use to them, they’ve swept her under the rug. They want me to replace her!”

Megan’s eyes went wide.

“I’m no damn manager! I told my boss where to stick it. I’m riding out my PTO, and then hell if I know what’s next. I can’t go back there, I’d just be dying in place. And for what? So the bum at the top of the food chain can have a third yacht?” I leaned toward Megan, my gaze pleading with hers. “Look, I ain’t afraid of death. I’m afraid of dying before I’ve lived. I don’t want my only contribution to the world to be reimaging laptops and rescuing old printers. I can’t do it anymore. Can’t sit around complaining, either, I gotta do something! I gotta get the hell outta that joint!”

There it was: out in the open again, no longer whispered but shouted from the core of my being. Leaving was the right call for me. I felt it in my bones.

Megan held eye contact, blinking a few times. “I remember you saying you wanted to leave. If you did, what would you do?”

I’d never really let myself play with my little pipe dream. “I dunno exactly. But I’ve bought myself time to think it over. There are options, like going freelance.”

She blinked again. “Freelance tech support?”

“I majored in Computer Science back in school,” I said.

Her eyes went wide again. “Really?”

“Haven’t flexed those muscles in a while, but I could. Or I could get into something totally different. And you could come with.” Well aware of how unhappy she was at that joint, I sat up straighter in my chair. “We could start our own IT group. No bosses. Everyone an equal partner with an equal say in how things are run. And we could rope in anyone else who wants to come with!”

Megan seemed intrigued at first, but then sobered. “What about bills? Rent? Everything?”

“We could pool our resources and look out for each other,” I said. “That’d give us some time to get our feet under us.”

Her expression turned strained. “Aren’t you scared?”

“You bet I’m scared!” I glanced down at the table. “When I first got outta school, the idea of spending the whole rest of my life at a full-time job terrified me. But it seemed like everyone around me was fine with it. I thought I was the problem. Bit my lip, put my head down … for 20 years.” I glanced back up at her pleadingly. “Has it gotten any better? No. I’ve just gotten used to it. Another 20 years, and I won’t be any good for anything else. That’s if I make it that long! Aggie didn’t. Look, there’s no right or wrong answer, just what’s right for you. Listen to your gut. If you don’t like where you’re at, I’m living proof that staying the course is the wrong move. Leaving is risky … but so’s staying put, you know. The next round of layoffs could be right around the corner. You might get stuck babysitting that scheduling algorithm you were telling me about.”

Megan listened intently to my rant. Finally, she nodded. “You’re right. I’m not happy where I am, and it won’t get any better. Time to try something different.”

Still mired in grief, I had at least gained a new sense of purpose to keep me afloat in the storm. Megan went back to work like nothing had happened. With my remaining time off from work, I did some research into our options. Hunting around online turned up a highly-rated accountant who walked me through the bare-minimum corporate setup, the taxes and bookkeeping and all that. We both tracked down advice online from other freelancers who’d been where we were now. And we put out feelers among our coworkers. Our questions struck some nerves, but also stirred considerable interest. Reynaldo was in; we had ourselves a network guy. Sanjay, a backend developer, was a maybe who wanted more time to think it over.

There were plenty who wanted to join us badly, but couldn’t swing it due to debt, insurance, things like that. I urged them to think about one thing they could improve at work, one cause they could get behind. Whatever it was, I told them to start making it happen, one step at a time.

As my PTO bled away, I found myself half-exhilarated, half-scared outta my wits.

Finally, it was time to go back. That first morning seemed like any other, but with my secret purpose in mind, I sat on the bus and walked the bone-chilling streets with a secret strength hardening my spine. When the old joint appeared ahead of me, more foe than friend, I felt relief knowing our remaining time together was short.

Tech Support seemed no different; everyone was quietly minding their own business. I’d had plenty of time to think about what I’d do on the first day. My plan involved skipping my cube and heading straight to Aggie’s old office. After my talk with Megan, I’d decided to go looking for something. I had a snowball’s chance in hell of finding it, but something in me insisted on trying.

As I walked up to the closed front door, the first thing I noticed was my name, not hers, standing out in fresh, gleaming gold letters against the frosted glass. Pushing past revulsion, I grasped the doorknob and turned it.

The door gave way to darkness. I flipped the light switch with my other hand and found an empty desk, gutted shelves, bare walls. Looked like someone had come through with a giant trash can and thrown out whatever wasn’t bolted down. My revulsion intensified, but hey, at least I wasn’t trespassing. I shut the door to “my” office behind me and slowly approached the desk.

There was nothing to be found out in the open, not even a stray paperclip. I sat down hard in her old chair, reeling for a minute. Then I searched the desk drawers in front of me: first the bank on the left, then the right. Empty. I pulled out the drawer just under the desk—and there he was, swimming between a few stray pencils: a rubber duck about 3 inches tall. RD in the flesh.

It was as if Aggie had put him there for me to find. I couldn’t believe it. My spirits soared in a way they hadn’t for ages.

Just as I slipped the duck into my trench coat pocket, the door to her—my—office swung open again, making me freeze. There stood Bill, my boss.

“I saw the lights on in here.” A smug smile spread over his face. “I knew you’d be back. Bet it feels great, knowing you’re done babysitting all those morons and their computer equipment!”

Was that it? Twenty-odd years of my life boiled down into one cynical statement? No, there was more to it than that. For every bizarre war story, there were tales of grateful people helped, challenging problems solved. It hadn't been all bad. But it was over, just not the way Bill thought.

An electric mix of nerves and resolve jolted me to my feet. “I told you to find someone else, and I meant it. This is my two-week notice.”

I left Bill agape in that threshold and hurried back to my old cube, where my company-assigned laptop, docking station, and phone still resided. I hung up my coat, sank into my old chair, and booted up the machine. I had such a mountain of email in my inbox that I didn’t even want to look at it, but there was one message at the top that I absolutely couldn’t pry my eyes away from:

I moved some things around on my calendar. 4:00 PM today is open. Please come to the executive floor.

-Leila

To be continued ...

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