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“It should be.” He lifts a hand toward the stage where Bane is still speaking with clients. “You saved us.”
“We all saved it.”
Raj gives me a look. “I typed very quickly. Olympic standard.”
He grins before disappearing back towards the control room.
The boardroom fills over the next twenty minutes with executives, department heads and enough coffee to keep the building awake until Monday.
I settle into a chair near the end of the table as everyone works through the morning, discussing client feedback and the additional meetings already appearing in their calendars.
“Excellent recovery,” one director says, looking around the table. “I’d never have guessed there’d been an issue.”
“That was the objective,” Bane replies before turning another page in the briefing pack.
One of the senior executives looks across at me. “I’ve heard you reorganized the entire presentation with less than twenty minutes to spare.”
I glance at Raj. “It wasn’t a solo effort.”
He laughs outright.
“I’m flattered, but I’ll decline credit for this one.” He folds his arms across his chest. “Emma walked into the control room, looked at the schedule once, and rewrote the launch before I’d finished explaining what had gone wrong. The rest of us spent the next forty minutes trying to keep up.”
“I prefer to think we all adapted,” I say.
Bane looks my way. “Excellent work, Emma.”
“Thank you.”
The meeting carries on for another hour, covering budgets, implementation dates and follow up actions, and I keep pace until a wave of nausea rolls through my stomach hard enough to steal my concentration.
As the discussion shifts to the European rollout, I press my fingertips against my temple and hope the sickness passes as quickly as it arrived.
It doesn’t.
As soon as the meeting breaks, I gather my notebook and slip into the corridor, telling myself I’ve probably fueled the entire morning with caffeine instead of breakfast.
The smell of fresh coffee drifts through the doorway.
My stomach turns so quickly that I stop walking altogether. “Oh…”
“Uh-oh.” I look up to find Lena topping up her mug at the coffee machine. “You good, Emma?”
I lean against the doorframe and press the heel of my hand against my stomach. “I think I’ve overdone the caffeine.”
She glances at the coffee pot, then back at me. “Interesting diagnosis, considering you’re looking at coffee the way I’d look at a tax audit.”
“I don’t think I want any.”
She pauses with the pot halfway to her mug. “You?”
“I know.” I laugh, although it comes out weaker than I’d like. “I skipped breakfast.”
“That, I believe.” She sets the coffee pot aside and opens the cupboard above the kettle. “Tea?”
The suggestion sounds far more appealing.
“Please.”
