Random Esquire

The past two months, I have been working on a project of sorts at work.  We have important deadline tomorrow and so nearly every morning for the past three weeks, I get on a call with about 15 co-workers to discuss how things are progressing.  As the deadline looms closer, the calls have become a little more tense.

Our team is led by a woman from Georgia with a sweet southern accent who cracks the whip behind everyone.  On an afternoon call yesterday, she informed us all that she would not be able to run the call in the evening because she’d be having dinner with her family… because her mother was going to have open heart surgery the next morning.  It was a little like hearing that your Sherpa had to turn around and go home when you were nearly to the summit.

This morning, our leader returned to run our morning call.  At one point she stopped mid-sentence and said, “I have take this call… it’s my father from the hospital. My mother’s in surgery right now.”

Everyone froze while she switched calls.  A few minutes later, we knew she returned because we heard her sigh and then she said, “Guys, I’m having a rough morning.”

Someone said, “How’s your mom?”

She said her father called and said that a blockage has been found in her mother’s heart and a stint was being placed.  She sounded distraught.

Someone else said, “My father had open heart surgery… he has a pig valve in his heart.”

She said, “really?”

And then we talked for about 15 minutes and forgot our project and everyone seemed to take a deep breath and a collective exhale.

And then we got back to work.

It’s actually not so bad.