The few late workers popped up out of their cubicles like meerkats and came to find out what was happening. No one was reacting except to stare numbly.
“It’s anaphylaxis,” Jenny yelled. “Where’s his EpiPen?” She raced past Gordo, stepping on his hand where he was bracing himself upright. He made a sound, like he was trying to scream or gasp, a high-pitched horrible whistling sound, and fell onto his side.
Jenny rummaged around his desk, overturning his mug of pens, scattering them further as she pawed through them.
“Don’t touch him,” she screamed as she saw Traffic start to bend down. “Don’t!”
She couldn’t risk someone clearing his airway. She slipped the EpiPen out of her pocket and flung it under the credenza.
“Get help,” Jenny yelled, yanking open desk drawers and tossing the contents at random. “Call nine-one-one.”
Traffic raced to the nearest cubicle and Jenny could hear her stammering their office address and floor number into the phone.
Gordo had curled into a fetal position, his eyes rolled back, exposing blood-streaked whites, his face a livid red, welt-covered, inhuman. The ghastly wheezing, whistling sound stopped. His hand slipped out of his mouth and settled beside his head. Bloody vomit bubbled from his open mouth.
Jenny stepped over him and stood, breathing hard, with her colleagues, Carol among them, who had gathered, whimpering and crying, in the hallway.
“It’s too late,” Carol whispered. “Gordo’s dead.”
Jenny knelt and felt his neck for a pulse as she’d seen cops do on TV. Carol was right.
The cops, along with the emergency response team, arrived within minutes, although it felt like hours.
Jenny had herded her weeping, shocked, scared coworkers into the conference room to wait. All younger than she by a decade, now they looked less like sophisticated young professionals and more like the children they were. Carol sat apart from the others in a daze. Jenny took her hand and held it, squeezing hard enough to hurt. Carol winced but didn’t say anything or even look at her.
When the elevator chimed, Jenny went to meet the police and ambulance crew as they poured out into the hallway.
“This way.” She led them to Gordo’s corpse and stood back as they worked over him, confirming that he could not be brought back. The EMT in charge stood and shook his head.
“Looks like a massive allergic reaction. I smelled nuts on his emesis. Did he have a peanut allergy, do you know?”
Jenny nodded. “Yes, we all knew about it. He was very careful. But where’s his EpiPen? He always had one on his desk. I tried. I looked for it.” Her voice broke a little and she shuddered.
The cop nearest to Jenny turned to her, his notebook in his hand.
“I asked the others to wait in the conference room. I hope that’s okay.” Jenny teared up prettily and hugged herself. The cop nodded at his colleague, who moved off in the direction Jenny indicated.
“Let’s sit down for a minute. You’ve had quite a shock.”
Jenny nodded gratefully and they went to a nearby lounge to sit.
“Do you always work so late?”
Jenny told him all about the terrible evening. The work, the standard order of Chinese food, the scream from Traffic, the frantic search for his EpiPen as Gordo seemed to eat his own hand.
“People in crisis do all kinds of strange things,” the cop commented, writing. Jenny smiled.
“Right. Sure.”
Everything took about an hour, although like Gordo’s death itself, it seemed to take much longer. Someone came and took Gordo away in a neat black zippered bag. A cop had been dispatched to the hapless Chinese restaurant, which was probably in for a bad night.
One of the officers found the EpiPen on the floor of Gordo’s office. Jenny volunteered that Gordo had knocked over the pen mug earlier that day and she was certain she had seen it among the writing implements. She had picked it up and put it back herself.
The officer put away his notebook and patted Jenny’s hand.
“Don’t beat yourself up. It’s not your fault.”
The agency’s creative director arrived and spoke with the police and then the staff, giving them the next day off, half-day actually, he amended. He promised to bring in a counselor to help them deal with the grief.
Guilty looks were exchanged. They were shocked, but grief was not their paramount emotion.
The EMTs were gone. The police were pulling on their jackets and hats, still talking to the CD. The cop who had spoken to Jenny was going back through the pages of his notebook. They glanced back at her where she stood with her coworkers.
Jenny stiffened as the cops stood there while the CD walked purposefully in her direction. She caught a startled glance from Carol and suppressed a desire to run.
The CD thanked Jenny for her quick reactions and for keeping the staff from panicking. He actually hugged her briefly, in front of everyone. When Jenny turned around, the cops were gone.
Traffic called a car service to take everyone home.
And that, as they say, was that.
Gordo’s door remained closed and locked. Looking in the vertical glass panel beside the door, you could see that they had removed the terrariums, the snakes, and all of the personal effects. The desk was clean and empty. Two chairs stood by. The credenza was polished and the walls held no posters, whiteboards, or art.
Carol moved to another cubicle and studiously avoided Jenny. She never spoke another word to her. Jenny left her alone. Carol was scared. Carol was safe. Carol was no threat to her.
A funny story swept the agency. It seemed that two nights after Gordo’s death, a woman on the night cleaning staff was frightened almost to death when she got off the elevator and found a snake, dead, coiled up in the hallway. Several wags suggested it was Gordo come back to make mischief.
But one art director, a friend of Gordo’s, had a better explanation. It seemed that Gordo had come in one day to find the lid to a terrarium askew and one of his snakes missing. He had rushed out and bought a replacement snake so that no one would notice the empty terrarium. But he started staying late, roaming the offices and cubes, looking for the missing reptile. He was sure that he would be fired if one of his pets scared an employee. He knew that he was allowed his eccentricities but this would be going too far. Way too far. But no matter how many extra hours he put in searching, he never could find the errant snake.
By the following Wednesday, the gossip was dying down. Everyone who had been there that night had regaled his or her colleagues with tales of various acts of heroism that fateful night, all invented and embellished. Jenny herself had contributed a hilarious sendup of the creative director. “A terrible tragedy,” she intoned in his unctuous voice, “so take a day off to grieve. Well, after a halfday off, we’ll all join hands to feel our loss. Actually, let’s gather early tomorrow and have a moment of silence.”
Everyone had loved it. So it was disconcerting when Jenny was called to the creative director’s office. Traffic, who had been sent to summon her, must have sensed Jenny’s hesitation. “No worries, Jenny. I think it’s good news.”
Jenny’s heart leapt. The new definition of redundant: Kill your boss and get a promotion. She walked down the long hallway to the big corner office with a light step, almost skipping, humming to herself. “Isn’t it redundant? Da da, da di, di da.”
The CD’s admin nodded her in and when she opened his door and saw Carol sitting on his sofa, Jenny’s smile faltered only slightly.
“Carol. CD. What’s up? You wanted to see me?”
Carol looked strange, almost frightened. Jenny’s heart sank. She glared a warning but Carol squirmed slightly in her chair and wouldn’t meet her eyes.