DARBY SAT ON HER BED dumbly. She hadn’t moved since she got home. She was still shocked by the events that had transpired at work. Today had been her performance review. Only once before in her career had Darby ever received a bad review from her boss, but this report from Huck was worse than bad—it was scathing.
She hadn’t exactly expected Huck to be charitable in his assessment of her. He rarely took proactive opportunities to praise her, but her research work was promising and she had always excelled in clinical care. Everybody knew it and Huck wasn’t known for saying anything different in his reviews. But there was a first time for everything. The review had been so bad that he’d given her an official warning, which was considered by HR to be the first step in transitioning employees out, fancy talk for getting fired.
She didn’t—couldn’t—dwell on the sheer injustice of it all. If she focused on how much of her heart she poured into her work, and how much it hurt not to have that remotely recognized, she’d start to cry again. A terrible review had never factored into her plans. It would raise eyebrows in the executive suite, could ruin her research funding and could submarine her if she decided to pursue a position someplace else, something she’d only just begun to consider.
To make matters worse, Huck wasn’t up for promotion for another three months, which meant he would have input around her mid-year performance review. Her research fellowship was up for additional funding review in April. By then, she could be fired. Getting fired by Huck would be disastrous—it would send a signal that one of the most respected psychopharmacologists in the world didn’t think she was up to standard. It would cancel her research funding. Professionally, it would leave her with absolutely nothing.
The doorbell roused her from her thoughts, and as she became aware of her surroundings again, she realized that it was already dark outside. Having no idea who could be at the door, but hearing it ring a second time, she moved to descend the stairs and answer.
“Michael…” she breathed, closing her eyes and wiping her hand over her face shamefully. “I’m so sorry. I completely forgot.”
She shook her head, moving aside to let him in. She had forgotten that they had plans to hang out before he headed out of town the next day.
“Just give me ten minutes to take a shower, alright? I’m dirty from my shift, but it would be good to blow off some steam.”
He pushed inside and closed the door, looking stern as he spoke his next words.
“ I don’t have sex with people who are too upset to remember plans with me. But I’m not leaving either, not until you tell me what’s wrong.”
She sniffled. She found it endearing that he was refusing to sleep with her. As she thought more about it, she realized he was right. Angry sex was a bad idea.
“Huck threw me under the bus in my performance review,” she said miserably, moving aside so that Michael could come in farther.
The frown remained on his face. Over the past few months, he had said more than a few things to remind Darby that he had a sister and a niece. He’d been raised by a single mother, understood a fair bit about what girls went through, and had no respect for people who mistreated women. He had gleaned from what little Darby had told him that Huck had some kind of problem with women—the more he learned about this, the more Michael disliked Huck.
“When was the last time you ate?” he asked.
She thought for a minute but honestly couldn’t remember. He set down his messenger bag and hung his jacket in the front closet, by then completely at ease in her house.
“I’m making you dinner,” he said. “And while I do, I want you to tell me everything.”
So she did. Not just starting with the performance review that day, she told him about how it had been with Huck from the beginning. She gave him examples of ways in which Huck had treated her differently, how he’d worked to discredit her in subtle and subversive ways, but how this—which could be considered nothing less than a blatant attack on her—had been unprecedented.
As she spoke, he moved around her kitchen easily. She hadn’t been grocery shopping in a while, but somehow Michael assembled ingredients from her cabinet and her freezer into a meal far superior to anything that she had ever cooked. By the time she’d finished venting, he had defrosted chicken from the freezer, cut, breaded and butter-sautéed it and whipped up a sauce using lemon juice from her refrigerator and capers he’d found in her cabinets. While the chicken finished cooking in the oven, he defrosted some frozen dinner rolls she had lying around and used fresh garlic and dried herbs to make special butter. Darby had a double oven that she’d never used, but for the first time she saw how it might be useful. Michael used the second one to brown the tops of what smelled as if it would be very tasty garlic bread.
All the while, she had been sitting on a barstool in her kitchen, sipping a glass of wine she knew she could only nurse slowly given her empty stomach, but one that felt good to drink all the same. Michael touched his own wine for the first time only after he had set two steaming plates down before them. He had rolled up his sleeves to cook, and he hadn’t gotten a drop of oil or speck of flour on him as he’d made their amazing meal.
“Eat, please,” he said gently, but with a bit of urgency in his voice. He didn’t like it when she went hours without having something in her stomach, even though he did the same thing.
“This is amazing,” she said around the first bite, and it really was. When Darby looked inside her cabinets, she saw a whole lot of nothing to eat. When Michael looked inside her cabinets, apparently he knew how to make magic. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said smiling a bit, pausing to acknowledge her appreciation before getting back to business. He took a sip of his wine but left his food untouched as he looked back at her with serious eyes.
“I wasn’t kidding about the private investigator.”
She took another bite, chewing slowly.
“I know you weren’t.”
“It’s time you fight back. He’s trying to ruin your career.”
She knew Michael was right.
“But, why?” Tears stung her eyes. The injustice of it all was still fresh.
“ Why doesn’t matter. All we’re looking for is something we can use as leverage to get him to back off.”
“It’s more complicated than that. Even if we find something on him, what am I going to do? Blackmail him? Walk into HR with some sort of dossier?”
“No.” His voice was calm. “You’re going to stay as far away from it as possible and let me do it. The less you’re involved, the better.”
She went quiet, not liking this idea at all.
“What you will do is cover your ass. Build allies. Go through the proper channels. How’s the rest of your HR file?”
Darby thought about it.
“Well, I never get patient complaints. All the people who are closest to my work only have good things to say about me.”
“Alright…how were your earlier performance reviews from him?”
“Not glowing, but solidly good.”
“Good,” Michael said approvingly. “You can use that. If he’s never had a bad thing to say about you before and no one else has either, it will make the current performance review look suspicious. Do you have any other enemies?”
She shrugged. “Kind of. There are some people who don’t like the fact that I keep beating them out for grant money.”
“Is Huck friends with any of them?”
“Come to think of it…yes,” Darby admitted with a sinking feeling, thinking of Yelena. She couldn’t believe she had never made the connection before.
“I have a friend who works in the HR field who I can call tomorrow. I’ll see what general advice she can give me. In the meantime, play dumb. Convince Huck that you’re crushed and eager to get back into his good graces. You’ve worked too hard to let him ruin your career. Don’t worry. I’ll help you.”
She was starting to feel better about things. Her reply felt inadequate but she’d say it anyway.
“Thanks.”
That night, he held her as they watched “Before Sunset” on her couch. He knew that movie always made her feel better. After it had finished, he tucked her under her covers as she had fallen asleep, cleaned her kitchen, and took a hot shower before slipping next to her into bed.
When she woke the next morning, he was gone. But when she arrived in her kitchen, she saw that he’d left a note next to her coffee machine.
I’ve got you, it read in his elegant scrawl.
Darby took Michael’s advice and began to build her case against Huck. Michael’s friend in HR had referred her to a worker’s rights attorney, who had given her a specific list of documentation he wanted her to gather. By the time a week had passed, she had downloaded four years’ worth of positive performance reviews, the results of the annual 360-degree review feedback solicited from peers (which were all glowing) and all of her grant proposals, which included letters of recommendation.
After learning that she could quietly work a few HR channels without getting on Huck’s radar, she asked for her patient feedback file, which included both positive and negative feedback from individual patient cases. The few negative patient reviews were earlier in her tenure, when she’d been less experienced, and she was pleased to see that all reviews from the past two years had been positive. She was buoyed by the HR rep’s offhand comment that patients rarely left positive reviews. It would be a feather in her cap to show such a strong track record. It turned out that the hospital had a policy of allowing employees who feared retaliation from another employee to file a special complaint. Darby took the opportunity—the special complaint would be considered if he ever attempted serious action against her.
But more than just covering her ass at her current job, she’d taken Ben’s advice to heart and was actively pursuing other roles. She had updated her resume, was returning calls, and was quietly letting people within her network know that she might be ready for a move. She knew that, at absolute least, she had to hedge against whatever Huck would do. But Ben was right—even if things couldn’t have been better at Northwestern, it was the right time for her to consider something new.
She had mixed feelings about leaving—she’d made Chicago her home, and not just because it was the city where she’d been born. Five years before, she’d had other offers apart from Northwestern. At the time, her mother had still been alive, and dealing with her addiction, so that had made her decision to return to Chicago easy. But in the years since, she’d built herself a cozy little life. She loved the house she’d bought, loved her rituals of seeing movies and going shopping in her free time, loved the small but tight-knit group of friends she’d built, loved what she had with Michael. Starting over in a new city at 20 was one thing, but starting over at 32 was something else entirely. Doctors like her did it all the time, and moving from place to place was something she’d always anticipated. But the idea of leaving Chicago wouldn’t be as easy as she’d once thought.
Michael commiserated with her. When he was in town, he came around more often, or had her over to his place, cooking her dinner, massaging her tired feet. He never complained about seeing less of her, even though she was working longer hours. Working harder was her insurance policy against any possible complains. She treated her patients and conducted her research to the same standard of quality she always had (maybe even a higher one), and stayed late to cross every “t” and dot every “i”—unwilling to allow any move she made to be viewed as a mistake.
Although she was tired, she was trying to hold onto her new routine of getting out more, with Michael by her side. It wasn’t just about letting herself have a little fun and counteracting all the stress—networking would be good for her career.
That was why, on a calm Tuesday night at her place, she and Michael sat before a twin stack of mail. One pile was his, the other hers. They were their collected series of invitations. Each of them was invited to at least a dozen functions a month. For obvious reasons, they declined most, but every once in a while something piqued her interest.
“What looks good?” Michael asked as she leafed through the many opulent cards before her.
She had already started a pile of “nos”, mostly charity functions and weddings. A few industry events were in her “maybe” pile, though she was sure hanging out with a bunch of doctors all night would be pretty dry for Michael. She was just placing an invitation to a film screening in the ‘no’ pile when Michael caught her wrist.
“Seriously?” he asked.
“It’s in Park City,” she said reasonably.
“Which is only a three-hour plane ride away,” he said, as if she had no understanding of U.S. geography. “Why would you not want to go to Sundance?
“Because it’s in Park City,” she repeated, not budging an inch.
“It’s the Sundance Film Festival.”
She shrugged. “I get invited every year. I never go.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I don’t know,” she said a touch defensively. “It seems far.”
He shook his head.
“You need to get out more.”
She took a sip of her wine.
“We should go away together,” he said with determination. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”
He had?
“You have?”
“I think we could both use a few days away. Don’t you?”
“Where did you think we would go?”
It wasn’t an answer to his question. She was still turning this over in her mind. It would be amazing to get away. But she’d never even gone anywhere with the men who had been her actual boyfriends. Doing it with Michael would make this more real.
“I don’t know—maybe shopping in Milan or in London. And you know we both love Paris.”
All of that sounded amazing. She didn’t know what to say.
“Before, when I traveled for work, I used to extend my trips over the weekends. I’d turn a layover in London into a stopover and find something new to see.”
“Before what?”
“Before you.”
Oh.
“I’ve always wanted to go to the biggest events around the world. Oktoberfest in Munich. Carnival in Rio. Fashion Week in Paris. The Cannes Film Festival.”
“Have you?”
“I’ve gone to a few of them. They’d have been a lot more fun with you.”
His light words felt heavy. It wasn’t that she disliked the idea. She liked it a little too much. She liked all of it too much—the unprotected sex, the sleepovers, the intimate gestures, and all the other lines the two of them had crossed. Surrendering, she took the invitation to Sundance, which was still held in his hand, and started a new pile—the ‘yes’ pile.
“I’ll book the tickets,” she said.