DAVID
David Geller-Bradley, please dial extension 1412.
David grabbed his report on prisons and Pilots off the printer and headed back to his desk, thumbing through the pages as he walked. Really, he should have armed himself with this information before the health fair the week before; he resolved to do better about that in the future. If he was presenting at a place with specific needs, it was important to research them in advance.
There was an e-mail for his supervisor stuck to the bottom of his report. Nina printed and filed all her e-mails. David thought it was odd and wasteful, not to mention she was constantly forgetting to grab them off the printer, so that they’d all gotten used to making extra deliveries. He knocked on her open door and handed it to her.
David Geller-Bradley, please dial extension 1412.
She pointed at the phone quizzically.
“On my way back to my desk,” he said. “I’ll get it there.”
He’d heard them the first time, of course he had. They hadn’t given him two seconds to reply. He didn’t know which department 1412 was in. There were so many departments. The funny thing was that everyone knew him, the poster boy, but he didn’t know everyone. Need a speaker at an event? Call David. Need a ribbon cutter? Someone to talk on the radio? David’s your guy.
David Geller-Bradley, please dial extension 1412.
He dialed extension 1412. “This is David?”
“Hi, David. This is Dr. Morton. Can you come see me in Health Services?”
“Sure thing.” He was supposed to say yes. Say yes, hear what any department wanted from him, decide if it fell within his purview. If he thought it was outside the bounds of what he was supposed to do, he went to his supervisor.
Tash Johnson peeked over their shared wall. “New poster, poster boy?”
“Maybe. New ask, I’m guessing. Maybe another health fair? They just like me best because I’m famous.”
Tash grinned; they were one of the three others in Recruitment, though David was the only one whose face had been in the first big ad campaign, so nobody else had the street recognition he had. The others didn’t seem to mind.
It wasn’t until he pushed open the Health Center door that he realized if they had wanted him to go to another fair they’d e-mail the date and say “be there.” No time-consuming visits necessary.
When he said he was there for Dr. Morton, the receptionist waved him through without making him sign in. “Third door on the right,” she said.
The first two doors were open medical examination rooms, but the third was a well-appointed office, the kind with diplomas on one wall, leather-bound medical journals in built-in shelves on another, and an enormous wooden desk at the focus. It had large windows, though they faced the parking lot. A brass clock ticked away on a shelf at eye level, and someone was running photocopies somewhere nearby.
“Dr. Morton?” David knocked on the open door.
“Shut the door and have a seat, David.”
Cold washed over David, even though this was not his supervisor or Human Resources or anyone in any position to give him bad news. There was something about this room, this desk, the clean-shaven white doctor with the yellow-gray comb-over that started just above his Pilot, that suggested a principal’s office, a sergeant’s rebuke, a telling-off. He shut the door and chose the right-hand chair of the two identical chairs on the desk’s near side, the one two feet farther away from the ticking clock, like that would do any good.
“David, as I’m sure you know, BNL runs Pilot clinics all over the country.”
“Yes, sir.” He tried to think of a reason BNL would send him to one of their own clinics. Maybe the doctor was going to ask him to do a recruitment video specifically to play on waiting-room televisions.
The doctor continued. “What I think maybe you don’t know, or haven’t considered, is that those clinics are the same entity as the corporation we work for. All one system.”
David was already sitting straight in his chair, but he sat even straighter. His back broke out in sweat.
“So, David, to spell it out, when an employee goes to a BNL clinic, it’s the same as if they came to see us here at Health Services. All the same system, you understand.”
David noticed that the paper file on the doctor’s desk had his name on it. He kept silent.
“So when an employee goes to a BNL clinic and asks to have their Pilot deactivated, that gets reported here. If the employee went into the clinic in an agitated state, that gets reported here as well. We obviously don’t share this information with Human Resources or your supervisor or anything like that—”
“Obviously.”
The doctor continued as if David hadn’t spoken “—but it is of concern to the company nonetheless. So it falls on me to ask you a few questions. Do you mind?”
David knew this wasn’t optional unless he planned on walking off the job today. “Go ahead.”
“Why did you visit the clinic instead of coming here or going to the VA?”
“I was under the illusion the clinic would be more private. I was wrong.”
“And why did you ask them to turn off your Pilot?”
“That wasn’t what I asked first. First, I asked if they knew any way I could dampen it a bit. Quiet it.”
“They said you were combative and aggressive.”
“I was frustrated, but I didn’t threaten or anything. Maybe I shouted a little, but only because I wasn’t being heard.”
“Is your Pilot malfunctioning?”
“I’ve said so a dozen times, but every time you all test it you say it’s working exactly as it’s supposed to. Eventually I stopped asking that question, since it makes me feel like I’m malfunctioning.”
“Have you considered you might just need to practice better focus?”
David didn’t answer, but instead scanned the diplomas on the wall. Chester Morton, doctor of psychology. Great.
“Have you considered the ramifications that decision might have on your career here? Your entire position hinges upon you being a brand ambassador, so to speak. How could anyone trust that you believed in the product if you weren’t using it yourself?”
David stayed silent.
“David, would you mind answering? Or telling me what you’re thinking?”
“I’m thinking it’s bullshit, sir, no offense, and an intrusion of privacy, that you would be talking to me about my job when your office is supposed to be here to talk about my health.”
“This is your health, David. Mental health is health, too, and you are clearly dealing with something I’d like to help you deal with before you jeopardize your job. Why didn’t you answer the question about focus exercises?”
“Everyone assumes user error when I say my Pilot is too loud, like all I have to do is practice and I’ll be fine. You have no idea how hard I’ve practiced. I’m a focus machine. How do you think I survived? Translate the inputs, integrate the inputs, do it all in a millisecond or you’re dead. I know it saved my life. I know the benefit of having all this information. But. It. Never. Stops. It never stops.”
“I hear you. Have you considered longer down-cycles?”
David fought the urge to slam his head into the desk. Longer down-cycles. Next the doctor would ask if his app was current. Nobody ever got it. He gave up. “I’ll try that.”
The doctor beamed. “Great. Why don’t you check back with me in two weeks and tell me how that’s going for you? I’ll put it on your schedule as a consultation so your supervisor doesn’t ask any questions.”
“Great idea, sir.” David forced a smile onto his face. If this doctor was good at reading people, he’d see right through it, but Morton looked like he’d just negotiated world peace. This was how it always went.
And what kind of bullshit was it that allowed the clinic to share his information over here? It hardly seemed legal, but if they were all the same system he guessed it made sense. He should have known he didn’t have any privacy. He was a public figure, the poster boy. They had invested in him. They wouldn’t let him go this easily.
Tash didn’t stand when David came back, but their voice carried over the half wall. “What was that about?”
“Consultation,” said David. “They have some dumb idea about the clinics.”
“Ugh. Have fun.”
David sat at his desk and listened to every finger every keystroke on every keyboard every voice on every phone work calls personal calls all the calls somebody’s headphones bleeding smooth jazz into the room every fluorescent light overhead with its own hum one bulb flickering three cubicles over Mackenzie Vogel eating her afternoon popcorn the smell of said popcorn slightly burnt someone else’s coffee someone else’s tea the microwave going with someone else’s late lunch and what jerk heated fish in an office microwave the printer in the corner and above it all his own thoughts incessant no app could fix this he had tried he had tried he had tried he had tried he had tried.