“Darcy, I need to talk to you,” Michael said. His words were muffled by the others who were shuffling out the door, but Darcy heard him. She considered ignoring him but reminded herself that he was a vice president and the brother of the CEO to boot. So she turned around and came back into the room. He would probably just follow her to her office. She’d rather be in the large conference room rather than her small office. Michael’s personality and the fact that he was so tall and muscular just filled up all the available space.
“How are you doing?” he asked, his eyes thoughtful.
She shrugged. “I’m fine, how are you?” she asked, ignoring the curiosity in his question and looked down at her papers.
“You look tired. Are you working late nights again?”
Defiantly, she shook her head. “It has been a rough week on the proposal effort but you just said things were on the right track.”
“I’m impressed with the progress so far. I know you’ll do a great job and will win the work. I’m talking about the circles under your eyes though. It is one thing to win a proposal but lose a …valuable employee,” he said.
Darcy wondered a moment about the pause before ‘valuable employee’ but then brushed it aside. She didn’t want to think about him caring for her in any way other than professionally. She got burned with those kinds of wishful thoughts before.
“Darcy,” Jim interrupted, poking his head into the conference room, “there’s a problem with the server and they need your help.”
Darcy noted the urgency in his tone. “I’d better go,” she said to Michael, wishing she had the courage to tell him what a cad he was and that she never wanted to talk to him again. But she couldn’t do that and keep her job so she retreated behind a façade of professionalism.
“Do you need help?” Michael asked. “I don’t have anything scheduled for the afternoon,” he offered.
“I’m sure we can handle it,” she said and rushed out of the conference room.
She made her way to the lab and resolved the crisis temporarily. But biting her lip, she wondered for how long. Apparently, a corrupted file got into the server. She wasn’t sure how much of the work her team had been doing for the past month was lost. This wasn’t her area of expertise. Briefly, she considered going to Michael and asking for his advice. She was sure he’d be able to figure this out quickly. But since she’d just rebuffed his offer of help, she didn’t want to go to him, tail between her legs and tell him that she now needed him.
Back in her office, she called several colleagues, asking for their assistance. Two of them came up and took a look at the data, then told her they weren’t sure how much damage was done or how to fix the problem. Both recommended that she contact Michael for assistance.
Darcy bit her tongue each time someone made that recommendation. She was determined to solve this problem herself. She dug into the systems and tried to figure it out on her own, working until almost midnight Friday night. By that time, she thought she had stabilized the server and shut it down for the night.
Saturday morning, she immensely for the first time. having the same problems she was having and they were all able to joke about it together. Because of her exercising over the past week, she wasn’t as sore as she usually was either.
went to her horseback riding class and enjoyed it
There were others in her class that morning that were
Unfortunately, the server crashed again that afternoon and Darcy spent the rest if the weekend trying to fix the problem herself.
Monday morning, she arrived in her office to a summons from Michael on her voice mail. He did not sound happy. Riding up the elevators to the executive floor felt like she was riding to a death sentence. Her feet dragged as she walked up to his secretary’s desk.
Donna smiled but Darcy could see the pity in her eyes. “Go on in, Darcy. He’s been waiting for you all morning,” she said and her tone promised that Michael was not happy about something. Could he have found out about the server? She was the only one who had been working here all weekend. Surely he couldn’t know about that. Darcy resolved that she’d have to tell him. She accepted that she needed his help now. She was all out of ideas and didn’t know of anyone else to turn to for questions.
Darcy pulled her shoulders back and marched into Michael’s office with her head held high, ready for whatever he wanted to deal to her.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded as soon as she walked through his door. “Did you know that the server crashed on Friday?”
“Yes, but I thought I’d been able to fix things that night,” she said defensively.
“Well apparently, you thought wrong. Why didn’t you call me? You called both Jimmy and Ben. They both recommended that you call me. Why didn’t’ you?” he asked, almost yelling. He went over to slam his door shut. “Do you have any idea how much data you might have lost if they hadn’t called me this morning? There’s a virus eating away at the server that is connected to the LAN.”
Darcy’s face paled. She had gone through everything she could think of to figure out the problem but a virus had never occurred to her.
“I see from the look on your face that you weren’t even aware of the problem, much less how to fix it.”
Darcy just shook her head. “I’m sorry.” “Why didn’t you call me?” he asked, his voice softening slightly, but his hands were still on his hips as he stood in front of her.
“Because I’d already told you on Friday that I could take care of it.”
Michael shook his head. “And independent little woman that you are, you spent the whole weekend her trying to fix it didn’t you?”
Darcy didn’t respond.
Michael looked at her despondent face but was too frustrated with her. “So what’s your solution? Since you don’t need my help, what are you going to do in order to save thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of work?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against his desk.
Darcy thought frantically but she couldn’t come up with a solution. “I don’t know,” she said finally, defeated.
He moved closer to her and she could see the anger in his dark, blue eyes. “Well, here’s an idea. Why don’t you get back downstairs, copy all the files and get back up here? I’m taking over the problem as of right now and you’re going to help me find the bug.”