Joshua lost his footing completely, one leg shooting forward while the other twisted oddly beneath him. Everyone gasped as he landed heavily and loudly on the hard floor. A crunch noise rang out through the huge office, echoing sickeningly.
“My leg!” Joshua screamed, clutching his shin through his electric blue pants. “I’ve broken my leg!”
Everyone seemed stunned into paralysis. Keira ran up to him, not sure what to do to help, but certain that breaking one’s leg in such a manner had to be impossible.
“It won’t be broken,” she stammered, trying to be reassuring. But that was before her gaze fell to the awkward angle of Joshua’s leg, to the tear in his pants through which she saw protruding bone. Nausea gripped her. “Actually…”
“Don’t just stand there!” Joshua screamed at her, rolling around in agony. Through a squinting eye he stole a glance at his injury. “Oh God!” he screamed. “I’ve ripped my pants! These cost me more than you earn in a month!”
Just then, the main glass doors swung open and in strode Elliot.
Even if Elliot hadn’t been six foot three he’d have been imposing. There was something about him, about the way he held himself. He could strike terror and obedience into people with just one glance.
Like deer caught in headlights, everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at him in fear. Even Joshua was scared into silence.
Elliot took in the sight before him; of Joshua lying on the ground, clutching his leg, screaming in pain; of Keira standing helplessly over him; of the crowd of writers standing at their desks with horrified expressions on their faces.
But Elliot’s expression didn’t change at all. “Has someone called an ambulance for Joshua?” was all he said.
There was a sudden flurry of movement.
“I’ll do it!” everyone began saying over the top of one another as they clambered for their desk phones, desperate to be seen as the savior in front of Elliot.
A sheen of cold sweat glistened on Joshua’s forehead. He looked up at Elliot.
“I’ll be fine,” he said through his clenched teeth, trying to sound nonchalant but failing miserably. “It’s just a broken bone. Good thing it’s my leg and not my arm. I don’t need my leg to write the Ireland piece.” He sounded somewhat delirious.
“But you do need it to get on a plane and trek around the hillsides,” Elliot said calmly.
“Crutches,” Joshua said, grimacing. “Wheelchair. We’ll just need to adapt a bit.”
“Joshua,” Elliot replied, sternly, “the only place I’m sending you is the hospital.”
“No!” Joshua cried, trying to sit up. “I can do the assignment! I just need a cast and then I’ll be good as new!”
With no emotion at all, Elliot ignored Joshua’s pleas and glanced at his watch. “I’m beginning the meeting at eleven sharp,” he announced to the writing staff. Then he waltzed off to the conference room without so much as looking back.
Everyone stood there, silent, shocked, unsure what to do. Then Joshua’s screaming snapped them back to attention.
“Let me get you some water,” Lisa said.
“I don’t want frickin’ water!” Joshua yelled.
“Here,” Duncan said, rushing forward. “You need to elevate the wound.”
He reached for Joshua’s damaged leg but Joshua smacked his arms away. “Don’t touch me! I swear to God if you touch me I will fire you!”
Duncan drew back, hands in truce position.
“The ambulance is here,” Nina called from the window, blue lights flashing from the other side.
Thank God, Keira thought. She’d had about as much of Joshua as she could stand for one day. For a lifetime, if she was being honest with herself.
Just then, she looked up and realized Elliot was standing in the doorway of the conference room, watching them all bustle around Joshua, acting like headless chickens. He looked less than impressed. Keira noticed the clock. The meeting was starting in less than one minute.
Keira realized there was an opportunity here. There was no way Joshua would be completing the Ireland assignment, Elliot had made that quite clear. Which meant everyone else would fight for it in order to get noticed. It wasn’t the most glamorous of jobs but it was more than Keira had ever had. She needed to prove herself to Elliot. She needed that assignment.
Leaving her colleagues behind her, Keira strode toward the conference room. She passed Elliot in the doorway and took a seat next to the one she knew Elliot would soon be occupying.
Duncan noticed her first. Seeing her sitting in the empty conference room seemed to make it dawn on him suddenly what Keira herself had realized, that the Ireland assignment was vacant and one of them was needed to fill it. He rushed (while trying to hide the fact he was rushing) to be the next one inside. The others noticed, and there was a sudden scramble for the conference room, each colleague politely apologizing for “accidentally” shoving into the other in their haste to get inside, to impress Elliot, and to win the coveted assignment.
Which left Joshua completely alone in the middle of the open-plan office, paramedics hoisting him onto a gurney and stretchering him away, while a conference room full of his staff prepared themselves to battle it out for his assignment.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed by now,” Elliot said, “that Joshua’s unfortunate accident has left me in a bit of a predicament.”
He folded his large hands on top of the conference table and glanced at all of the writers sitting in front of him.
Keira stayed quiet, biding her time. She had a strategy: let the others wear themselves out asking to be given the assignment and then swoop in at the last minute.
“The Ireland piece,” Elliot continued, “was going to be our cover story. Viatorum is going in a new direction. Personal pieces, first-person accounts. The writer drives the narrative, creates a story, in which the location is a key character. I’d briefed Joshua on this. I don’t know if any of you guys have the talent to do this, to understand my vision.” He looked down at the tabletop, frowning so hard a vein bulged in his forehead. “The plane leaves tomorrow,” he lamented, as though he didn’t have an audience.
“If I may,” Lisa said. “My Florida piece is almost done. I can finish it up on the plane.”
“Absolutely not,” Elliot replied. “No one can be on two assignments at once. Who’s free?”
There was a collective deflating as several of the writers around the table realized that they were already out of the running.
“I’m free,” Duncan said. “I was supposed to be flying to Madrid today but work comes first. Stacy won’t mind if I defer the holiday.”
Keira only just managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes on hearing Duncan’s rehearsed line. She wondered how chill Stacy really was about her holiday being cancelled.
Elliot scrutinized Duncan across the table. “You’re that Buxton guy, aren’t you? The one who wrote the Frankfurt piece?”
“Yes,” Duncan replied, grinning proudly.
“I hated that piece,” Elliot said.
Keira could feel it bubbling up in her, the excitement. This was her moment. Her time to shine.
Ignoring the nerves she felt, she raised her hand with forced confidence. “I’m available for the piece.”
Everyone’s