I’d been feeling under the weather since the middle of last week, and after going through my second packet of tissue paper while translating some power point slides, I cleared my swollen, phlegm-infested throat, wincing in the painful act of swallowing, and asked to be excused for the day.
My boss relented. Go back and rest, she said, a failed attempt of a sympathetic smile on her face. Just make sure you come back on Wednesday for the next assignment, she continued before returning to her notebook.
I texted the boyfriend to come pick me up and started packing up my stuff, chiding myself for not going to the clinic during the weekend.
I got back to work a day later, and my friend/colleague almost could not sit still for all the gossips she simply had to tell me. My boss peeking through the windows to see who came to pick me up that day. Colleagues feeding my boss with theories of me being a crazy wild party girl who overdid it during the weekend, which was why I sounded like a croaking frog on Monday morning. The dragon lady boss asking around trying to find out if I was staying together with the boyfriend, what the boyfriend does for a living, and whether anyone has ever seen a picture of him.
Funny how the boss could seem so concerned with our personal lives and yet doesn’t think twice about cutting off our medical expense claims.
