Defibrillate
Her suspension from work was a wound, unexpected and clinically delivered. There were other, eviscerating emotions: the wince, the sting, the steady throb of embarrassment every time she thought of the pale mouse from HR, shaking as he delivered the interim verdict. Six weeks garden leave, on full pay, while inept pencil pushers investigated whether her scalpel had deliberately nicked open a millionaire’s aorta or if it was, as she insisted, an unavoidable risk of surgery.
Bastards, bastards, bastards. A curse on a round tape, threading under the hire car’s stereo as she followed the arterial routes to the border and further north to the ferry. She had made the limp HR man squirm, though, and she returned to the image of the waxen little chap as a dying bird returns to its n
