Beyond Believing

by D. D. Marx

  “Scottie, this gentleman has been a bit overserved. I’ve asked him to step outside to take a breather,” he states.

  “Why is she crying?” I inquire.

  “Because I asked her for a fucking vodka tonic, and she brought me a gin and tonic,” the guest declares, ready to lunge.

  “Sir, what is your name?”

  “My name is Doug Hemsworth.”

  “Well, Doug, I think you’re being highly inappropriate. It’s a simple mistake, and I will not have you speak to any of my employees in that manner.”

  “Oh, yeah? We paid way too much money to rent this joint to have some white trash bitch not know how to do her job.”

  “That’s it. Leave,” I demand, doing everything in my power to hold back punching him in the face. Aye, would I love to give this guy a piece of my mind, but the last thing I need is bad press.

  Several others have now gotten up from the table and are trying to intervene and defuse the situation.

  “Doug, hey, hey, you need to calm down,” one of his colleagues says trying to interject.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Come on, let’s go outside,” his friend says as he gestures to the group. I look at them in disgust. Who are these idiots? I have never seen anything like this in my life. These are grown men. Professional men running a billion-dollar organization.

  I address the group. “I would like for you to please apologize to my staff on behalf of your colleague. His outburst is repugnant. What kind of circus are you people running anyway?”

  “Listen chef, we are so sorry for his behavior. I assure you this is not a proper representation of Doug or our organization. He’s been under a lot of pressure.”

  “I’m sorry, but there’s no excuse good enough to condone that behavior. You know who else was under a lot of pressure? Me. When my wife was dying of breast cancer, helpless, so I turned to your organization to get her admitted to a clinical trial that you denied her. And yet, here I stand in my own restaurant, dedicated in her honor, being completely disrespected by you bastarts. How’s that for irony?”

  The room fell dead silent. I caught a glimpse of Tex’s face and could tell he was heartbroken. He had no idea who these people were. He doesn’t know any details about Christine’s passing.

  “Chef, how can we make this right? We really feel horrible. We will leave a generous tip to compensate,” says the CEO.

  “That’s your solution? Throw money at the problem? There are some things money can’t buy or fix, especially this. Your money is no good here. Please, leave. I don’t want to see any of you on my property ever again. If I do, I guarantee I will not be this pleasant.” I storm back into the kitchen.

  Tex stays to see them all out and lock up. He found me cleaning up back in the kitchen.

  “Scottie,” he begs, “I reckon you did the right thing. Just ‘cause trouble comes visiting, doesn’t mean you have to offer it a place to sit down.”

  “Listen bloke, don’t worry about it. I know you had no idea,” I say as we finish breaking down the kitchen. When I arrive at the restaurant the next morning, there is a FedEx envelope waiting for me. It’s a check made out to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for fifty thousand dollars donated from Hellyxia in Christine’s memory.

  Chapter Nine

  (Olivia)

  New Year’s weekend is here, and it’s now crystal clear why this position was wide open when I got hired. I’m the only sucker working. Fortunately, my Portal pilot is on track to golive in February which is Doug’s only concern. Most leaders understand that there are multiple pillars to delivering a successful project. They include time, cost, and quality, each pillar being equally weighted. Dougbag is only concerned with time because it ties to his bonus. I heard when the ERP project went live, finance had to go back to manual paper processes for sixty days. He must have some really incriminating pictures of someone somewhere. Most Chief Information Officers don’t survive an ERP implementation, let alone one that disastrous.

  Garrett, on the other hand, is not returning texts. I haven’t missed a New Year’s Eve in ten years. It’s not that I care about my job; it’s about the cause. If I can help connect even a few of these women, I will feel validated. It’s about the greater good. Deep down, I know he understands, but right now he wants me enjoying an appletini around his gorgeous dining room table in Palm Springs. This year he even hired some hot new celebrity chef to come to the house to cook for about twenty-five guests. Trust me, there is nothing I wouldn’t give to be there.

  #

  I am leveraging the holiday break to stress test the application which will simulate the real golive. Tens of thousands of patients will be accessing the Portal. I need to ensure the environment can handle a large volume of users simultaneously. This dry run will be instrumental in proactively identifying potential problems. I allow the team to work remotely but I’m on-site. I need to be here to physically reboot the servers if something should fail. I refuse to be that leader who has zero compassion for people wanting to spend quality time with their loved ones over the holiday season. I’m keeping our status calls to a minimum but have a lot of time to kill because almost everything is automated and runs in the background. The office is eerily quiet and there is only so much time you can spend on Facebook, so I start playing around on the internet and begin googling members of the executive team to get a better understanding of where these clowns came from and how they ended up here. I start with Doug. I haven’t been able to reconcile his seemingly squeaky-clean past with his real-life behavior. Something just doesn’t add up. He has an obvious personality disorder. He tries hard to cover it up. He has bouts of calm but under pressure he cracks and his inner tyrant comes out. He’s a loose cannon. There is only so long you can mask that kind of behavior before it rears its ugly head. It’s a pattern. Everyone on the executive walks on eggshells around him, wondering what the next trigger will be. My inner detective is on the case and what I stumble upon is mind blowing. It’s all here in black and white. Proof that he is not only a cheat and a liar but a complete fraud. I don’t know who to call. I’m pacing in my office and now paranoid because I found the information on my work laptop. Someone is tracking searchable sites; we’re a healthcare company, for God’s sake. With all the crazy HIPPA laws, they have to record everything and save it for a minimum of seven years. Did the Board ever perform a background check on him? I can’t imagine they did. This information wasn’t all that hard to piece together. Oh my God, what am I going to do? I spend the next several hours printing and copying everything I find and save it to an external hard drive. I know when the time comes and I get backed into that corner, I’m coming out with guns a-blazing. Until then, I will act as if it is business as usual.

  #

  I’ve been putting in so many hours, I am running on fumes. The only thing keeping me going is these patients. I know a Portal isn’t exactly curing cancer but if it can make their lives any bit easier, I want to be a part of it. I am not going to lie though; the stress is mounting. This is my first real project, so all eyes are on me. I’m on the verge of carrying around a dispenser full of Xanax. I have been sick for almost a week but have been keeping up by working from home. There has been no lapse in work or progress, but I know Dougbag is not a fan of working from home, especially the directors. He wants us to set the example.

  #

  It’s Monday morning and I’m running late to work, so I go straight to the conference room for our first all department meeting of the year. Once a month, Doug hosts a video conference call with all our sites to address the department and update them on overall enterprise happenings, IT project status and year-to-date budget. It provides him an opportunity to introduce new hires and have face time with employees. Then the call ends with an open forum called “Ask the CTO.”

  We’re ten minutes into the call and all of a sudden we hear, “Do you have poo-poo’s?”

  Holy hell. Someone is working from home
and didn’t put herself on mute. She’s talking to her toddler. I look over at Doug; he is not amused as his expression changes to pale white.

  He says, “Excuse me?”

  She still has no idea he’s speaking to her so she continues with “Go see Daddy and tell him you have poo-poo’s.” The room erupts in laughter, but the only one not laughing is Doug. He stands up and yells “That’s it. No more working from home, effective immediately,” turns on his heel, and storms out of the room. He just had a tantrum. I’ve never seen anything like it. The leadership team looks at each other and announces the meeting has been adjourned. I don’t dare engage any of them in fear of saying what I really think. I get back to my office and there is an email already waiting from Doug.

  To: Leadership Team

  From: Doug Hemsworth

  Subject: Monthly IT Meeting

  Emergency Leadership Meeting at 1 p.m. today to discuss the new work from home policy and the new organizational psychologist I’ve hired.

  -Doug

  The “emergency staff meeting” commences. You might wonder what an organizational psychologist does, which is my question. They get paid a lot of money to teach leadership how to communicate in an honest and safe environment by establishing a common, non-threatening foundation leading to a circle of trust. You know what this sounds like? A communication major’s dictionary. How did I not invent this? Sentences full of big, fat, useless, fluffy words to charge corporations a shit-ton of money. Dammit. Another missed opportunity but I’m not going to lie; I cannot wait to see shit show this in action.

  #

  The other big meeting happening today is my executive status update with the Board. Each month, the Board has a meeting with the directors to obtain status updates on all the critical technology projects in progress. I have thirty minutes assigned on the agenda to provide a demo of the Patient Portal and walk through my pilot launch strategy and timeline, which is deploying in four weeks. The meeting commences and my hands start sweating because I’m up first on the agenda. Just as I was about to take the stage, Doug stands up and says, “I’m not comfortable with the progress of Olivia’s efforts, so I’m putting this project on hold.” What on earth is he talking about? I am so perplexed, I cannot help but chime in.

  “Excuse me, Doug? I’m a little taken back. I have a presentation prepared that demonstrates the project status is green. We have minimal bugs and are more than prepared for go live.”

  “It’s been brought to my attention that you have been absent several days over the past week, so I’m not confident we’ve had the proper oversight. This is one of our most important projects. We can’t take any chances so I’m proposing to hand this over to Chris Peters. He is more than equipped to see this through to execution. I just need a few additional weeks, so he can get up to speed.”

  Oh my God, what the fuck is he talking about? I am beyond incensed. My entire body is bubbling with fury like a volcano ready to erupt. I manage to calmly utter the words, “Doug, maybe we can take this offline after the meeting so I can better understand your position.”

  He interrupted, “That won’t be necessary, I’ve made my final decision. You are excused, Olivia.” Excused? Excuuuuuused? What? You have got to be kidding me. And that was it. That was all it took. I snapped. All I felt next was what I assume was the Holy Spirit taking over as I began speaking in tongues.

  “Okay, but before I leave Doug, the Executive Leadership Team might be interested to learn that your real name is not Doug Hemsworth. It’s Carl Edges. Does that ring a bell?” He looks at me in disbelief. He turns pale white and realizes what I am going to say next will bury him alive.

  “You see, it seems Doug Hemsworth was your best friend growing up in Madison, Wisconsin who died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when he was nineteen. He had a very impressive albeit short life. The article I read stated he graduated with multiple degrees, earning him very honorable and elite accreditations from the University of Wisconsin. All I could find on Carl Edges were mug-shots from two DUI’s and, wouldn’t you know it, those mug shots look exactly like you. In addition, he has multiple arrests for misdemeanor battery charges; seems like someone has a bit of an anger management problem, which explains a lot. And the only degree I could find for him was a two-year Associates’s degree from a community college. The only logical conclusion I could come up with was that you’ve stolen your friend’s identity and heroic credentials to get yourself a fancy little corner office. Isn’t it amazing what you can find on the internet with a little digging?” The people in the room are aghast. I look over at Chris Peters, who looks like he’s about to vomit and add in a British accent, “I didn’t even bother looking you up. You are pretty self-explanatory.” It’s evident that Doug has no words. He fumbles to discredit me but to no avail.

  “So, my parting words to you and your fake friend ‘Petey’ are . . . go fuck yourselves.” And with that, I reach in my purse, grab the external hard drive and hand it to the CEO. “I’ve saved you the trouble and provided all the proof you need right here. In case you think you can bury this to save the company from a very public and humiliating scandal, I’ve made multiple copies. Those copies are with my lawyer,” I say as I storm out. I get in my car and head straight for the airport.

  I know Garrett’s address, but I don’t even tell him I am coming; I just get on the next flight out of town. Next stop Palm Springs. I have an emergency gym bag tucked away in the trunk for this purpose. Working almost two hours from home, I have to be prepared for any weather at any time. I pull up to the stop light, still in shock from the events that just went down, and staring me dead in the face is a license plate that reads Hank. I burst into tears.

  I have a very serious heart to heart discussion with Dan on the plane ride out to California.

  Danny, I wish you could just tell me what the plan is because nothing is adding up.

  You keep giving me these signs, but the puzzle isn’t fitting together. I am soooo tired of waiting, and I don’t even know what I’m waiting for. For something good to happen, for starters. I know there isn’t any magical destination, but there has to be something more, something bigger. I thought it was this job. The greater purpose. Helping women overcome cancer. Leveraging my talents to connect, heal, and inspire others. Instead, it ended up with my career imploding. I’ll be lucky to even get a job after this. Ugh, what am I going to do? You need to help me, now. I’m not messing around anymore. I mean, the company had the word Hell in it. How could I be so stupid? Is there even a Beyond to believe in? Can you even hear me?

  I am bewildered and exhausted. My faith continues to be tested and doubt settles in deep. Doubt that Dan can hear me. Doubt that I will ever meet a decent guy. Doubt that my life is going to amount to anything. It strikes me that I might be making life-changing decisions based on songs that I just “happen to hear” on the radio.

  I exit the airport terminal and get into an Uber. “Small Town” comes on.

  Really, Danny? Nice try. What does that even mean? Oh, I’m supposed to be in this Uber right now? Not buying it, sorry.

  I check my phone and see dozens of voicemails from Hellyxia. I delete each one of them without listening. I have zero interest in working for an organization that didn’t do their homework. How could they allow something this egregious to happen? I arrive at Garrett’s and as he opens the door, I collapse in his arms.

  “Liv. God. What are you doing here? Are you okay? What’s going on?” Garrett says with shock and concern.

  “Holy shit balls, I quit my job today. And not just quit my job . . . I tossed a grenade and there aren’t any survivors. I told everyone in ear shot to fuck off. Oh my God, what have I done?”

  “It’s about time. That place seemed shady from day one. You can stay here as long as you need to. Does anyone know you’re here?” Garrett asks.

  “No, I pulled out of the parking lot at work, went straight to the airport, and got on the next plane. Thank God I
keep a gym bag in my trunk for emergencies.”

  “Is anyone going to be worried about you?”

  “No, I was supposed to be leaving for a conference for the week tonight, so everyone thinks I’m out of town anyway.”

  “Well, good. No more excuses about why you might not make it out here for the grand opening. I could really use your help,” Garrett says.

  “Okay, but first I need a drink and to get some sleep.” As I crawl into bed, I grab my phone and type a quick text to Red.

  Are you sitting down? O M G . . . I quit my job today. I’m in California at Garrett’s. No idea what I’m going to do. Still in shock. Will figure it out when I get back. Staying through the grand opening. Call you later. WTF. XO

  Awesome and about time. Love you. XOXO

  With that, I pass out for what feels like days. As morning arrives, I am awoken by bright sunlight shining through the windows. This is my first time at Garrett’s new house. It’s so new he doesn’t even have any window treatments. Right now, I’m finding it more aggravating than amusing, seeing as he owns a store that specializes in this exact thing — blinds. All I want to do is sleep the rest of my life away, but instead I get up and drink in the view. Mountains as far as I can see. My bedroom has a sliding glass door with direct access onto the patio, which is a stunning desert oasis. Very private, fenced-in yard with a beautiful pool and adjacent hot tub. The waterfall is so soothing to listen to. As the crisp desert air hits my face, I take in several deep breaths to enjoy the moment. I realize that Garrett and Tristan are both already well into their day, so I decide to take a morning soak in the hot tub. The yard is secluded enough so I go au natural. The water is hot at first but I quickly get used to it. I go over the events of yesterday as I soak, wishing there was someone bringing me endless mimosas to dull the pain. I’m still in shock but have never felt such a sense of relief in my life. The last few months have been an absolute living hell. I am jolted back to reality as I hear, “Hello? Hello . . . .Olivia?”