A Bargain With The Boss

“You need to come to the office.” She stopped herself.

What Tuck really needed to do was to go to the hospital and meet the ambulance there. She searched for a way to phrase those words.

“Why?” he asked.

“It’s your father.”

“My father wants me to come to the office?” His drawling tone dripped sarcasm.

“We had to call an ambulance.”

Tuck’s voice became more alert. “Did he fall?”

“He, well, seems to have collapsed.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know.” She was thinking it had to be a heart attack, but she didn’t want to speculate.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“The paramedics are putting him on a stretcher. I didn’t want to call Mrs. Tucker and frighten her.”

“Right. Good decision.”

“You should probably meet them at Central Hospital.”

“Is he conscious?”

Amber looked at Jamison’s closed eyes and pale skin. “I don’t think so.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Good.”

The line went silent and she set down the phone.

The paramedics wheeled Jamison past. He was propped up on the stretcher, an oxygen mask over his face and an IV in his arm.

Amber sank down onto Margaret’s chair, her knees wobbly and her legs weak.

Margaret and the nurse emerged from Jamison’s office.

Margaret’s eyes were red, tears marring her cheeks.

Amber rose to meet her. “It’s going to be all right. He’s getting the best of care.”

“How?” Margaret asked into the air. “How could this happen?”

The nurse excused herself to follow the paramedics.

“Do you think he has heart problems?” Amber asked quietly.

Margaret shook her head. “He doesn’t. Just last night...” Another tear ran down her cheek.

“Did something happen yesterday?” Amber assumed Margaret had meant yesterday, maybe late in the afternoon.

“He was in such a good mood. We had some wine.”

“You had wine in the office?”

Margaret stilled. Panic and guilt suddenly flooded her expression, and she took a quick step back, glancing away.

“It was nothing,” she said, focusing on some papers in her in-basket, straightening them into a pile.

Amber was stunned.

Jamison and Margaret had been together last night? Had they been together, together? It sure looked like it.

Margaret moved briskly around the end of her desk. “I should... That is...” She sank down in her chair.

“Yes,” Amber agreed, not sure what she was agreeing to, but quite certain she should end the conversation and get back to her own desk.

She started for the hallway, but then she paused, her sense of duty asserting itself. “I’ll call the senior managers and give them the news. Did Jamison tell you about Dixon?”

Margaret looked up. “What about Dixon?”

Amber decided the news of Dixon leaving could wait a couple of hours. “Nothing. We can talk later.”

Margaret’s head went back down and she plunked a few keys on her keyboard. “Jamison had a lunch today and a three o’clock with the board.”

Amber left Margaret to her work, her mind racing with all that would need to be handled.

Dixon was gone. Jamison was ill. And that left no one in charge. Tuck was out there somewhere. But she couldn’t even imagine what would happen if Tuck took the reins. He wasn’t a real vice president. He was just some partier who dropped by the office now and again, evidently giving heart palpitations to half the female staff.

* * *

A week later, Tuck realized he had to accept reality. His father was going to be weeks, if not months, in recovery from his heart attack, and Dixon was nowhere to be found. Somebody had to run Tucker Transportation. And that somebody had to be him.

The senior executives seated around the boardroom table looked decidedly troubled at seeing him in the president’s chair. He didn’t blame them one bit.

“What I don’t understand,” said Harvey Miller, the finance director, “is why you’re not even talking to Dixon.”

Tuck hadn’t yet decided how much to reveal about his brother’s disappearance. He’d tried calling, text messaging and emailing Dixon. He’d had no response. And there was nothing to go on except the cryptic letter his brother had left for their father, saying he’d be gone a month, maybe even longer.

“Dixon’s on vacation,” said Tuck.

“Now?” asked Harvey, incredulity ringing through his tone.