The Alarming Palsy of James Orr by Tom Lee

Author:Tom Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2018-11-16T21:27:58+00:00

4

Later that afternoon, when he woke up from his nap, James called his office to let them know he had been signed off for another month.

In January, Deborah had told him he was on course to join the senior management team at the company within a year or two. She was expecting a promotion herself and wanted him to take over her current role. This was all before the palsy, of course. Now he could not help thinking about how his absence would be affecting these prospects, the project at the law firm that would already have become someone else’s and for which they would get the credit.

From time to time, in the moments when he was feeling more positive, he thought that the answer would be simply to bite the bullet and go back to work, to force the issue. It would be difficult at first but the shock of it might revive him, instead of all the fretting and inactivity that surely only compounded his general lassitude. After all, it was this powerlessness over his situation that was really intolerable.

Work had put him under no pressure to return, and this was really a credit to them. At first he had called every Monday morning to update Deborah on his situation, but he had got the sense that this was unnecessarily conscientious. “Just let us know when you are ready,” she had said, more than once. When he asked how things were going with the project she had chided him in a friendly way. “That is not currently your concern,” she said, and then added, “We are all thinking of you, James.” “Really?” James had replied, taken aback. “I mean, of course, thank you.”

He had got another doctor’s note but no one had asked him for this, or in fact for the first one. Again, he was just being conscientious. Nevertheless, whenever he picked up the phone and heard it ring, he became intensely nervous, and this time, as every other time, he thought carefully about what he was going to say, almost as if he were preparing a lie.

In the event, he needn’t have worried. The phone rang for some time and was then answered by someone, a man, whose voice he didn’t recognise. Deborah was out of the office and this other man had picked up her phone, as James had done in the past.

“Can I leave a message?” said James. “Can you say that James called?”

“Of course,” said the man. “Can I take your surname, James?”

James could hear the hum of the office in the background, people talking, a printer clicking into action, other phones ringing. He tried again to picture himself there, as one of the people talking in the background perhaps, but the image refused to form.

“Orr,” said James. “It’s James Orr.”

“Can you spell that for me?”

James spelt out his name and then hung up. He opened the laptop and tried to log into his office emails. For weeks he had resisted doing this, on Deborah’s instructions.

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