The Boxer's Corner by Miguel Barron

Author:Miguel Barron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Miguel Barron
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Office

This all made things very difficult to explain to family, friends, and colleagues. It was great that she was feeling better. And all we wanted was for her to have as much quality time as possible. But people’s conception of a terminally ill cancer patient is linear: they are supposed to go from bad to worse, not rebound magically from one day to the next. I myself didn’t understand it at first. But the fact was, she was up and about and feeling better. And even though I knew it was not sustainable indefinitely, we would try to enjoy her newfound strength as much as possible.

During the week that Nadia had spent in the hospital, I had tried to go back to work. I was feeling self-conscious about how much time I was spending out of the office, especially because my firm was still paying me. The day I went in, my boss asked me how Nadia was doing. I replied candidly that she was doing terribly. She was in the hospital and in pretty bad shape.

Later that morning, after my bosses had time to speak to each other about my situation, they came back to me and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I should go back to the hospital and take care of my wife. In addition to their sense of decency and compassion, they also knew it would be impossible for me to concentrate on work as long as Nadia was in this condition. We had put a coverage plan in place so that two of my colleagues would be in charge of my clients in my absence. By all accounts they had been doing a good job. We also all understood that this was not the type of job you could float in and out of. In addition to the daily research and marketing trips we were hosting throughout North America, we had many live transactions going on all day long. You had to be on top of everything in case your clients asked about any one of the many balls we had in the air. Unless you were immersed in it on a continuous day-to-day basis, you were pretty much out of the loop. I understood that my trying to periodically take the reins, only to disappear again at the next medical crisis, was disruptive to the group and to the flow of business.

So I continued to spend time at home, helping out with the boys and taking care of Nadia. I would occasionally check in with my bosses, who continued to insist I take care of my family (“It’s what matters most”) and that I shouldn’t worry about work (“Let us take care of that”). They also knew that the issue of medical insurance was absolutely critical. At this stage, my back-of-the-envelope calculations estimated that since Nadia’s initial diagnosis, her various treatments, operations, and emergency-room and hospital visits had generated expenses somewhere in the region of $1.5 to $2 million. Our insurance had covered pretty much everything.

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