The woman watched from her post at the desk as her boss walked in, all pristine suits and expensive watches. He barely paid her a glance. The woman went back to her work at the desk in the big empty front room. The keyboard clacked as she looked up again, her boss was gone and no one new had come through the door. She sighed before looking out the window. They had planted a new tree; it was just a sapling still. She went back to her work.
The doors opened and she watched as her boss walked through the door yet again this time trailed by a posse of men with similar fashions. He didn’t look at her as he always did when passing by her desk. He had no need. She watched them go through the room then towards the elevators with a blank look on her face. She didn’t have any strong feelings towards her boss. She barely interacted with him as it was yet she had no want to interact with him further. She looked out the window at the flourishing sapling then sighed, back to work.
The boss walked through the doors of the building looking worse than the last times. His suit was crumpled, and his hair was no longer tidy. He looked at her and quietly asked her to make a personal appointment for him before walking away. She didn’t comment on the bags under his eyes. She worked in silence making the appointment that had nothing to do with her job before another person walked through the doors and she focused on helping them. She looked out the window but quickly looked away. The little sapling wasn’t fairing as well in the cold of winter.
The smiling man walked through the doors holding a little girl’s hand in his own. She smiled at the pair as they walked away from her desk and started up towards her boss’ office. She had only seen the girl a couple of times but she had certainly brought joy to the building whenever the boss brought her by. She looked around the little entrance room she was in, her eye catching on the little tree outside the window. It had grown a little and would no longer be considered a sapling. She smiled again at the progress of the tree before going back to her computer.
Her boss stumbled through the doors, tear tracks left on his face and he no longer was wearing a suit. She didn’t look at him, didn’t even know why he was here. She knew what had happened, everyone in the office did. There would be no little girl trailing the man any longer. He stumbled past her before stopping to stare at the woman for a time. He opened his mouth to say something but shut it just as quickly. He shook his head before continuing up to his office. The tree still grew yet.
He stumbled over himself as the doors opened automatically for him. He was clearly not all there but she didn’t dare comment on it. He looked at her and she could see his blown out pupils and smell his breath. She watched him go up to the elevator with pity. She didn’t know what she could possibly say to help the man she barely knew. She looked back to her computer and stared at the dwindling number of clients that the company worked with. She sighed and started to look for other jobs. The tree had stopped growing.
The doors opened but this time her boss was not entering. He shouted at the officers who held his hands together and led him out of the building. He wasn’t together anymore, that was clear from his slurring words. She knew this was coming. They barely had any clients now but she still had hoped deep down that he hadn’t fallen that far. She watched with sadness as they forced him into the police car and carried down the small bags they had found in his office. She looked down at the open email on her screen. She had been accepted at a new job. She looked out the window but the car was long gone. The tree was there, but it was withered and gone. She felt her tears gather.