“Are we in danger of losing Freddy?”

When Clare heard those words, she almost choked on her crayfish and rocket sandwich. Bits of fresh granary bread stuck to her throat was not how she envisioned her life would end. Luckily, she had cranberry juice to wash away impending death.

“What?” she coughed.

“Freddy,” repeated Alyson from HR. “I hear that he is going to be let go.”

Clare blinked for a few moments and allowed the sandwich to go down her throat.

“Not Freddy,” stammered Clare. “They can’t let him go.”

Freddy, the perfectly groomed, the perfectly spoken assistant who in Clare’s eyes was the angel Gabriel. Wingless but the harbinger of good and holiness. He had been a constant in her always busy life and she had forgiven him his name almost immediately after meeting him. And now, all the immaculate filing, the perfectly ordered photocopying, the ready supply of coffee and the occassional shoulder rub was on the brink of disappearing.

“I heard one of the managers saying that due to the current financial squeeze, personal assistants are a luxury that we don’t need.”

“But I need him,” said Clare almost crying but that was largely due to the remaining bits of crayfish and rocket in her esophagus.

“Well,” replied Alyson. “You better get used to not needing him.”

Clare sipped on her cranberry juice and looked around at the busy office. She let out a deep sigh.

“Are you okay?” asked Alyson.

“Yes,” said Clare. “I’m just thinking about all the work that needs to be done.”

This work by Leonardo Morgado is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.