Crossing In A Heartbeat

Chapter 1

Kara stared at her computer screen. She focused hard because she kept drifting off into a daydream. If she let herself do that, then she would never get this document edited. However, she found it so boring that she felt like she could fall asleep in an instant.

Heavy footsteps rushed up to her cube. She suddenly felt dizzy.

"What is wrong with you?" a stern voice said.

She jerked to sit straighter before she turned away from her screen to look.

"What?" She felt surprised there was no one there.

She stood and walked to the opening of her cube to look up and down the aisleway. There wasn't a person in sight.

A dizziness swept over her again and she found herself in a room lit with oil lamps. She could smell a wood fire. A slight turn of her head revealed a huge stone fireplace with a roaring fire. The room felt warm because of it. She felt aware of two other people and shifted to get a better look at them.

Then she took a big, gasping breath.

She found herself still standing at the opening of her cube, alone. Someone coughed. The only smell even close to a fire was burnt popcorn someone had overcooked in the microwave.

She stood there for a long time, staring at the wall across from her. This wasn't the first time she had a dizzy spell.

I need a vacation, she thought.

She sat back down at her desk and noted the time was four-thirty.

"I'm not going to get this done." She whispered under her breath, because there was no privacy in a room full of cubicles.

She had fifteen more pages to edit. There was no way she could finish, especially since the document was so poorly written.

"This guy didn't put any effort into it because he knew I had to do the editing. Asshole pushed off his work on me."

She resigned herself to the fact she wouldn't make her deadline. With the pressure off, she almost felt euphoric. She tried to use that feeling to get at least a few more pages edited, but the next paragraph wasn't even in English.

"What the fuck?"

She copied and pasted the text into a language translator. Either the guy was testing or harassing her, or he had accidentally copied the text into the document. There were sexual references. After staring at it with shock, she realized he probably meant for this to go to his girlfriend.

"Idiot."

She gave up and reached for her coffee mug, but it was empty. It was too late in the day to go get some. Besides, she bet the office girls had already washed and put away the pots. She almost switched over to a new tab in her browser to do some online shopping when she heard the footsteps. These were footsteps she knew, and she switched back to the document.

"Kara, are you done with Rod's documentation?"

"No." She didn't even give her boss, Jim, the courtesy of looking at him. Instead, she stared at the document.

"Kara, we need that done."

It was a quarter to five on a Friday afternoon. She doubted anyone was going to look at it until Monday.

"If he knew how to write better, maybe I'd have it done."

"That's your job."

"But when he starts writing in a different language, that gets harder."