When my boss, Victor Kroll, learned I had stage II lymphoma, he didn't offer sick leave.
Dust settled slowly in the ruined dock lobby, catching the weak glow from a flickering emergency light. Victor and I sat on overturned crates, our clothes torn and smudged with concrete dust. The silence was thick, broken only by the distant wail of emergency sirens heading for the collapsed building.
Victor wiped a trickle of blood from his temple, his eyes fixed on the twisted metal around us. He looked diminished, shattered.
I reached into my pocket, pulling out the folded DNA report. My hand trembled slightly as I held it out.
“This is for you, Victor.” My voice was quiet, almost lost in the vast, empty space.
He stared at the paper, then at my face. He took it, slowly, his fingers stiff. He unfolded it, his eyes scanning the data, the names. Kroll. Dempsey. Gia.
His jaw went slack. The blood drained from his face, leaving it ashen. His eyes, usually so sharp and calculating, clouded with a profound shock that transcended even the recent trauma.
He looked from the report to me, then back to the report. His mouth opened, then closed. He tried to speak, but only a choked, broken sound emerged.
“I… I didn’t…” he stammered, his gaze unfocused. “I didn’t know.”
His eyes held a flicker of something new, something raw and vulnerable I had never seen before: shame, deep and personal. He mumbled a broken apology, a halting, almost routine phrase, as if he couldn’t form new words. He pushed himself off the crate, his movements stiff and clumsy. He took a single, unsteady step, then another, moving toward the gaping hole where the main doors used to be.
He just stumbled out into the dark, rainy night, leaving the shattered dockhouse and the DNA report behind without another word, without a fight, without arresting anyone.
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