Wilson was standing in my office practicing his yo-yo, one of the seemingly endless array of new “hobbies” he had taken up during the pandemic. I was busy reading about a rogue goat terrorizing a small town in Scotland. I was hoping to find video that would allow me to waste more of the morning.
Our best efforts at corporate time mismanagement ended abruptly when a blood-curdling shriek came from down the hall. It was followed in short order by another, this one sending a chill pulsing up my spine.
I looked up from the goat story and Wilson stopped yo-yoing to see Big Mike racing past in his hi-vis vest and a walkie-talkie to his mouth.
“Seventeen oh-one, office seventeen oh-one. We’ve got an unaccompanied, unscheduled re-entry” he yelled as he passed.
Wilson looked at me and said, “Seventeen oh-one, isn’t that…”
“Muriel,” I said, “Nice woman, at least she was when I last saw her eighteen months ago.”
“March twenty-twenty,” Wilson said, shaking his head. “It seems so long ago.”
“It was,” I said. “Want to go rubberneck for a bit?”
The shrieks had become frequent as people returned to the office for the first time in a year and a half. We’d hear a howl of disbelief, or a scream of fright as the unsuspecting opened office doors and stepped back into their pre-pandemic life.
They were greeted with plants that had grown unchecked or died, unopened or uneaten food, and strange liquids that seemed to have seeped from the food. And there were plenty of half-full coffee cups left behind when people were ordered out of the office all those months ago.
The wave of traumatized coworkers caught management by surprise, so Roz moved quickly to form the Rapid Response Reentry Team. For reasons known only to Roz, Mike was placed in charge of the unit. The team acted like a corporate EMS operation, only without the training, expertise or skills of real EMS professionals.
Wilson and I moseyed down the hall as the rest of the Reentry Team approached from the other direction. There were two of them, and like Mike they were wearing hi-vis vests. One guy pushed a gurney with the big first aid kit from the break room and a fire extinguisher on it. The other guy was carrying what appeared to be a machete and a large container of liquid with a hose attached to it.
We neared the office door and heard Mike inside trying to calm Muriel down.
“It’s okay, ma’am, it’s okay, we have counseling available in the lobby. We’re here to help.”
Muriel blurted out words between sobs. “I saw one of…(sob)…of those..(sob)…big man-eating snakes. An an…
“Anaconda, ma’am? No, I don’t think so. That’s just your aloe plant that’s run slightly amok while you were gone. Here, look, see, I’ll touch it.”
Muriel shrieked. “No, no…don’t touch it. Please don’t touch it. It’s alive. Ahhhh….it’s alive…it’s alive. Oh my…it’s moving.”
Mike stuck his head out into the hall and yelled.
“Hector, machete. Stat. Slice that thing up and clear the brush so she can get to her chair.”
He turned and saw us. “Oh, hey, guys,” he said, with a wave. “Either one of you guys happen to have any sedatives on you?”
It was just another day on the job for the head of the Rapid Response Reentry Team.
Mike walked Muriel out into the hallway while Hector, who I believed was in event planning before the pandemic, cleared the thicket of plants in the office. There were grunts and slashing sounds and an occasional muttering of ‘son of a …,” but slowly slivers of daylight shone through from the office.
Muriel choked back a sob and flinched whenever Hector grunted from inside her office. Mike, taking his role as team supervisor seriously, offered the scant and random resources he had available.
“Would you like to be strapped to the gurney, ma’am?” he asked the poor, traumatized woman.
Muriel shook her head and backed away from Mike. If a word bubble were to appear over her head it would certainly say, “Where am I? And why on earth did I not resign when I had the chance?”
Muriel used the back of her hand to wipe away the sniffles while the guy with the gurney, who I still didn’t recognize, rummaged through the first aid kit. He came out with a packet and offered it to her.
“For your cold,” he said.
Muriel took it, stared at it and said, “It’s a Handi Wipe.”
The guy nodded enthusiastically as if Muriel understood him perfectly. “Yes, from the pandemic. Its good for the nose too.”
Muriel looked at him, then Mike, then over to Wilson and I, and seemed to be determining if it was safer inside her office with the anaconda-like plant or in the hall with the Rapid Response Reentry Team. Or maybe somewhere else all together.
Hector emerged from the office, his face flushed and moist with sweat. He was dragging a tangle of vines and branches.
“All clear, boss,” he said to Mike.
Wilson had broken out the yo-yo and was practicing his Walk the Dog technique while Mike walked Muriel to the office door.
“See, all clear,” he said. “Just some twigs and what looks like vermin droppings under the desk, but we’ll get that all cleaned up. Would you like to try logging on now?”
Muriel stood in the doorway and shook her head. “I can’t…I can’t go back in there now,” she said. “It’s so different than what I remember.”
“Once we get the droppings cleared away you’ll be fine,” Mike said. “We found a squirrel in one guy’s office upstairs.”
“Oh heavens no, don’t tell me that,” Muriel said.
“It was dead,” Mike said. “I think it choked on a petrified Fig Newton.”
Muriel’s knees buckled and she put a hand against the wall to steady herself but she gamely stayed on her feet.
“That’s what that was, boss?” Hector asked.
“I think so,” Mike said. “I smelled it. It kinda smelled like a Fig Newton.”
Meanwhile the guy with the first aid kit was busy pulling out its contents like a dog looking for its favorite toy. The gurney was covered with small boxes and packets of random emergency and medical supplies that would most likely never be used. He settled on a thick strip of something with a tube attached.
“Would you like me to take your blood pressure, ma’am?” he asked Muriel.
Muriel looked at the Rapid Response Reentry Team, then Wilson who appeared to be practicing for a yo-yo invitational, then me.
“A lot has changed,” she said to me.
“Did you know that goats can become aggressive, even violent, if cornered?” I asked.
“I’m going back home where it’s safe,” she said, turning to leave.