Chapter 3

On the third day, I was supervising an outdoor shoot on location in the suburbs that afternoon when the weather turned against us and a sudden downpour hit.

To protect the studio's expensive camera equipment, I took off my jacket and wrapped it tightly around our two main cameras and the full set of lenses.

Not a single drop got into the gear, but I was drenched to the bone.

The cold October rain chilled me straight through. By the time I got back to the studio, I'd started running a low fever.

My soaked clothes clung to my body, and my old stomach problem flared up with a vengeance. It felt like I'd swallowed a handful of broken glass, and every breath brought another wave of twisting pain.

I dug out the stomach medicine I kept in my drawer.

But when I took a cup to the break room, I found the water cooler had long since run dry.

To save money, Rick had ordered the bottled water delivery canceled two months earlier.

He claimed boiled tap water was healthier, but really, he just wanted to save the few hundred dollars a month it cost.

And now even the cheap electric kettle had been broken for two days, and he still refused to approve the money for a new one.

I had no way to take my medicine.

The intense pain had me breaking out in a cold sweat, and my vision began to blur.

Bracing myself against the wall, I stumbled into the storage room.

The box of Honeycrisp apples sat right where it had always been.

After the trouble of the past two days, no one had dared to touch it. Aside from the two I'd taken, every apple was still there, lined up neatly inside as if to mock my wretched state.

To get the dry pills down, I gritted my teeth and picked up a third apple.

I figured the juice from the fruit would help me force the medicine down in a pinch.

I'd barely raised the apple to my mouth, without even getting a bite in, when a shout exploded through the office.

"JOSH!"

The roar was so shrill that Rick's voice cracked.

Like a feral cat whose tail had been stepped on, he came charging in from outside.

He viciously smacked the medicine out of my hand, and the white pills scattered across the floor.

He jabbed a finger at my nose and started screaming at the top of his lungs.

"Everyone, stop what you're doing! Look over here!" Rick yelled to every employee out front.

Terry and our other intern, Buck Collins, were so frightened they trembled. They both shot to their feet, at a loss for what to do, barely daring to breathe.

Rick pointed at the apple in my hand, his face twisted like a vengeful demon's. "Look, everyone! This is the Josh you all respect so much! This is our so-called ten-year veteran!

"Eating whatever he wants, taking whatever he wants, and shamelessly exploiting the company at every turn!

"One on the first day, another on the second day, and today, he has the nerve to eat another one!

"What's next? You planning to haul everything in this company back to your house?"

Clutching my aching stomach, I leaned against the wall and looked at him.

"Rick... I have a fever, and my stomach's acting up... There's no water to take my medicine with..." I explained weakly, every word accompanied by a convulsing stab of pain.

I pointed at the pills scattered on the floor.

But Rick didn't care whether I lived or died. All he could see was the apple in my hand.

"Stop playing the victim! Does a stomachache give you the right to take company property whenever you feel like it?

"You pull in such a fat commission every month, and you still have to squeeze the company for the price of some fruit!

"These three apples add up to forty-five dollars!

"That's the same as stealing forty-five dollars in cash from the company!

"I don't think you come here to work at all. You come here to suck this company dry like a bloodsucker!"

Listening to his illogical, vicious words and looking at that face, made hideous by his greed, I gave up on him completely.