Slipperless by Sloan Storm Page A

began to stroll away from me. Lifting my eyebrows, but not my head, I watched as he meandered through the lab workstations until eventually he reached the doorway and exited the room.

    FIONA
    Gabe hadn’t been gone for the lab for more than ten or fifteen seconds before Amanda and Melissa descended on me. Weak kneed, I collapsed into my lab stool as they surrounded me on both sides.
    “What. The. Hell. Was. That?” Melissa demanded.
    “Yeah,” Amanda said as she nodded her head in agreement. “Gabe made a beeline for you. What did he say?”
    As they peppered me with questions, I felt the room start to spin. I didn’t want any of this. I just wanted to do my job and be left alone. Nothing was happening between us. I wasn’t encouraging him to do anything. After propping my elbows up on my workstation, I dropped my head in my hands.
    My eyes fluttered closed.
    “Please stop,” I mumbled.
    They cackled at my request. I felt indignation rise up inside of me. Even though I didn’t suspect they were trying to be cruel per se, the situation was more than I wanted to deal with at the moment. I fell silent and drew inward, squeezing my fingernails hard into my scalp. They chuckled and carried on for a few more seconds until they went quiet as well.
    “Fiona honey?” Amanda said after another moment or two. “What’s wrong?”
    “Yeah,” Melissa added. “We were only teasing you. Are you okay?”
    “Mmm, hmm.”  I muttered as I allowed my hands to fall away from my head. Afterward, I began to stand from my lab stool, scooting it with a groan across the floor. Amanda and Melissa moved aside, giving me room to make my way.
    “Are you sure?” Amanda asked. “You don’t look so great.”
    It was the last thing I remembered.
    When consciousness returned, my eyes flickered open. Glancing down, I noticed I lay flat, on what looked to be a leather sofa. Directly overhead, florescent lighting buzzed and illuminated a harsh glow as I squinted up at it.
    Lifting my hand to shield my gaze, I rolled my head to one side to try and figure out where I was. I didn’t see anyone as my eyes adjusted to the brightness, but as I looked around, I noticed an assortment of medical and monitoring equipment.
    I exhaled and closed my eyes once again as the glare grew to be too much to bear in that instant. While I rested my head, I heard a pair of footsteps squeak as they approached until they’d drawn to within a foot or so of me, when they ceased.
    “Fiona,” the voice of an older woman whispered.
    As she finished speaking, I opened my eyes once again.
    “Oh. Oh good,” she began. “You’re awake.”
    My eyes darted around the room as I attempted to get my bearings in the unfamiliar surroundings.
    “Do you know where you are, Fiona?”
    I blinked as I felt awareness begin to return.
    “Fiona?”
    “Hmm?” I replied as I looked up in her direction. An instinct to move overwhelmed me, but as I tried to sit upright, the woman bent at the waist and pressed her palm flat into my shoulder, holding me against the couch.
    “Fiona,” she said once more. “I need you to lie still and answer my question, dear. Do you know where you are?”
    After a second or two I exhaled and managed a reply. “Yes um, my job. Hawkins Biotech.”
    After that, the woman, who revealed herself to me as the company nurse, explained I’d lost consciousness in the lab. However, before I collapsed in a heap to the hardness of the linoleum floor, Amanda and Melissa grabbed me.
    The nurse also said she’d checked me over for serious medical conditions and hadn’t found any. Instead after helping me into a seated position, she began to ask me a series of questions. I answered ‘‘no’ to all of them except the last one which forced a lie to tumble from my lips.
    “Have you been under a lot of stress recently?”
    Hmm, let’s see. My grandmother is battling a life-threatening illness. I’ve finally landed a job I’ve been after for most of the