A screech of brakes, a looming white shape, and the impact of a body on metal. I saw my coworker, Mai, carried forward by a commercial van, splayed across the hood and windshield, before the truck's rapid deceleration left her flying through the air. Her limp body arced forward and tumbled across the pavement a further distance before coming to rest. Though the din of traffic had filled the air before, I swear I could hear my heartbeat and the heavy breathing of the large man next to me in the silence that followed. Everything slowed to a stop along with Mai's form on the asphalt.

Then I heard two sets of footsteps traveling in opposite directions. I realized one set was the large man that had been fighting with Mai, running away down the sidewalk. The other set I was surprised to learn was my own as I rushed over to where Mai was collapsed on the ground. My phone was in my hand from when I'd been about to threaten the two combatants with the police. I quickly dialed 9-1-1 and knelt down next to Mai, only then thinking I should see if there were more cars coming, if it was safe. I saw the truck had stopped completely, an airbag filling the interior of the windshield, webs of radial cracks running along the surface. The cars next to us had stopped, though a few in the lane beyond had started moving again, unaware of the scene playing out a few feet away. I started to hear other voices and yelling around me, saw more people moving toward the truck, toward me. I looked back down at Mai.

I had no idea how to do CPR or first aid. I knew you shouldn't move an injured person, but the way Mai lay crumpled in the street didn't look right. She had collapsed on her right side, her arm twisted unnaturally beneath her, her neck extended at an odd angle. I saw blood bubbling from her lips as she wheezed. She was breathing at least. Blood started to seep up from scrapes and abrasions all over her face, arms, and chest. I had this weird vision that she was drowning, swallowed up by the rising blood.

"Hello? Hello?" I heard an attenuated voice, and looked around at where it was coming from. I saw a cracked phone a few feet away from Mai and went to pick it up with a free hand. I held it up to my ear, but the voice kept coming from far away. "This is 9-1-1 dispatch, who's calling? Are you able to speak?" I realized then it was coming from my phone in my other hand. I felt another person kneeling next to me, saw someone else had started to inspect Mai with trained eyes, people were shouting and there was a belated scream in the distance. I held my phone to my mouth in a daze, and said in a weirdly calm voice, "This is Bushra Patel. There's been an accident."

✦ ✦ ✦

When the ambulance with Mai inside left, I remained seated on a concrete planter some distance from the street. There was a scratchy blanket on my shoulders, and two cardboard boxes resting on either side of me. Once the EMTs had arrived and I'd hung up with 9-1-1, I'd moved away from the scene to sit down, and really started to shake. A new batch of firefighters had come and draped the blanket over me, and checked me over. Finally, a police officer came by and took my statement, asked about Mai, took down my information. He gave me a card, which I still held in the hand that clutched the ends of the blanket together. While I was sitting there, someone had brought the two boxes over to me, with what impulse I'm not sure. I guess they thought Mai and I were connected in some way. I didn't even remember Mai's last name.

I stirred, and looked around. People were still milling about, but most were keeping their distance. Traffic had started moving again, and the scene was slowly returning to normal. Like it never happened. The police officer was talking to a tow truck driver that had arrived to remove the vehicle from the scene of the accident. Sitting on the curb nearby I saw an EMT administering to a man with a gauze pad pressed to his face. The truck driver, I assumed. I felt a surge of unwarranted anger at him. He forced this on me. It's his fault. Everything could be his fault. But that fire flamed out with one look at the man's weeping face. He looked so pitiful and lost. I couldn't hear what he said, but it was clear he was as much the victim as me. If Mai died, it was going to haunt this poor guy, I reflected.

Then I pulled up with a start. Was Mai dead? I bit my lower lip, trying to stifle the feelings surging up my throat. I barely knew her. We worked together one time. But I remembered a quiet competence and confidence from being around her. It soothed my taut nerves when dealing with those egotistical, chauvinist engineers who found fault at every turn. When I wanted to yell and scream in frustrated rage, she'd simply smile and turn their words back on them. She never let them derail or rant. She was in control. Even remembering that helped me stop shivering and regain some measure of calm. But it also unblocked my thoughts, and I could feel the hot wetness building at the corner of my eyes.

Needing a distraction and lacking other outlets, I turned and pulled one of the boxes up and onto my lap. I wiped at my eyes ineffectually with the rough blanket, and opened the box to confirm its contents. The first thing I saw was an unfamiliar padded wallet with a strange set of keys laying on top of a ripped and mostly empty laptop backpack. Maybe they were Mai's? The rest of the box was a jumbled mess of folders and office supplies. I remembered I still had her phone in my bag, pulled it out, and put it in the box with the wallet. Then I set that box down on the ground, and picked up the other one. This one was in a similar state, papers strewn around. I recognized the exit paperwork and the upended succulent I'd had at my desk, but then I saw a few items – were these toys? – that weren't mine. They looked like little rubber robots. I picked up the papers on top and went through them, finally realizing they were certificates and recognition awards for 'Mairead Carrigan' – these were all Mai's. I shuffled through the other box again, and realized it contained some photos of mine and other personal items underneath the other things. It was all a jumbled mess.

I came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to separate all this here on the sidewalk. Wanting to be away from this place as soon as possible, I picked up both boxes and headed for the lot where I parked my car.

✦ ✦ ✦

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"Ammi, I'm home," I called out tiredly as I came through the front door.

"Bushra? Is that you?" I heard my Mama call out from the back of the house.

"Yes, Ammi," I replied from behind the boxes I was carrying, moving swiftly toward the stairs, "I'm not feeling well, I'm heading to my room to lie down."

"Do you want something to eat?" came her distracted voice.

"No, I'm just going to lie down for a bit." I called back.

"You sure? Or how about some tea with honey?" I heard some shuffling in the back.

"I'm fine, just tired."

"Bistar per jao," she relented, "Your Papa will be home late tonight."

I quickly made my way upstairs with the boxes before she could see and ask questions I didn't want to answer.

My room was upstairs and near the end of the hall. My parents' room was down the hall the other way. My older brothers' rooms, in the middle, were empty, as both had since moved out. They were storage space now, though largely untouched. I think Ammi kept them available just in case.

I swiftly but quietly closed the door to my room, and set the boxes down on my bed. The room was cluttered, but familiarly so. Beyond the bed was a large double bookshelf holding piles of books, double-stacked – non-fiction works like The Drunkard's Walk and Code Girls, were propped up next to science fiction novels by authors such as C J Cherryh and Kim Stanley Robinson. Near the top were treasured childhood awards and trophies, the earlier ones placed high in positions of dusty prominence, while newer certificate frames and medals were draped or stacked wherever there was space. The praise I received for these accolades always paled in comparison to what my family showered on my brothers. Toward the end of school, I'd stopped bringing them up at all.

My desk had my personal laptop, as well as a large LCD monitor connected to a tower CPU beneath the desk. Cables and accessories were littered around, including multiple models of AR glasses I'd been testing. To be honest, most of this was left over from university projects – I'd barely done any work here since then. I mostly used the PC to play games on Steam when I was taking a break. It was easier to stay working at the office than come home, easier to avoid the comments about social events, my brothers' success, or worse, my brothers' successful coworkers that I should meet. My work was appreciated at the office. What I created there had value.

When I was first approached by Jon, I was utterly stunned. I was proud of my work, but to have that pride be affirmed was intoxicating. My professor in Computer Science introduced us at a dinner party she held, extolling the recent work I'd been doing. I was the youngest person there, but Jon made me feel like I was the guest of honor. I can't remember talking with anyone else at the party, I certainly drank a bit too much wine, but being able to discuss the work I'd been doing in AR and collaboration, getting feedback and ideas from someone who was working with whole teams of engineers and real budgets… I was floating.

Long before the offer, before we met to discuss terms of acquiring my project, before the guarantees of financial and professional freedom, I'd made up my mind that I wanted to work there, where Jon was. It wasn't romantic. Jon was decently attractive, but not overwhelmingly so. And he obviously loved his family. There was never a question. But the allure of that acceptance, that approval, was so powerful. I'd never felt so nervous to live up to those expectations, so embarrassingly grateful to be seen.

When Thorsten accused me of "sleeping my way up", my throat swelled shut with a savage hate. All words flew out of my mind, and my fists at my side were shaking as my vision contracted until only the two men in front of me existed. I lashed out to claw at that face that spat such venom in front of Jon. But Jon only sat there and said nothing, simply shifted to avoid my gaze, looked down at his hands… all my rage popped like a balloon, broken. It wasn't the lurid details Thorsten enumerated, the insinuations of my sexual appetites, or the blatant presumptions of my degeneracy. No. It was the complete dismissal of my hard work and skill, all my accomplishments waved away like smoke. It was the truth that their lie revealed, that I'd never earned their respect or their acknowledgement. Once they had my work, that was the extent of my worth. Like the husk of the fruit, ripped away and discarded.

I stared at the boxes on my bed, feeling the wet futility returning to my heated cheeks. All that I'd built was on my Complyze laptop and cloud repositories – which I no longer had access to. It felt like a chunk of my life had just been ripped out and removed. A pleasant dream, soft and soaring, and evaporating upon waking. I wanted to scream and pull out my hair, to tear into this body that summoned nothing but disdain and despair. But then I flashed hard on the figure flying through the air, and swallowed hard.

When I saw the man first hit Mai to the ground, I was irritated at how weakly Mai fell. I was looking for anything to wail against, to purge this helplessness. But then Mai leaped back up at her attacker. And I recognized that desperate anger, that drive beyond hope for a reason, any reason for what was happening. I let out the faintest breath of a laugh. It was stupid. But I felt it reignite the fiery fury clenched within me. And then, as soon as mine flickered back to life, Mai's fire was extinguished like a match in a rush of wind, metal, and glass. In the end, I didn't even know what she was arguing about, or with who. The flicker of resistance stilled on the pavement, ended even as it began. But I didn't want that flame to go out. I wouldn't let it.

I pulled my worn wooden desk chair over to the side of the bed, and opened the lid of the box closest to me. I removed the wallet, keys, and phone which had fallen along the side, set aside the backpack. Then I took up the stack of loose papers and began scanning through it. It was my exit paperwork, a detailed and formal treatise on the subject of ruining my life. I dropped it angrily to the side of the box next to the things I'd already pulled out. I flipped the box over and shook it roughly, dumping the contents on the bed. I began to systematically shift through the contents, sorting it into piles.

It was while I was sorting out the second box that I came across an additional packet of exit paperwork. I was about to toss it on the pile with the rest, when I noticed it was a repetition of what I'd read before. A copy maybe? I went through it more thoroughly, and found that while it was mostly the same, it differed in some areas. There were references to fraudulent invoices and vendors, including one that was part of the project Mai and I worked on together. Jon and Thorsten never mentioned anything about this to me. I flipped back to the front of the document, and saw Mai's name as the identified employee instead of mine.

My lips curled up in a self-mocking sneer as I sat back heavily in my chair. I shook my head in disbelief. What kind of trial was before me to bear this kind of luck. My only possible ally in this mess, and they're in the hospital. Maybe even dead. I covered my eyes with my thumb and fingers, pressing hard enough to see white flashes in my inner vision. But my mouth was stretched wide in a maniacal grin. My Ammi would call all of this a test from God. Well, I aced tests. God owed me this one.