Don’t Wake The Koala

I must have been a koala in my past life. Other people survive the corporate grind on iced coffee. I survive on my fluffy fleece blanket. If I stay awake for more than six hours straight, my heart starts doing backflips and my vision goes completely black. During my internship year, a manager forced me to stand through a four hour morning meeting. I collapsed right there, ended up in the emergency room, and barely woke up. My brother was so terrified that he outright bought a boutique firm just so I could practice having a normal job. The hours were set from ten thirty in the morning to three thirty in the afternoon, with a mandatory three hour lunch break. There was only one golden rule in the entire building. Nobody was allowed to wake me up. That was until our new department manager decided to establish her dominance on her very first day. Right in front of our biggest clients, she ripped my blanket off and chucked my ergonomic neck pillow straight into the trash can. "The CEO didn't sponsor my education for ten years just so I could babysit dead weight like you!" she screamed. "You sleep for one more minute, and I will fire you on his behalf!" My hands shook violently. Fat tears splashed onto my keyboard. Victor always told me to let him know if anyone dared to disturb my rest. But looking at her, I was terrified that if my brother found out, he would completely destroy the life she had crawled through hell to build. 1 "The CEO didn't sponsor my education for ten years just so I could babysit dead weight like you!" The shrill female voice detonated across the open floor plan. Before my brain could even process the noise, the cashmere blanket draped over my shoulders was violently yanked away. The little memory foam pillow I was hugging vanished from my arms. A loud thud echoed through the room. My pillow had been violently hurled into the metal wastebasket. I was forced to pry my eyes open. Dark spots danced across my vision. My heart hammered wildly against my ribs, beating so fast I thought my chest might crack open. I gasped for air, my fingers trembling uncontrollably. Standing over me was our new department manager, Rachel. A group of VIP clients stood awkwardly right behind her. "This company is not a retirement home!" she barked, leaning in close. "You sleep for one more minute, and I will fire you on the boss's behalf!" The sheer volume of her voice left my ears ringing. Tears spilled down my cheeks without my permission. It wasn't that I wanted to cry. My body had a severe physical stress response whenever I was frightened or pushed past my exhaustion limit. "I wasn't slacking off," I whispered, biting my lower lip to fight back the dizzy spells. "I have a medical condition. I can't stay awake for extended periods. The company has always approved my rest schedule." Rachel let out a vicious scoff. "If you're sick, stay home in bed. Don't use your illness as a VIP pass. Everyone else here works a full shift. What makes you so special?" She turned around, addressing the entire bullpen of wide eyed employees. "You guys are pulling overtime every single day to hit your quotas. Why should she get to sleep through her shift and collect the same paycheck?" Murmurs instantly broke out across the office floor. "She has a point. Sleeping at your desk is a terrible look." "Why does she get a free pass when we are drowning in work?" The clients awkwardly averted their gaze, pretending to look at the ceiling. I shrank back into my ergonomic chair. Cold sweat drenched the back of my blouse. The room began to spin. Pure instinct made me reach for my phone. All I had to do was press one speed dial button. Victor would answer immediately. One word from him, and Rachel would be packing her things in a cardboard box. But her words echoed in my head. The CEO sponsored her for ten years. She had studied through freezing winters, fought tooth and nail to climb out of poverty, and finally made something of herself. If I made the call, her entire life would crumble. I didn't want my medical privilege to destroy a normal girl's hard earned future. I quietly locked my phone screen. The very next second, a hand shot out and snatched the phone right out of my grip, slamming it face down onto a stack of folders. "Playing on your phone during company hours?" Rachel glared at me, her eyes practically shooting daggers. "Today, I am going to do the boss a favor and discipline the nepotism right out of this office." She spun around to face the entire department. "From this exact moment, this department is under new management. No sleeping. No blankets. No pillows. All extended lunch breaks are canceled until we meet our project deadlines." The office went dead silent. Sarah, one of our senior accountants, couldn't bear to watch anymore. She raised her hand hesitantly. "Manager Rachel, the big boss personally gave the order. No matter what happens, absolutely no one is allowed to wake Sophie up." Rachel's face darkened into a scowl. "The CEO is busy managing hundred million dollar acquisitions. You think he actually cares about trivial garbage like this? Nobody had the guts to manage her before, but I am here now. This company will no longer fund parasites." She marched back to my desk and slammed her hands on the wood. "I don't care who you batted your eyelashes at to get your little hall pass here. That garbage doesn't fly with me. Stand up and get to work." 2 It was eleven in the morning. Normally, this was the exact window where I would close my eyes to let my palpitations subside. Instead, Rachel slammed a massive stack of client dossiers onto my desk. "You have one hour to verify and input every single client ID number in this stack. Sophie, listen to me very carefully. If you make a single typo, this entire department loses their monthly performance bonus." A collective gasp sucked the air right out of the room. Collective punishment. She had just handed a loaded gun to my coworkers and pointed it right at my head. I forced my trembling muscles to straighten up. My vision began to blur. The black text on my computer monitor doubled, then tripled. My fingertips grew numb from the lack of oxygen circulating in my blood. I forced myself to type, but my keystrokes grew slower and heavier by the second. The guy sitting in the cubicle next to me violently slammed his mouse on his mousepad. "Can you speed it up? Are we all supposed to starve this month just because you type like a turtle?" The woman sitting across from me chimed in immediately. "You're so good at catching up on your beauty sleep, but you're completely useless when it comes to actual work. Please don't drag our paychecks down with you." I frantically tried to apologize. "I am so sorry. I promise I will try to go faster." But the harder I pushed, the more my brain felt like it was stuffed with wet cotton. Through the blinding white spots in my eyes, I accidentally mistyped the last two digits of a client's account number. "Stop." Rachel had materialized right behind my chair. She reached down and ruthlessly yanked my keyboard cable out of the USB port. Then, she mirrored my monitor directly onto the massive presentation screen in the center of the office. Holding a laser pointer, she circled the two incorrect digits in glaring red. The blood red numbers loomed over the entire room. "Take a good look, everyone." Rachel's voice echoed off the walls. "This is the caliber of work you get from someone who relies on special privileges. She can't even copy basic numbers. What is the point of keeping trash like this on the payroll?" The atmosphere in the room turned utterly toxic. Sarcastic whispers drifted from the cubicles. "Must be nice sleeping all day while our bonuses evaporate. So fair." "If I knew playing the sick card worked so well, I would have faked an illness too." I bit down on the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper. The back of my eyes burned fiercely. Jenna from the administrative department happened to be walking by. Seeing my face drained of all color, she quietly slid a fruit drop and a paper cup of warm water onto my desk. "Sophie, drink some water. Catch your breath." "Jenna, what exactly do you think you're doing?" Rachel stormed over and slapped the paper cup right off the desk. Warm water splashed all over my skirt. "Who gave you permission to feed her on company time?" Rachel glared at Jenna like she was dirt. "Covering for a lazy employee? Consider your nomination for Employee of the Month permanently revoked." Jenna's face went completely pale. Her eyes watered, but she didn't dare say a single word in her own defense. She just lowered her head and scurried back to her desk. The colleagues sitting closest to me immediately rolled their office chairs away. They treated me like a walking plague. The isolation took less than five minutes to cement. The whispering grew louder and significantly more vicious. "Who exactly is her sugar daddy anyway? How did she get away with sleeping on the job for so long?" "Take a wild guess. Look at that innocent little face. I bet she does plenty of overtime in the bedroom." "Wait, are you saying she's sleeping with the CEO?" My whole body shook with panic. "It is not like that at all!" I tried to explain, my voice cracking. "You guys are totally misunderstanding, the boss and I..." "What about you and the boss?" Rachel cut me off, leaning down until her lips were right next to my ear. Her voice was dripping with pure, unadulterated jealousy. "The kind of women I despise most in this world are parasites like you. You survive by whining and relying on men's pity. Do you honestly believe the CEO is going to fall for your helpless little act forever?" The clock struck noon. The company's officially mandated lunch break had finally arrived. My body was entirely giving out. I gripped the edge of my desk, trying to pull myself up so I could go lie down in the breakroom lounge. "Listen up, everyone! Grab your laptops. We are doing a project review in the main conference room right now." Rachel clapped her hands. "Sophie, your attendance is strictly mandatory." My knees buckled. "Manager Rachel, I physically cannot keep going. Please, just give me thirty minutes to rest." Rachel laughed in my face. "You want to sleep for thirty minutes? So someone else can do your work for thirty minutes? The sheer entitlement is sickening." My coworkers immediately joined the firing squad. "Just suck it up, Sophie. Stop trying to be a diva." "None of us are sleeping. Why do you get to nap?" "Hurry up and walk. You're wasting our time." Surrounded by a wall of hostile faces, my tears finally broke free. There was nowhere left to hide. Clutching the hem of my ruined skirt, I dragged my leaden legs toward the conference room. 3 It was one o'clock in the afternoon. The air conditioning in the conference room was blasting freezing air. My consciousness was rapidly approaching the danger zone. Cold sweat dripped steadily down my forehead. My lips were as white as a sheet of printer paper. The frantic thumping of my heart echoed like a war drum against my eardrums. "Sophie. Stand up and recap the core marketing metrics we just discussed." Rachel sat at the head of the table, tapping her manicured fingernails against the glass surface. My brain felt like molasses as I forced myself up. "The metrics we discussed... regarding the target demographics... were..." "Stop." Rachel cut me off with an exaggerated sigh of disgust. "I asked you for a professional recap, not a stuttering performance. Did you leave your brain in your bed this morning? Or is your skull just stuffed with pillow fluff?" Eager to stay off Rachel's bad side, a few coworkers let out sycophantic laughs. "The manager is right. She sleeps so much her brain has completely rotted." "She probably thinks she's still tucked into her mattress at home." Once the floodgates of bullying are thrown open, crowds love to disguise their cruelty as casual banter. Fighting the urge to sob, I kept my head down and tried to type the meeting minutes. My hands were shaking so violently that I produced a string of unintelligible gibberish on the screen. Rachel walked up behind me and stared at my monitor. "Read the sentence you just typed. Out loud." I stared at the scrambled letters. My throat felt like it was packed with broken glass. "I..." "Read it!" I closed my eyes in utter humiliation. "The... client requi..." "Enough. Save us the embarrassment." Rachel sneered. Hoping to score points with the new boss, a male coworker grabbed a heavy stack of printed reports and slammed them down right in front of me. "Since you can't seem to wake up, why don't you collate these files? A little manual labor will get your blood flowing." A female coworker sitting next to me kicked my office chair away. "Stop sitting. It only makes you lazier. You can collate them on your feet." I gripped the edge of the glass table, my calves trembling violently. I desperately wanted to grab my phone and hit that speed dial. My hand reached into my pocket, only to grasp empty air. I remembered with a sickening jolt that Rachel had confiscated it. During a brief five minute bathroom break, Rachel walked up to me. She lowered her voice, dripping with venom. "Don't think the CEO will protect you forever just because you're his flavor of the month right now." "The boss respects competence. He admires women like me. Women who can actually carry his empire forward." "Not useless, pathetic burdens like you." I froze. Staring into her ambition warped eyes, it finally clicked. She was the girl my brother used to talk about at the dinner table. The brilliant, hardworking student he had sponsored for ten years. The one he praised for having a "relentless drive." "My brother..." I gasped for air, clutching my chest. "My brother would hate the way you treat people." He paid for her education because he felt sorry for her. Because she wanted to learn. He didn't build her up so she could use her power to crush the people beneath her. Hearing the words "my brother," a flash of absolute malice crossed Rachel's face. She clearly assumed it was my pet name for my sugar daddy CEO. "Calling him 'brother' now? No wonder you walk around this office like you own the place," she hissed, grinding her teeth. "Too bad the boss will eventually realize you are nothing but a dead weight." Dead weight. Those two words drove a jagged knife straight into my soul. I had been severely ill since childhood. My entire family lived in a constant state of anxiety because of me. My greatest, most paralyzing fear was becoming a burden to the people I loved. At two o'clock, the administrative department sent out a frantic mass alert. The CEO was personally escorting the board of directors from our partner corporation to listen to the project pitch. The conference room exploded into a frenzy of preparation. Rachel's eyes lit up with feverish excitement. She viewed this as her ultimate stage to prove her worth to the man who funded her life. She pointed a rigid finger at the conference room doors. "Sophie. Go stand by the main doors and act as the official greeter." "I want our investors to see that this department has officially eradicated its culture of laziness." I gripped the glass table so hard my knuckles turned white. "Manager Rachel, I am begging you. My heart can't take this." "Please, just let me lie down for ten minutes..." Rachel stepped forward and violently yanked my company ID lanyard. "If you dare pass out today, you are deliberately sabotaging a multimillion dollar deal. When we lose this contract, the entire department's yearly bonus will be wiped out. Because of you." The other employees immediately swarmed me. "Don't you dare play the sick card now. Stop acting like a fragile little princess." "Can't you just hold it together for one hour? Will it actually kill you?" "If you ruin my paycheck, I swear to God I will make your life a living hell." I looked around at the circle of resentful, hateful eyes glaring at me. The words pleading for my life died in my throat. Leaning heavily against the drywall, I dragged my feet inch by agonizing inch toward the entrance of the conference room. 4 It was two thirty in the afternoon. The executives from the partner corporation began filtering into the room. My legs had completely lost their strength. I was solely relying on the doorframe to keep myself upright. My vision was reduced to a swirling storm of television static. The voices around me sounded muffled, like I was listening to them from underwater. Inside the glass walled room, Rachel stood confidently in front of the projector, radiating triumph. "Distinguished guests, our department recently underwent a severe cultural overhaul." "Previously, we suffered from a few negative elements. Lethargy, entitlement, and a complete lack of professionalism." "But since I assumed control, I have shown absolutely zero tolerance for such parasitic behavior." She didn't say my name out loud. But her piercing gaze shot straight like an arrow, landing directly on me. Everyone in the room followed her line of sight. Dozens of judging eyes cast a suffocating net over my fragile body. My fingers dug into the wooden doorframe so hard my nails were close to tearing off. I really couldn't stand anymore. I tried to let gravity take over, slowly sliding my back down the doorframe to crouch on the floor. The other greeter standing next to me immediately hissed a warning. "The manager is watching you. Don't you dare get us in trouble." She grabbed my arm and roughly hauled me back onto my feet. "I... I really need a doctor..." I wheezed. "Oh, cry me a river. Nobody likes working," she rolled her eyes in sheer disgust. "Drop the pathetic act, okay?" Rachel used the excuse of handing out physical portfolios to march out into the hallway. Her eyes zeroed in on the thin cardigan draped over my shoulders. It was the only thing protecting me from the biting chill of the overhead AC vents. "Front facing roles require a crisp, professional aesthetic. What is this sloppy cardigan supposed to be?" Without waiting for an answer, she snatched my only source of warmth right off my back. "Stop looking like a dying Victorian orphan. It is embarrassing the company." The freezing artificial wind blasted directly against my damp skin. I began to shiver uncontrollably. My heartbeat completely lost its rhythm. At exactly three o'clock, the VIP elevator at the far end of the hallway chimed loudly. The polished steel doors slid open. My brother, dressed in a flawless midnight blue bespoke suit, stepped out, surrounded by a phalanx of senior executives. His expression was chiseled out of ice, projecting an aura of dominance that made everyone instinctively hold their breath. The moment Rachel saw him, her eyes gleamed with pure adoration. She plastered on her most charming, professional smile and hurried over to intercept him. "Mr. Cannon, it is an honor." "You have been far too lenient with this company in the past, which allowed a toxic culture of laziness to fester. But please, rest assured. I have completely disciplined the floor on your behalf." Victor's expression remained completely bored. He was flipping through a financial prospectus and barely even acknowledged her presence. Desperate for his attention, Rachel doubled down. "Specifically, there was a certain employee who slept on the clock, dragged down team metrics, and humiliated our corporate image." "I have finally put her in her place." "I plan to permanently dispose of this trash very soon. I will never allow parasites to suck this company dry under my watch." Victor's fingers froze on the edge of the paper. He frowned, his brilliant mind instantly catching the phrase "slept on the clock." Assuming she had finally won the CEO's interest, Rachel eagerly turned around and pointed her manicured finger straight at me. "That's her." "As you can see, sir, if we leave vermin like her unchecked, this firm will eventually be dragged into bankruptcy." Every single pair of eyes in the hallway snapped toward the conference room doors. I was barely hanging on, clinging to the wooden frame. My face was completely drained of blood, resembling a porcelain doll. My eyes were bloodshot, my lips quivering violently. And lying on the carpet right by the trash can near my feet, covered in dust, was my little memory foam neck pillow. The very next second. My vision plunged into absolute darkness. My legs surrendered their final ounce of strength. Like a puppet with its strings brutally slashed, I plummeted forward, my body slamming hard against the freezing marble floor. CRACK. The sickening sound of impact echoed loudly down the sterile hallway. The financial prospectus slipped from Victor's hands, scattering across the floor. The instant he registered the face of the girl collapsing on the marble, all the color violently drained from his face. "What did you just say..." Victor locked his eyes on Rachel, his voice sounding like a demon crawling out of the abyss. "What did you just do to my baby sister?"