Marginal gains

Sarah stood in her office's breakroom, watching the clock tick toward 3 AM. Her quarterly presentation was due at sunrise. The spinach and goat cheese salad she'd eaten hours ago sat heavy in her stomach, a sad attempt at self-care during eighty-hour weeks.

"You're being a bull about this," her boss had said that afternoon, leaning over her shoulder. The older man's cologne smelled like desperation and expensive scotch. "Just massage the numbers. Nobody's gonna look that close."

She'd massage them, alright. Right into an early grave.

She swallowed her daily vitamin pack — A, D, E, K, omega-3s, magnesium — a colorful cocktail of hope that maybe she wouldn't die before forty. Not with the lifestyle.

The numbers were wrong. She knew they were wrong. The company was hemorrhaging money, but Marcus wanted her to make the Q3 projections sing like a trained canary. If she didn't, she'd be the one taking the fall. Again.

Last time she'd refused to fudge figures, she'd been transferred from the Manhattan office to this Chicago satellite. Her marriage hadn't survived the move. Tom had called her stubborn, said she couldn't see the bigger picture.

But she wasn't being stubborn. She was being honest.

She thought about spinach. How it looked healthy but could hide so much grit. How her mother used to say it would make her strong, right before serving it creamed and wilted from a can.

Honesty was like that sometimes. Looked good on paper.

Sarah opened the spreadsheet. Highlighted the red cells. The ones that showed the company was insolvent by next quarter. The ones that would tank the stock price, cost hundreds of people their jobs, Marcus's golden parachute included.

She pressed delete.

Then she retyped the numbers. Green ones. Pretty ones. Ones that showed marginal growth, sustainable margins, a company that wasn't circling the drain.

Her hands didn't shake. That was the worst part — they didn't shake at all.

She saved the file. Uploaded it to the shared drive. Marcus would praise her tomorrow, maybe even mention her name to the board.

Sarah walked to the window. The Chicago skyline glowed like money. She'd gotten good at being the bull. At charging through whatever barriers stood between her and survival.

Tomorrow she'd buy more vitamins. Maybe organic spinach. Start taking care of herself.

She believed it, too. That was the terrifying part. She actually believed it.