…my husband, Tom. I watched the video that night at home, with my laptop on the kitchen table and Tom asleep upstairs. At 2:04 a.m., the office lights flickered on. My boss, Gerald, walked into my cubicle with Tom right behind him. Tom was holding a small white box. Gerald was holding a printout of my calendar.
“She had another one on Tuesday,” Tom said, on the recording. “Forty seconds. Afterward she didn’t remember it. She told me she just zoned out.” Gerald nodded. “Two at her desk last month. Same thing. Staring, then shaking. Then she just picked up her pen again like nothing happened.” He sighed. “I’ve begged her to see a doctor. She says she’s fine.”
I stopped the video. My hands were trembling. I had no memory of any of it. Not Tuesday. Not last month. Just a few odd gaps in my day I had blamed on being tired.
I pressed play again. Tom opened the white box. It was a fall-detection sensor. “If anything happens when she’s working late,” Gerald said, “the camera alerts me and you. Someone gets here in ten minutes.” Tom’s voice cracked. “I know it’s wrong to do this behind her back. I just can’t get her to go to the doctor, and I can’t stand the idea of her alone on the floor in an empty office.”
I woke Tom up at four in the morning. I was furious and terrified at the same time, and I told him both. Nobody had the right to record me without my knowing. He agreed. He cried. Then he asked me, very quietly, if I would see a neurologist. Just once. For him.
I went that Thursday. The diagnosis was epilepsy. The kind with seizures so brief you don’t notice them yourself. Medication controls it now. The next Monday, I asked Gerald to take the camera down. He did it himself, in front of me, and apologized. Then I asked Dev to install a proper emergency button at my desk. One I chose, one I know about. It’s never been pressed. But I sleep better knowing it’s mine.
