AUGUST 4TH
Wildfire season in Southern California is nothing to joke about. Ellen listened to the radio as she drove into work, anxious to reassure herself that the fires being fought at the moment were not near San Diego. It had been a hot, dry summer. Living close to the ocean made it easier for her to deal with the heat, but many of her co-workers were not so lucky. Temperatures could vary dramatically away from the coast, and the day-to-day tasks of commuting and running basic household errands became more onerous as the mercury climbed. Most of the people Ellen saw every day had central air-conditioning at home. Those that didn’t were easy to spot, as they came into the office with dark circles under their eyes borne of night after night of being unable to sleep in the heat.
Ellen Sparks was the Director of Employee Relations at BioCell Systems, a Carlsbad California company that produced both the equipment and software used for genetic research and testing. The workforce included biologists, chemists, and a variety of engineers. In addition to the technical personnel, there were sales, marketing, finance, legal, and administrative employees at the company headquarters, which was where Ellen’s office was located. Altogether, the company employed around six thousand people, although not all of them were at the same site. Since BioCell produced both hardware and software, they maintained three manufacturing facilities and a research lab in the greater San Diego area, in addition to their corporate headquarters. Ensuring that these diverse personality types were provided with an environment that allowed them to work toward the company’s goals was no small matter. Ellen and the members of her team were responsible for the rules and processes that “kept the wheels on the bus.”
People who didn’t understand what Human Resources was all about often teased Ellen about having a job where she listened to people complain all day. Every once in awhile, there were days that felt like they were right – but in reality her role was fairly strategic. When key business decisions were made, she developed the policies and procedures that helped the workforce line up with those decisions. In addition, she was a bit of a ‘business geek’ at a personal level. She had learned about the law from her late father, who had been an attorney, but her fascination with the business world was all her own. She had an online subscription to the Wall Street Journal that she read daily, and she followed numerous bloggers who wrote about her industry. As strange as it might seem to other people, reading about successful companies was her idea of fun.
As she pulled into the parking lot, Ellen though about the meeting on her calendar for the afternoon—with her boss, Bob Parker and one of her peers, April Brackman, the Director of Compensation and Benefits. Bob had called the meeting and she wasn’t exactly certain what he had on his mind that would impact both of them.
Pulling her briefcase out of the Mini Cooper’s back hatch, Ellen felt the heat reflecting off the asphalt. It had to be in the mid-eighties already; temperatures could well rise above one hundred degrees today. Brushing her dark hair out of her eyes, she walked quickly to the front door and heaved a sigh of relief to be inside the air-conditioned building.
Once she was settled in her office, Ellen sent a text to her thirteen-year-old niece, Whistler Benton, who lived with her. Whistler was enrolled in a computer camp at the local high school. Ellen was in the habit of checking in with her every morning to make certain that she was up and dressed, and on her way to camp. She worried that she might be hovering too much, but couldn’t seem to break the habit. She was new to the ‘parental’ role. Whistler had become part of Ellen’s life earlier in the summer after the death of her mother, Ellen’s sister Jana. The two sisters, (technically half-sisters as they shared the same mother and different fathers), had not known one another.
The genesis of this unusual situation occurred during the Vietnam War years. Jana’s father, Noel Benton, had taken his infant daughter with him as he fled the country to avoid the draft. Ellen, born many years later, was raised without knowing anything about this early chapter in her mother’s life. By the time she discovered her sister’s existence and her location, in Arlington, Virginia… it was too late—Jana had become the victim of murder. During that difficult time, Ellen readily bonded with Jana’s daughter, and made peace with Noel, the child’s grandfather—for the girl’s sake. Noel and Ellen decided that it would be in Whistler’s best interest to leave the town that held so many painful memories, and for Ellen to become her primary guardian. Noel had by no means abandoned his granddaughter. He planned to relocate to San Diego so that he could also be a part of her life. He was presently tying up loose ends in Virginia, and was expected to arrive in San Diego during the early fall.
The adjustment from living alone and unencumbered, to assuming responsibility for a teenager had been easier than Ellen expected in some ways, and harder in others. A loner at heart, she had initially worried that she would feel hemmed in with another person around her all the time. That had not turned out to be true.
Wanting Whistler to feel at home, Ellen had given her free reign to make whatever changes she liked to the guest room that would now be hers. They had worked together to paint three of the walls light lavender, and one a deeper purple—as purple was Whistler’s favorite color. Whistler was an avid photographer, and together they had framed some of her pieces for the walls, to complement the pictures of her mother she had brought with her from Arlington. Fortunately, her niece was mature for her age and didn’t need to be entertained. Like Ellen, she liked to read and was somewhat of a techno-junkie. She was learning the basics of computer programming over the summer and seemed content with solitary amusements. As a result, their time together in the condo fell into an easy rhythm that seemed to suit them both, although Ellen hoped that once school started she would make some friends her own age.
The unexpected aspect of Whistler’s presence that Ellen struggled with was her own degree of worry. She was constantly asking herself, “Am I doing a good job with her?”—“Is she happy?”—“She’s been inside all day, doesn’t she need some fresh air?” Her best friend David was constantly telling her to give herself a break, that things were fine. They were; she knew that. Still, she worried.
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