STD

The first email of the morning said, “Morgan, where are we on the fully executed STD? We were expecting it yesterday evening. Please can you circulate asap this morning so that we can fund?” 

Morgan sat at her desk. She too had been working yesterday past midnight. This morning, for self-comfort, she had bought a glazed pastry and now chunks of sugar speckled her desk. She wiped them carefully into her palm and dropped them in the bin. 

She minimised the email without responding and logged into her account at British Airways. She was due to fly to Amsterdam at 2pm but changed to the latest flight possible today, departing London City at 8pm. The change cost £450. 

She had not circulated the fully executed STD because she did not have the fully executed STD. One of her clients, Horizon, had not delivered its signature page. 

Now she wrote to Horizon. “Dear Jake, following up on my previous emails, it seems that the situation is becoming somewhat urgent. We have been told that the funding deadline is ‘early afternoon’ London time. Therefore, we would be very grateful for your signature page at your earliest convenience.” 

After checking that no one was looking, she reverted to an old habit: chewing a few strands of her straight brown hair. The British Airways page was still open on her screen and she reflected on the delay to her trip. The £450 did not matter so much (such was the salary of a London solicitor having qualified all of six months ago), it was more that it augured badly. If Morgan were a real Durndell associate, she would not be paying £450 of her own money to accommodate her slow-moving clients. Really, she ought to bill that cost to her clients or, better, not get into this situation in the first place. Meekly re-booking her trip to Amsterdam, paying the difference from her own pocket? That was a sign that perhaps she did not belong here. 

At her first bi-annual review last March, her seniors definitely seemed to share that view.

There was a lot for Morgan to do today. She had another closing on Tuesday, she owed a memo to Marc, comments on an STD (a different STD) for Jane, marketing. But Morgan knew that she would not do any of these tasks today. No, no. Today was a day for uselessly waiting around for Jake’s signature page, monitoring her bile as it moved from her liver to her gallbladder, getting harangued endlessly by Stiltons (opposing counsel), feeling sick, potentially getting sick. That was today’s agenda.

And getting sick was not feasible, not today. The purpose of the Amsterdam flight was to meet her baby niece for the first time. Morgan’s sister Eleanor, recently wed to a Dutch civil servant, would never forgive her if she got the baby sick. No, if Morgan got actually sick, not just nervous sick, then she would have to cancel her flight. 

The STD sat on her bookcase, massive. It was a 400 page document when negotiations began and Stiltons and Durndell had managed to beef it up to 600 pages through a mixture of hard work, exactitude, mistrust, and good old-fashioned shirtiness. 

She spent the morning organising and scanning the ancillary documents: the minutes, the certificates. She called opposing counsel, making apologies and commitments, excuses and promises. She called Jake at Horizon but he didn’t answer. 

At noon, the phone rang but she ignored it. A minute later, an email arrived. “Morgan, tried to reach you. Please circulate the STD. We have been told that funding is imminent but we cannot proceed without sight of the fully executed STD.”

There was an individual bathroom on the sixth floor, the floor below. Morgan went downstairs and used this opportunity to throw up. She returned to her office. 

At 2pm, the missing signature page arrived from Horizon: “Hi Morgan, sorry for the delay. My board is on a retreat this week, so we had a little trouble rounding up the signature. Have a good w/e! Jake.”

She printed the attachment and slipped the page into the STD. She now had the fully executed copy in her hand. The funding deadline was “early afternoon” but surely opposing counsel (or their clients) had built in a little bit of cushion. In this business, early afternoon means late afternoon. It would be fine. 

She walked to her secretary Janeane. “Please can you scan this as a top priority?” 

Morgan returned to her desk and waited. She thought about going to the airport after she had sent the STD. It was too early but it would be nice to be physically not in the office. Ten minutes passed, twenty minutes. Morgan didn’t want to be pushy but what was taking Janeane so long with a simple scan? 

After thirty minutes, Janeane returned.

“We’re having a bit of trouble with the scanner,” she said. 

Janeane led Morgan back to the scanner. They stood like surgeons over a gasping patient as the 600 pages were swallowed up into the chamber, one after the other: I-think-I-can, I-think-I-can, I-think-I-can. The pages went through okay but no email arrived at Janeane’s account. Then, a moment later, “ERROR” showed on the scanner’s little rectangular display. 

Time was passing. They tried again and again. The STD was too big and something had broken deep in the scanner’s code. Through trial and error, Morgan and Janeane determined that the machine could successfully scan four pages at a time but no more. Morgan thought about scanning the entire document in four-page chunks. Maybe she could then, back at her desk, assemble them into the full 600 page document? But, no, that would take hours, a whole morning. 

Opposing counsel had now decided to just let Morgan’s phone ring constantly. It was beginning to bother the other associates, who stopped by the scanner: “Er, Morgan, is that your phone ringing?” Opposing counsel was also calling Morgan’s partner. He was in Beirut on a closing but nevertheless found the time to send frantic emails that Morgan didn’t open. 

Finally, Morgan made a bold decision. She instructed Janeane to scan the cover pages and the signature pages only. That was just nine pages, which she could easily assemble into one document from the four-page chunks. She would send around the lightweight document as evidence of signing and then follow up on Monday with the proper scan, all 600 pages. But the nine pages showed that her clients had signed, which is all the funders needed to fund. 

That would have to do. 

Two hours later, Janeane was on the airplane to Amsterdam. She continued to play back the exchanges from the day. She had a glass of white wine. She went into the bathroom and cried. 

By the time she arrived at Eleanor’s little Dutch rowhouse, Morgan was composed again. She even managed a little smile as she hugged her sister, while her brother-in-law hovered behind with baby Olivia.  

As they shuffled into the sitting room, the baby was crying in an extravagant way, throwing her whole body into it, curling even her tiny feet in the performance. Morgan was nevertheless urged onto the sofa to hold the baby, while Eleanor and her husband went into the kitchen to make coffee. Morgan was left alone with her niece. The baby continued to cry hysterically but simultaneously looked with curious eyes up at Morgan. 

Morgan tilted her head down close to the baby, feeling its breath, surprised by how calm she, Morgan, suddenly felt. “There, there,” she said softly. “There, there, there, there.”