The Unfinished Sentence

“The reason that I called this meeting is that…” Those were the only words heard by the employee audience as the speaker, Jason, the owner and boss of the company, fell down apparently unconscious, not even moving, just lying on the floor. There was a collective sharp intake of breath from the 70 – 80 people in the company meeting room. The people in the front row did not visibly react. They were younger members of the speaker’s family. It did not take long, however, for several unrelated people in seats farther back to jump up and run to the front, worried about what had just happened to their employer. He was very much appreciated by most of the staff.

           George, his youngest brother, stood up and said in a loud stage voice, “He’s been doing that a lot recently. It’s well past the time that he should be retiring, and have one of his younger family members take over the company.”

           Those who had come up to see how their boss was, glared at George, who was not at all popular with the company staff. They knew that he wanted to take over the business, and also felt pretty sure that he would be a horrible boss. He was bad enough as a minor executive.

           Annette, who had been one of the people to rush to the front to check out on Jason, asked George, her immediate boss, whether she should use her cell phone to call for an ambulance. George said, rather loudly, that it wasn’t necessary, that “some of the bigger boys” should just carry him up to his office, and place him on his couch. He further said that “he will probably be able to sleep it off in about an hour or so” implying that he had been drinking, and had imbibed too much. Other family members nodded their heads enthusiastically in support of George’s assessment and treatment of the situation.

Two fairly big men picked Jason up and carried him out of the room, and into his office. Once Jason was out of the room, George declared that the meeting was now over, but that there would be another at the same time on the next day, that they should be sure to attend. The employee response was initial silence, but much talk after they left the room.

The family members, male and female, got together in their collective office to discuss what their plans would be concerning the next day meeting. They were all in agreement as to how the upper structure of the business would be altered. George acted the part of their leader, as he so often was when they got together to talk business, especially concerning their older brother’s position in the company.

Annette followed the ‘bigger boys’ who carried Jason into his office, and set him down on the couch. She asked them whether they should call for an ambulance, no matter what George had said. They looked a little nervous, apparently not feeling comfortable with such a proposal that might threaten their jobs. One of them said, “You can do what you want. I think that the rest of us should claim ignorance of this call.”

Annette wanted to say to him that he didn’t need to claim ignorance, as that trait was obvious by what he just said. But she kept silent, as she was well aware of how jobs could be threatened by George and his like-minded relatives. Once they left Jason’s office, she made the call. Then she went into her shared office and asked a couple of men she trusted to carry Jason downstairs in the elevator, so that ‘the mighty family’ as they were known to most of the staff would not see the Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) charging into and out of the building in their obvious uniforms to be detected by ‘family members’.

The hospital was not far away, so it was a mere 20 minutes for the ambulance to arrive, and for Jason to be taken into the hospital. Annette had hurriedly got into her car and followed the ambulance. Along the way she called one of her friends at work and asked whether there was any reaction by ‘the family’. It turned out that there wasn’t. There was no sign that the family knew what was going on.

She was right behind the ambulance all the way, and was able to park quickly so that she could run into the hospital and follow the EMTs who carried Jason to the emergency room. Fortunately, Annette and the still unconscious Jason did not have to wait long for his treatment. 

The diagnosis was relatively quick as well. The doctor could smell on Jason’s breath a very powerful knock-out drug, one he could tell had been taken in an unhealthy large dose. His words to Annette were “I’ve never detected such a strong dose of this drug. It might have killed him. Fortunately, we have an antidote that will pretty much cancel out its deadly effects. I am glad that you had him brought here so quickly”.

About an hour after the administration of the antidote, Jason woke up. At first he had no idea what had happened to him. Then, an idea suddenly came to him. “Just before I went to make my speech, my brother George gave me a coffee that I hadn’t seen him prepare. I believe that he put a large dose of the drug in it. I remember talking in the auditorium, then it was like my mind just shut off.”

Annette told him that his brother said that he should just “sleep it off”. She swore that she was going to find the coffee cup to prove what had caused his near death. She would accomplish this later that day, after work hours. The ‘mighty family’ were a messy bunch and would typically force ‘lesser staff’ to do the cleaning, which apparently had not been done yet.

She brought the cup to the hospital, where, by a simple sniffing, the doctor pronounced that this was the source of the deadly drug. The next morning, the police showed up just as the planned meeting was almost to begin.

When George stood where his brother had stood the day before, two police officers walked up to him and said that they were arresting him for attempted murder. There were a few people in the audience who felt like applauding, but refrained from doing so.

Annette had the last word when she walked up to the microphone and said, “Let’s hope that you will have an unfinished sentence, just like your brother did".