The holiday ended. Suddenly, life snapped back to its usual chaos and the next two weeks just vanished in a blur of busy workdays. Bonnie really struggled to keep her focus at the office. Most days, her thoughts drifted off, no matter how hard she tried to concentrate.
She ended up messing up one of the numbers on the Meadows School project, missing a chunk of the above-ground square footage. Jim called her over, but he didn’t scold her. Mistakes like this were normal, especially for newbies.
“Half the gym is above ground, so redraw that section,” he said, keeping things calm. “Fix the metric and send it to the Printing Department. The mayor has a meeting at nine tomorrow morning. Just meet us at the district government building.”
Bonnie nodded and hurried back to sort it out. She double checked the numbers, made sure everything matched between the blueprints and the PowerPoint, then sent the files back to Jim. Five minutes later, he replied with a quick ‘got it’ and told her to connect with Printing.
She bundled up the files and sent them over, explaining exactly what she needed. With that handled, she finally felt like she could breathe, but she went back and checked the blueprints and numbers one more time, just to be sure.
About an hour later, someone from Printing delivered the freshly bound documents. The stack was thick and heavy. Bonnie checked everything right there, signed for it, then dragged the whole thing to Jim’s office. He looked glued to his screen, barely even glancing up.
Eventually he skimmed the important bits, nodded that it was all good, and told her to go get the documents stamped.
Bonnie gathered the materials and headed toward the conference room. On her way, she spotted Helen at her desk, clearly lost in her phone. Bonnie walked over and gave Helen’s shoulder a little tap.
Helen jumped, quickly closing her chat with Ned. When she realized it was Bonnie, she grinned and gave her a light punch on the arm.
Bonnie grinned back. “Helen, help me with the stamping?”
There was barely any work left in the day, and Helen didn’t seem busy. She hopped up without a second thought and followed Bonnie to the little meeting room.
Stamping was repetitive and kind of exhausting. Bonnie stamped while Helen flipped through the stack, page after page. The sound of the seal hitting paper echoed around them.

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