Helena said Dr. Carol Meyers has the documentation. She does, but the review takes time and I can't practice during it. Then we go public. We explained what the sessions actually were. If we go public, he said, we confirm that we've been meeting privately for 3 months.
And right now, every outlet covering this is already implying what they think that means. The moment you make a statement defending me, Bridget has what she needs to call an emergency board session and argue you've lost objectivity. Helena stared at him. So, what do you suggest? She asked.
He was quiet for a moment. I think we stopped the sessions temporarily. That's out of the question, Helena. His voice was calm, but something underneath it wasn't. If this takes the company down, you lose everything you've spent 15 years building.
Nia starts college in 10 years. I can't. He stopped. Started again. I'm not willing to be the reason you lose the company.
I can wait. She wanted to argue with him. She had 12 arguments ready and she looked at him and understood that none of them would matter because he had already decided and he had decided for her and she was not accustomed to anyone doing anything for her without wanting something in return. This isn't your call, she said. No, he agreed.
It's not. She didn't stop the sessions, but she arrived the following Monday morning to find the coffee table unmoved and the standing frame gone returned to the clinic. Quentyn hadn't come in the night before. She sat in the empty office for a while and then she went to her desk and started working. Without the sessions, her progress stopped.
Not physically, the neural gains she had made were real and didn't reverse. But the thing that had driven her to the standing frame at 6:00 in the morning, the thing that had kept her in the chair when her arms shook and kept her closing her eyes and walking in her imagination down imaginary hallways, that thing went quiet. She worked longer hours again. She answered emails at 2:00 a. M.
She stopped sleeping well. Northgate Systems filed a formal acquisition proposal. Bridget announced to the board that in light of recent events, the media coverage, the stock decline, and what she called a pattern of isolated decision-making from the current CEO, the board had an obligation to consider the offer seriously. A vote was scheduled for the following Thursday. Three days before the vote, a publicist and two communications advisers came to Helena's office and spent an hour telling her that the most important thing she could do before Thursday was to demonstrate stability, show the public and the board that she was in command physically and otherwise, that the narrative of fragility could be reversed by a single strong image.
She listened to them. After they left, she called the organizer of the product launch event happening Wednesday evening and confirmed she would be making the keynote address. She told no one else what she intended to do. The keynote was in front of 400 people and a media wall of cameras. She rolled out in her wheelchair as planned, delivered the first 8 minutes of the address without incident, and then, against the advice of every person who would have told her not to, had she told any of them she locked the wheels, gripped the podium with both hands and stood.