Honestly, the way it started, it could have been anything. She just assumed it was fatigue (and it very well could have been - she had spent so long in the office those past few weeks that a few blurred words on the screen were nothing to worry about). Maybe it still was when she tried to pick up that huge book she had committed to reading months ago. Maybe her brain just didn’t want to have to deal with more words on a page.
So she gave herself a break - tried not to panic - and walked around all weekend making her best effort not to encounter any written words. It was a surprising success: it turns out almost every word out there has a picture next to it - ads? The product is right there. Directions? Just follow the little arrow!
She came back to work on Monday rested, relaxed, ready to take on another week. She had been assigned one of the toughest litigations the firm had ever seen in preparation for her election as partner, and although she didn’t want to doubt her own capacity to win it, it felt a little cruel for the bar to be staked quite so high when she had seen Glen get elected partner off of an absurdly small tax evasion case. I mean come on - it hadn’t even been worth a million bucks. And she had to stake hers over a three billion dollar bank trial? That felt a little disproportionate.
Anyways. She opened her computer - it had been a while since she had completely logged out for the weekend - stared down at her keyboard. Nothing. It was clear that at some point she had known the meaning behind each of the glyphs on there, but today? She couldn’t even have told you which was a letter and which was a number.
A ball of fear at the bottom of her stomach, she tried typing her password in by muscle memory alone.
By some lucky feat, it worked.
She breathed a sigh of relief and, wary of her malfunctioning brain, cut up a post-it note, sticking pieces of it to each key she had touched. You never know: at this pace, she might forget the movements tomorrow.
She checked her calendar: thank god for icons. She had a full day of meetings, which meant she would be excused for not reading any new case materials until tomorrow anyways. She picked up the phone and asked her secretary to set up an emergency appointment with her doctor - she, at least, might be able to help.
Now to the task at hand: she would need to find someone to help her keep track and take notes for the day. She popped her head out of her office in search of some junior she might be able to bribe with the promise of senior exposure.
There was some justice in this world: Julie Scribe, a new recruit and her mentee, was just walking past.
“Julie! I was just looking for you.”
The young woman turned around - a senior barrister looking for you either meant great things or a night in the office, and she had been hoping to start the week with at least eight hours of sleep.
“I’m going to be spending the entire day in meetings on this banking litigation case. Would you like to join me? I think it might be useful for you to see what a senior woman does for a day”
That was so wishy-washy and she knew it - but Julia’s eyes brightened as the unspoken approval of a mentor confirmed the reach of her aspirations.
She rushed back to her desk - screw sleep, she hadn’t spent so long behind library doors to turn her back on this much exposure! - as our recent analphabet returned to her desk, relieved: for today, at least, she had found a fix.
The day went by without a snatch: Julie was a surprisingly good notetaker and a familiar presence in rooms where she was used to being the only woman. The young paralegal took her through her notes as they power-walked from one SteerCo to another, reading out loud and unwittingly covering up her mentor’s current failings.
At 6pm sharp, as clients went home and meetings wound down, our not-so-heroic protagonist rushed out of the office and into her doctor’s:
“I swear, doctor, one day I felt completely fine and the next it’s like my brain just forgot what letters were.”
Dr H. frowned, looking doubtful:
“And you’re sure this isn’t just stress-related? I remember you telling me about this pretty big case…”
“Please!” She interrupted. “I’ve been a lawyer for the past 25 years. Why now? And even if that did make sense, I spent the entire weekend outside of the office. Do you know when the last time I did that was? I don’t even know myself!”
Clocking the doctor’s raised eyebrows, she stopped her tirade short. Okay, so she might have been a little more stressed than she originally thought - but wouldn’t you be, if after 35 years of normal, reading life you suddenly forgot the meaning of letters?
She came out of the office with the doctor’s eyebrows raised, a prescription for some sleeping pills and the pressing recommendation to take a few days off of work - she would, of course, ignore the latter.
She spent that evening preparing her game plan, which proved less exciting than usual when she realized the pen and paper she had taken out would be useless this time.
She spent a week with Julia by her side, walking her from meeting to meeting, recording everything in extremely well structured notes that she shared after every meeting, blissfully unaware of their uselessness.
By Friday evening, she had nearly convinced herself forgetting how to read changed nothing - she spent the weekend incredulous, somewhere between disbelief and hope.
All this changed when, Monday morning, Julia was nowhere to be found. Julia was ill, said HR - hadn’t she seen her email?
She made a quick excuse and rushed back to the safety of her office, her stomach suddenly down to her heels.
She let the panic settle. This wasn’t so bad after all, she thought. There were loads of juniors around who would jump at the opportunity to shadow a would-be partner! All she had to do was find one willing to throw their workload out of the window, just until Julia was back.
In fairness, she knew exactly who to ask: Will D. was exactly the kind of overconfident, ambitious, privileged young man who would drop everything at the first opportunity of undue advancement.
Just to be sure, she made the offer extra-nice for him: she was bound to have some crucial meetings this week and she wanted to make sure she was supported by the best of the best. She didn’t want to miss anything at all, she was counting on him to be her right hand man and help her push this incredible deal through the door.
He bought it, of course: one thing you could always count on around here was alpha males’ unshakeable faith in their own utility.
The day went by easily enough - Will trailed her every move, attended every meeting, doggedly typing away at his computer whenever anyone spoke. He wasn’t as structured as Julia had been and she missed the quick recaps as they walked back to her office but considering the fact she remained incapable of reading a single word, she would take what she could.
9pm came around and she called Will into her office - they needed to go over the day’s notes, draft replies to some emails she had received (thank god for the ‘forward’ arrow on Outlook) and plan the next day.
She raised her eyebrows expectantly at him - so? What were the key takeaways from the day?
Will cleared his throat nervously, fumbling around on his open laptop.
“Well. I think the first thing to say is you ran those meetings impeccably, really, and I think we’re in a great position for the next hearing.”
“Could you tell me more?” She prodded. “What elements do you think put us in such a good position?”
“The uh.. The client’s responses… Were really very positive and uh.. They agreed to provide evidence...” Will’s voice died in his throat.
She was confused: hadn’t he spent the entire day taking notes during the meetings? If anything, she had been impressed by the cadence at which he had been typing!
Will smiled nervously. Ok - maybe this was a question of stress. He had spent the entire day following an entirely new case, after all.
Had he had a chance to take a look at the emails she forwarded him?
Some more random typing and clicking on his computer.
What was going on?
A grimace - he had tried to work on his other assignments during all of his free time, so he hadn’t yet gotten round to her emails, but he would definitely do it in the next few hours!
Look - if this was any normal day in any normal situation, she would have done the work herself and never asked for that junior’s help ever again.
As things currently stood, she was an analphabet looking to become partner at one of the best law firms in the world. She couldn’t complain about a few wasted hours.
Except the next day was exactly the same. And the day after too - to the extent that she asked her assistant to refer Julia to her own doctor in the hopes it might accelerate her recovery.
It got to Thursday and Will was yet to produce a single email or meeting summary - it didn’t matter that she couldn’t read them anyways, why did a guy who jumped at the opportunity to shadow her seem so incapable to produce any form of output?
She called him into his office.
He started justifying himself the moment he got through the door: look, he had a lot of other work to do, ok, and he couldn’t keep up with the pace of her work. It just wasn’t fair to expect that much of him on such short notice, he claimed, and she needed to have a little compassion.
There were a few problems with his tirade, she knew: for one, after the second day of hearing about all this other work he had on, she had gone directly to his line manager to clear his schedule. Imagine her surprise when he had informed her Will was actually just coming off of another litigation and had no other work to do!
Will went silent at that, his demeanor changing to that of a trapped animal. He fidgeted in his seat.
Nobody had told him he would need to do that! He didn’t understand. He had been placed on this track to follow in the footsteps of the law greats but nobody had ever told him anything about reading or writing, those were clearly added skills that were a plus but, let’s be honest, given the amazing education and background of everyone in the firm, it didn’t seem to him like something anybody might need to do - except maybe the secretaries!
She needed to get out more and talk to the other partners, he said, and understand that this had never been asked of him before from anyone, especially not partners - they didn’t know how to do it, and yet he was expected to just because she had some sort of special reading skills?
Stunned, she sat back in her chair.
“Are you sure? None of the partners know how to read?”
With a harrowing look: “Of course not. How could you not know this? They always joke about it when we’re out golfing!”
Ah. She had never been golfing, in fairness.
She got out of her chair, out of her office. She marched to a senior partner’s desk - the one who looked like he was least busy, typing away at a pace which would have put Will’s furious note-taking to shame. She had in her hand one of the offer letters they sent out to their clients.
She slammed it down in front of him.
“Read this.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Read what’s on this page.”
“You must be kidding. What’s going on with you?”
“I’m asking you to read what’s written here. The first sentence at least.”
The partner, usually a dignified, portly man whose balding head of grey hair naturally gave him the look of an old sage, looked unduly terrified.
“Read this letter.”
He shook his head.
Fuck. They had played her all along.