Can You Mend My Broken Heart?

71 Bounds of duty and family

Meanwhile at Delphi's office video conference was ongoing in full force between Raymond, his finance team and Abacus Inc's finance team. It was already 7:30 p.m. and Raymond was getting a bit restless as it was already pretty late for the kid's party and Katherine had started sending him streams of messages continuously.

"Did you forget your promise? How much more time will your meeting take?" - Katherine

"Wrap it up fast Ray" - Katherine

"I am trying Kat. Buy me some more time please" - Raymond

"They are kids Ray. I can't push the cake cutting for so long. They need to go home after that." - Katherine.

"Ok ok, just stretch as much as you can. I have an amazing gift for her. She will definitely not mind me being late for a few hours if you can jot up some story". - Raymond

"Look, you ditched her that day on karaoke night. She was very upset that night. You had promised her and then you broke your promise. Did you forget? She took two days to get over that?" - Katherine

"And today on her birthday are you planning to ditch her again? Do you think some made up reason will be enough to ease the pain of a tiny heart? You are like the only father figure that she has. Don't do it" - Katherine

Raymond read the last message and his heart started getting heavy. He doted on his niece. She was his favorite person in the entire world. He could tread all the oceans for her but somehow today he couldn't even leave a meeting room for her. He started feeling desperate. Half of his attention was in the meeting and the other half was busy thinking of ways to attend the party.

He remembered the incident couple of weeks back when out of anger he rushed back from the Karaoke Station and didn't even take Kate inside. He didn't even justify his actions nor did he give her a solid reason why he did that. He was repenting for the way he behaved that day. Poor Kate, she had no fault in all this and yet she had to suffer. With each passing minute, an extra layer of guilt was piling on Raymond's heart.

He wanted to reschedule the meeting so bad. He initially wanted to split the meeting into two parts and schedule the second part tomorrow. But he was unable to do so. His heart just wanted to leave the room at that instant, but he couldn't as that could have jeopardized the budget setting meeting. He alone could have taken the risk but not at the expense of the future of his company and the people who worked for him. He had already tried pushing the meeting to another day but the team from Abacus was not happy about it. Strangely they were fixated on having the budget decisions finalized today itself.

The meeting was stretching on infinitely as they had to discuss regarding each and every minute details starting from expenses on media, advertisement to setting the price of the game at each level every country wise where they aimed to distribute their game. It wasn't something that could be done in minutes. It needed hours and hours of intense discussion.

Raymond very well knew the importance of the meeting. But on the other hand, he didn't want to disappoint his niece any further. His presence was mandatory in the meeting and there was no way to push the timings. So he felt all tied up within the bounds of duty and family.

After a while, his phone screen was again lit up again with Katherine's message.

"We are going to cut the cake. At least you could have done a video call right? You don't even have a few minutes to spare?" - Katherine

"I m still stuck in the meeting Kat. But I will come no matter what. Trust me on this one please" - Raymond

"Fine if work is so much more important than family then you stay there. There is no need to come back. I have supported her all alone by myself. I don't know why I was counting on you" - Katherine

After reading this the timer on Raymond's patience was set off. He knew he had to do something. Something that would give him an escape without hurting the future of his project. He had to do something very tactfully without offending the team from Abacus as they were also investing their precious time and money here.

It was high time so he immediately pinged David,

"Switch to plan - B now. PRONTO"

"On it", David replied.

After texting David, Raymond kept listening to the meeting with rapt attention and provided his feedback from time to time. Suddenly after a couple of minutes,

David fell down from his seat and suddenly started having epileptic seizures. His whole body was contorted and his eyes were rolled up awkwardly. Raymond immediately rushed to him and picked him up. He screamed and asked his teammates to call his driver to get his car on the main gate as an ambulance would take too much time to come and he didn't want to waste a single moment. Time was precious here. There was a sudden surge of silence that spread in the room.

When Raymond came out of the office door, he saw his car along with his driver in front of the main gate. He immediately placed David inside his car in the back seat. Few of his worried teammates also came there immediately taking the stairs. When Raymond saw them, he instructed,

"Inform the Abacus team about the predicament of the situation. We will re-schedule the meeting for tomorrow. I am taking him to Hospital. Please keep me updated about the status. Don't worry I will take care of him."

His team-mates nodded in unison and wished him luck and asked him to take care of David.

Raymond then got in the car and his car sped through. A few seconds later a devilish grin spread on his face when he heard David saying,

"Wooh that was some escape!!!"