ANDREA | KAIROS GLOBAL | NOVEMBER 2021

Author: Sijumon Abraham, Singapore

Intro: Kairos Global is happy to present the multi-part story, Andrea.

Devout Catholic, Andrea has just recently joined her new job. Extremely demanding work, an every-angry boss and an atheist colleague

Part I

‘Please keep a one-meter distance, madam!’ The safe ambassador’s warning brought Andrea back from the various thoughts running through her head.

‘Sorry, sure!’ Andrea took a step back and looked at the MRT sign board displaying, ‘Next train arrives in 2 minutes to City Hall MRT station’. She looked around; very few passengers were on the station. Many people work from home these days.

‘Yes, you have to come to the office every day, there is no WFH for this position at the moment,’ the HR manager’s voice echoed in Andrea’s head. The first thing she did that morning was to thank God for this new job.

On the way to the new office, many memories surfaced. She took her rosary and began to pray the Joyful Mysteries, offering them for her new job and colleagues. Soon came the announcement she was waiting for, ‘City Hall MRT station.’ Keeping a safe distance from the people around, she walked out the door.

‘Good Morning, Andrea! Welcome.’ Nicolas, her hiring manager greeted her and took her around the office. 

‘Only a few of us are there in office today, most of them from customer service. It is imperative we are available for our customers,’ Nicolas said. ‘Come on, let me introduce you to your work buddy.’ He led her to a cubicle, with two workstations opposite each other. One of the workstations was occupied; her work buddy.

‘Hi Michelle, this is Madam Andrea, your new work colleague.’ Michelle briefly looked up and nodded her head, without looking at Andrea and continued typing on her keyboard.

‘Michelle will help you pick up your work,’ Nicolas said to Andrea before walking away.

‘Hi...’ Andrea tried at an introduction.

Michelle turned to Andrea, ‘Hey! I’ve got a ton of work to do and my mind is going crazy! I'm crazy! We’ll talk later.’

‘Sorry!’ Andrea said embarrassed; turning she began to set up her workstation.

After cleaning the desk, she first took out a beautiful picture of Mother Mary carrying Baby Jesus from her bag and placed it beside her computer screen. After a silent prayer, placed the rosary she was holding next to the picture of Mother Mary.

All morning, Michelle was either on the phone with clients or busy processing the various work-slips that were piled up on her desk. Andrea went through her email, looking for relevant documents for her work and answered a couple of calls and emails that came to her.  At 1pm, Michelle stopped her work, turned and said, ‘Shall we have lunch?’

Andrea was glad she would have some time to talk to Michelle. On the way to the restaurant, Michelle grumbled, ‘Work, work, work! It’s so hectic that sometimes I just lose my patience!’ Andrea just smiled and listened quietly.

‘You'll see in a few days. That’s the only reason why your predecessor quit, the work just became too much to manage.’ Michelle continued as they had their lunch.

On the way home that day, Andrea thought of Michelle and prayed for her.

As the days went by, her workload definitely increased. On most days, Michelle had long office meetings with her direct supervisor, Eric. She found that her usually angry supervisor was hardly ever cross with Andrea and even gave credit for her work. Andrea always had a smile on her face even though she had mountains of work to do.

‘How do you always keep that smile?’ Michelle asked her one day.

‘It's simple, when you give the most important thing in your life the highest priority, you can smile at your problems,’ Andrea took her rosary and kissed the crucifix as she answered Michelle with a smile.

‘That's crazy! Everything seems to be important to me!’ Michelle muttered, turning to her workstation to see what was most important! Papers, documents, files, sticky notes, mobile charging cables, coffee mugs, pens – all cluttered the space around her computer, not to mention the multiple windows open on her screen. She did not realise what Andrea really meant.

‘What do you do on the weekends?’ Andrea asked Michelle one day.

‘Oh! Weekends, I relieve the stress of the week! Earlier, I used to go to the pub with friends, but nowadays that's not possible, so my boyfriend and I  usually go to our friend's house to drink and chill out,’ Michelle replied.

As she listened, Andrea offered a small prayer for Michelle to Mother Mary.

As days went by, Andrea began to help Michelle with her work, which was gratefully accepted. Michelle often wondered with amazement how Andrea handled things, how she calmly interacted with clients and everyone else in office. Especially with her angry supervisor who was not angry with Andrea at all!

‘I never imagined you would last more than a week in this office! How do you get it all done in such a short time?’ Michelle turned her chair to Andrea and asked her one day.

‘Nothing is impossible with God!’ Andrea answered with a smile!

‘God?! Really? I do not believe in God!’ With that Michelle turned her chair back to face her desk. Then with a laugh she asked, ‘By the way, what do you do on weekends? Pray to God?’ And yet, despite her rude joke, Michelle wanted to know more about her. There was something very different about Andrea.

‘Not only that! I also go for volunteer work,’ Andrea smiled and answered.

‘Oh? That is extraordinary! I could never do that! I just want to relax.’ Michelle leaned against her chair and continued her work.

On Friday afternoon, both Andrea and Michelle worked hard to finish their work to rush home. Files kept piling up on their desks related to audits, migration, inventory, quality, security, etc., in addition to customer service. Michelle was all stressed out and Andrea was depending on God's help to get her work done.

Suddenly, Michelle's phone rang. ‘Ah yes!’ She answered. ‘Oh no! When?’ Then dropping the phone on the desk, she held her head and was quiet.

Andrea immediately sensed that something had happened; turning towards Michelle, touched her shoulder, and asked calmly, ‘Anything serious Michelle?’

‘My father had a stroke earlier today and they're on their way to the hospital.’ 

‘I'm sorry to hear that! Don't worry, God will help you! You carry on to the hospital and help your family,’ said Andrea.

‘But how? I've not finished my work yet!’ Michelle was in tears.

‘Don't worry, I'll take care of your pending work. Just forward it to me.’ Andrea assured her.

Tears ran down her cheek in a wave of sadness and gratitude. Speechless, Michelle tried to focus on the pressing matters she wanted to pass on to Andrea, but her hands felt frozen. When she finally managed to forward all the tasks, she realised she had missed work on an audit report that was supposed to be sent out before noon. In a sad voice, she informed Andrea of this.

‘Don't worry about that, I'll take care of it first,’ Andrea told her.

Michelle thanked Andrea and taking a deep breath, began to pack her bag.

Before they knew it, Eric was standing before them, furious, ‘Michelle! What the hell are you doing? Why isn't the audit report ready yet?!’ 

Before Michelle could apologise to her supervisor, Andrea stood up and spoke, ‘I'm sorry. Michelle gave me this assignment and I've been working on it. I'll send it to you in two hours.’ Andrea looked at Eric with confidence.

‘Ok, send it to me as soon as it's ready,’ Eric replied and walked back into his cabin.

Stunned, Michelle looked at Andrea with gratitude.

‘Don't worry, you go ahead, I'll take care of these,’ said Andrea. And then added, ‘I will be praying for your father.’ 

Michelle quickly rushed to the hospital. On the way, she thought about Andrea. In all her life, she had hardly met anyone like her. 

Andrea finished the audit report and sent it to Eric on time. She stayed back in office, well past midnight to complete all the work Michelle had forwarded her.

At the hospital, Michelle's father underwent an emergency surgery. Miraculously he survived. Knowing how life-threatening the stroke had been, the doctors were surprised at his recovery.

It was Sunday afternoon when Michelle called Andrea, ‘Thank you for your prayers, Andrea. My father is doing well now’.

‘Praise God!’ Andrea gushed. ‘Jesus promised me that your dad would be safe when I prayed for him.’ 

Though Michelle found this hard to believe, she didn't say anything about it but thanked Andrea for helping her. ‘If it weren’t for you, I would have been clueless,’ Michelle said.

‘Oh, no problem,’ said Andrea. And then quickly changing the subject, ‘I’ll be coming by the hospital to visit you and your dad today.’ 

‘Sure, we'll be in Ward 6! See you later,’ said Michelle cheerfully. 

On her way to the hospital, Andrea bought a gift basket and placed a card in it. Inside, she had written the Bible verse, The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still Exodus 14:14. 

Michelle's father was a believer and was happy to meet Andrea. They talked for a while. 

‘Uncle, I don't want to bother you for long, just rest and get well soon, okay?’ And then turning to Michelle, Andrea bid her goodbye. Michelle followed her to the bank of lifts and thanked her for the visit.

‘No volunteering service today?’ She asked Andrea.

‘Yes, I went for a few hours this morning,’ Andrea replied.

Michelle was curious and wanted to know more about Andrea. ‘Let's go get some coffee, Andrea,’ Michelle said.

‘Okay, sure!’ Andrea accepted her invitation.

They walked to the in-house coffee shop. While waiting for their order, Michelle asked, ‘How do you manage to do all this, Andrea? And you always smile even though we've hectic work at office. How do you run those extra miles? Are you that free at home?’ There were a lot of questions Michelle wanted to know from Andrea.

Andrea said a quick prayer in her mind as she smiled at Michelle’s questions.

‘I was just like you many years ago, very scared, angry at everyone, always worried most of the time.’ And over coffee, Andrea began to open up about her past.

*

 ‘BANG!’ A balloon popped with a sudden loud noise. Everyone turned to see who had done it.

‘No! No, it wasn't me!’ Evan tried to convince everyone and threw the second balloon he had just picked up. The balloon floated into Andrea's hands!

‘Oops! Ha, ha ha!’ Andrea caught it laughing! Evan's eyes met Andrea's for a moment – the first time they laid eyes on each other. Andrea was at her best friend Tania's birthday party, and Evan was Tania's cousin. During the festivities that followed, Evan chatted casually with Andrea.

She couldn't quite forget Evan, handsome as he was. Tania and Andrea were studying at college at the time.

Andrea was a member of the college cycling club and had signed up for a local cycling event. Unfortunately, Tania was busy with assignments and couldn’t join her. The 25-km event was fun, and Andrea rode as fast as she could. Soon she was ahead of all the other riders. But just as she neared the finishing point, a cyclist came up from behind and rode right past her. There only remained one more kilometer to the finishing point! Two riders suddenly appeared right behind. Pumping the pedals with all her might, she increased the distance between them, but only for a bit. They barely had 20-30 meters to the finish; the rider in front was about two meters ahead of Andrea! Using all her strength, she willed herself to go as fast as she could, coming up to the rider ahead!

The finishing line was approaching! People all around were cheering, clapping, and shouting at them to keep going! 

‘Yay!’ the people around them shouted! Andrea and the rider had crossed the finish at the same time!

Taking off her helmet and goggles, Andrea wiped her face with a towel and looked up eagerly to see who shared her cup! The other rider did the same. 

‘Evan?!’ 

To be continued. 

Sijumon Abraham is an IT manager by profession. He served as National Animator of JY Singapore from 2017 to 2021. He lives in Singapore with his wife Sindhu and five children.