Shawn came out of the bathroom feeling like he'd expelled not just the contents of his intestines, but part of his soul too.
He collapsed onto the couch, body still shaking from the cold, stomach growling with the force of a diesel engine.
'I need to eat something or I'm literally going to die…'
But before dragging himself to the kitchen, his hand automatically reached for the phone on the coffee table.
The screen lit up showing seventeen notifications.
Fourteen of them were from his boss.
"Didn't that bastard block me before?"
Shawn unlocked the phone with trembling fingers and started reading the messages in chronological order.
[Boss - 14:23]: Shawn, the client called.
[Boss - 14:24]: They're willing to extend the deadline.
[Boss - 14:25]: But they need to see progress tonight. Before 11pm.
[Boss - 14:47]: You still there?
[Boss - 15:02]: Look, I know things didn't end well yesterday, but if you can deliver something decent tonight, we can forget all this.
[Boss - 16:30]: Shawn, respond.
[Boss - 17:15]: Last chance. Seriously.
Shawn stared at the screen for a long moment.
A second chance.
All he had to do was send progress before eleven tonight.
A bitter laugh escaped his lips.
"Ha."
Then a dry cackle.
"Hahaha… ha…"
Because he remembered perfectly what had happened right before all this madness started.
He remembered working on the project, the lines of code, the design tweaks, the hours invested.
He also remembered closing everything without saving when that damn book appeared.
Not a single file.
Not a single backup.
Nothing.
'I could ask Sarah for help…'
The idea flashed through his mind like a ray of hope, only to be immediately crushed by reality.
His younger sister was a programmer, yes. A pretty damn good one, actually. But she was also the most insufferably sarcastic person he knew when it came to his screw-ups.
"Lost all your work? Oh, Shawn, what a surprise. Did you also forget how to breathe?"
"Need my help? Sure, just let me take a picture of this historic moment first."
"The great Shawn Turner asking for help? Wait, I need to sit down."
No.
Definitely not.
Not in this state.
Not with this headache that felt like someone was using his skull as a drum.
Not with an empty stomach and nausea threatening to send him running back to the bathroom.
Shawn swallowed his pride—but not enough to call Sarah.
His fingers moved across the screen.
[Shawn - 18:47]: I'm on it. Sending everything in 4 hours.
Shawn sent the message and checked the time.
6:47 p.m.
That gave him until 10:47 to rebuild from scratch a website that had taken him two weeks to develop.
'Fucking hell.'
Shawn sat down at his desk, the monitor glowing in the darkness of his room. He opened the code editor and stared at the blinking cursor on the black background.
Line one… empty.
'Okay. I can do this. It's just a website for an insurance company. How hard can it be?'
Forty minutes later, Shawn discovered exactly how hard it could be.
"Where the hell is the design?"
He searched his folders, his email, his downloads.
Nothing.
The original design file the client had sent was gone—probably a victim of one of his periodic "clean out useless files" purges.
'Great. Just great.'
Shawn had to improvise. He opened the company's current live page—the one he was supposed to redesign—and started working from screenshots and memory.
"The logo. I need the logo."
He didn't have it.
Of course he didn't have it.
Shawn spent twenty minutes searching for the company logo online, only to find pixelated, low-res versions that would make any graphic designer weep.
He ended up using one from a news article about the company, silently praying no one would notice the difference.
'Who am I even praying to now? Myself? Technically I work for God…'
The headache didn't let up.
Every time Shawn moved his eyes too fast, it felt like someone was stabbing needles behind his eyeballs.
The hours blurred into code, errors, more code, and muttered curses.
"Why isn't this working? It should be working!"
The dropdown menu refused to drop down. Shawn checked the code three times before realizing he'd written "onclik" instead of "onclick".
"I hate you. I hate me. I hate everything!"
By 9:30, the contact form finally decided to cooperate.
By 10:15, he got the page looking decent on mobile.
By 10:32, he polished the last details and uploaded everything to the staging server.
At 10:44—exactly three minutes before the deadline—he sent the link to his boss.
[Shawn - 22:44]: Done. Here's the progress.
Shawn leaned back in his chair, body completely drained.
He'd spent almost four hours coding nonstop, without eating, with a killer headache and a queasy stomach.
But he'd done it.
'Now just wait.'
Shawn glanced at the chat. His boss hadn't replied to the 6:47 message where he'd said he was working.
In fact, he hadn't said anything in hours.
'Probably thought I was ignoring him. Or that I'd fled the country…'
But barely a minute after sending the link, his phone buzzed.
[Boss - 22:45]: Received. Good work, Shawn. I'll review it calmly and send your cut in a couple hours.
Shawn blinked.
'Good work?'
He reread the message three times to make sure he wasn't hallucinating.
No sarcasm, no veiled threats, no "but we need to talk about your attitude."
Just a plain "good work."
'Maybe the universe decided to give me a break for once.'
With the weight of work finally off his shoulders, Shawn felt the need for a distraction. Something light, something that didn't require using his brain.
He opened his favorite social media app almost on instinct, looking to kill a few minutes with memes or dumb arguments about shows he hadn't watched.
But the first thing he saw was his username trending.
The one he'd used for years to troll, to post the comments he knew he shouldn't, to be the worst version of himself behind the anonymity of a screen.
They'd doxxed him.
And now hundreds of people were sharing screenshots of his worst comments, along with his real name and his photo.
They were canceling him.