The Hot Canary (A Brian Quinn Fanfic)

Part 38: Down With the Sickness

As much as Nova wished that Topher's antics would have ended there, they didn't exactly stop. He did some of what he liked to call "restructuring" which made Nova's life more chaotic than ever. He threw other projects at her and duties which much to her dismay, took her off set and confined her to her office. 

She was now in charge of editing all the content that the photographers shot and processing all of the photo release forms and sending them to the legal department, which were sometimes over a hundred per skit. This put Nova behind her desk, more often than not and isolated from the rest of the team. It gave her longer hours and a slight pay raise, which wasn't exactly a bad thing, but it was doing the mundane tasks and barley getting to socialize with anyone, unless they stopped in for a visit. 

In the beginning, this was all talked up to Nova and made her feel like she was doing something important, but as she lived in the role, she realized quick that it was not all it was cracked up to be. She missed being behind her camera and she missed life on set. She missed the guys and the interactions and she felt like she was missing out on all the fun. 

Brian was furious when he found out that they were taking her off the front lines and stuffing her in the back end production. He knew that she was the best photographer they had and when he saw she was being replaced with newer people that Topher brought in, he pitched a fit. Nova told him not to worry, that it was a good thing because it meant more income for her, but Brian knew how much she loved being behind her camera and he would miss seeing her every day. 

Even though she was no longer a set photographer, she was still the manager of all the stills that were taken which gave her crazy hours. She would arrive every morning around 8am, sometimes sooner and usually get out around 9pm, sometimes later. She pulled weekend hours and holidays and even worked through her lunch break. It was a lot for one person to take on and even though she voiced this to Topher on more than one occasion, he assured her that she was doing a great job. 

One morning, Nova's alarm went off and she stirred awake. She looked at her alarm and sure enough it said 6am. It was definitely time to get up, but for some reason, Nova was finding it harder than usual to start her day. She hit the snooze a few times and then once her time was up, she groaned and threw the covers off of her. 

She shivered a bit and stood up to start go to the bathroom. She was freezing and on her way she checked the thermostat to see if her heat went out over night. It was now the peak of winter and it snowed just about every day and as much as Nova hated it, she had to constantly run her heat. Being a Florida girl, she had never believed in using the heat until she moved to New York and even though she had been living here for several years, her inner frugal self rolled her eyes every time she had to crank up the temperature. 

Nova had no clue what her problem was today considering that her gauge read that it was 80 degrees in her apartment. She frowned, not understanding why she was freezing and shrugged, not having the time to worry about it. As Nova got ready to start her day, she felt sleepy and in a haze. She did things out of order and she kept having a feeling like she was forgetting something. She skipped her morning smoothie and just made a cup of coffee to go, mostly to keep herself warm. She had no appetite and felt a slight head ache approaching. 

As Nova was getting ready to leave, it dawned on her was what going on. She sighed and let out a grunt.

She was coming down with a cold.

Nova cursed to herself all the way down stairs. This was one of the worst things that could be happening to her right now. She was on strict dead lines and was barely making them as it was, there was no way she could be sick! She was going to have to really push herself so she wouldn't fall behind and now she was going to go through the next few days feeling like garbage. This was going to suck.