[She nods at that - he puts it all much more succinctly than she had been able to at the time, but it was definitely that. While there had been a few personal relationships, a lot of it was just, y'know, people spend a lot of time at work! And when you lose someone so frequent in your life so quickly and unfairly it's ... It's bullshit. It's painful. But they still had to work, someone still had to fill the spot.]

A lot of it was just situational, there was too much in limbo for anyone to really spend months, even weeks debating the whole thing. [She's really not too proud to admit that a lot of it was circumstance and luck.] At the end of the day I was still Mrs. Chien's first assistant and Zeke, who was far more deserving and probably would have stepped up if he hadn't already put in for medical leave, vouched for me.

[She shrugs, going back to her potato now that she's decimated the ribs.] The deal was that the first year would be a trial run, that became two years, and then three, and in a few months it'll be four.