Jim’s new job.

The sudden, surprising promotion he’d mentioned on the phone, the one that had seemed like too much too fast for a man only months into a role.

The new apartment he somehow afforded.

The “stress” that had worn him so thin he’d needed a last-minute week at a resort he could not possibly pay for himself.

It was not the ordinary stress of a new job.

I had seen the ordinary stress of a new job; this was not that.