You were on the tail-end of an uneventful day in the office, in that doldrum stretch between 2:00 and 5:00, when your cell phone, face down on your desk, gave a buzz. You flipped it over and saw your wife’s face on the caller ID. It was unusual for Sarah to call you at work so you answered the phone without hesitation.
“What’s up, babe?” You said.
“OK, let me first say that everyone’s fine, but there was an accident on Katie’s field trip.”
You sat up straight in your chair. Your daughter Katie was a senior in high school, and was spending the day on a college visit at the local university, along with a few other high-achieving students. Despite Sarah’s assurance, images of your daughter in a crumpled van or caught in the middle of a campus shooting immediately blazed before your mind’s eye. “Is ev-“ you began.
“Everyone’s fine.” Sarah said again. “Apparently there was a chemical spill, and Katie got doused with a bunch of experimental fertilizer. It sounds like everyone kept their heads, though. She got rinsed off right away, and they sent her to the infirmary for a look over and monitoring.”
You rubbed your face nervously. “But they’re sure? Some of those fertilizers can be pretty tox-“
Sarah interrupted you gently. “David, they’re sure. I talked to Katie myself. She’s more ticked that this interrupted her visit than anything else,” she said. “Which is why I’m calling. They want to send her home early and have her take it easy over the weekend just to be safe. But she rode with the group in the van this morning so she doesn’t have her car. Can you cut out early and pick her up? I’m swamped here.”
You glanced at the clock in the corner of your desktop screen. You doubted you’d be getting much of anything else done today, so you shrugged. “Yeah, it’s not a problem. I can be out of here in the next five minutes.”
“Thank you, honey!” Sarah said. “They have her in the infirmary. Just go to the check-in desk and tell them you’re Katie’s dad. They’ll be expecting you. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Right,” you said. “Love ya.” You hung up.
You quickly gathered your things. You popped your head into your coworker Taylor’s cubical on the way out. “Hey, a family thing came up and I have to go pick up my daughter. I’ll see you Monday, yeah?”
Taylor was idling squeezing a stress ball as she stared at something on her monitor. “Yeah, have a good weekend, Dave,” she said without looking up, but you were already out the door.
The drive to the university was quick and uneventful—your office wasn’t too far from the main campus. However, once there it took you a while to find your way to the infirmary. The campus was a labyrinth of one-way streets; closed-off, pedestrian only roads; and barricaded, official use only driveways. On top of that, there was a crosswalk seemingly every 10 feet. Of course, the college students didn’t confine themselves to the crosswalks, and you found it slow going as you crept along making sure you didn’t hit any pedestrians or cyclists who seemed to have no concern that anything else might be using the road.
Eventually…
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