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A bit of a fright

Late last night my cell phone rang. It was Seattle calling. Literally, Seattle. No, I'm not making this up. His name is Seattle and he's a neighbor two doors down. He's lively and fun. Plus he likes to walk our dogs and he's a great chef.

The fact that he was calling me at nearly 11pm was a bit unsettling. The first thing he said was, "Is everything ok over there???" Yes, there were at least three question marks after his interrogatory plus several exclamation marks.

I told him we were fine--as far as I knew. "BUT YOU HAVE A FIRE TRUCK IN FRONT OF YOUR HOUSE!"

News of that nature is guaranteed to make you put your pants on--if you're not already wearing them. I wasn't. Wearing them I mean. It was bedtime. I threw them on and dashed up the stairs.

Ok, 'dashing' is a bit optimistic for what I actually did. It was more like lumbering up the stairs at a speed not hitherto known by my injured knee in many months. I checked the living room and no Dad. Ugh. Did he collapse outside and someone found him? I dashed--er, lumbered, out the back door and down the wheelchair ramp, barefoot across the patio and into the driveway.

Whew. There was my father, completely upright. The handsome fireman and medics were in my neighbors house. That was frightening because she'd had a knee replacement a few days earlier and my first thought was that she'd had a blood clot. She hadn't. It was her heart. She has an arrhythmia that sometimes crops up and her heart races. She's fine now. It was scary though.

Seattle was standing in our driveway and apologized for frightening me and gave me a hug. I thanked him for the adrenaline rush and told him it was fine, I didn't need to sleep anyway.

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