emergency response...

i have been watching too many shows about murder lately.  i got sucked in to the show, the following, which i'm told airs on fox.  i scare myself watching this show at night in a quiet home.  i have never been scared sleeping alone in my house, but since i started watching this show, i jump at shadows, including my own.  i suppose it doesn't take much to scare me, heck my son scares me weekly just to get a rise out of me. i don't usually get scared during daylight hours, but today i did.

i was sitting in my office, tapping away on my keyboard, when i heard two loud blasts...

looking from my office towards the entrance

a quick lay of the land before we go any farther.  our office is a long hallway with office's lining the right side of the hallway and a bathroom on the left side of the hallway (when looking at this picture).  the back of our office faces an alley, and the front of the office is actually underground because we are in a basement.  my office is furthest from the entrance. 

okay back to the story, i hear two loud blasts down the hallway, towards the door. i turned my radio down and listened for a few seconds.  the only noise i could hear was my office mate in her office on the phone with a client.  so i paged the bossman, everything okay in there?  i listened for any kind of noise from the bossman's office: keyboard clicks, scribbling on paper with his scratchy pens, or even a rustling of some sort, but i heard nothing.  the bossman didn't respond.  i decided to go investigate.

i grabbed my pen, because that will save me in case of an emergency, and peeked around the corner of my office door into the hallway.  the hallway was clear, but my nerves were definitely on edge.  i stepped out into the hallway and started walking towards the entrance.  

i looked in my office mate's office, she was still on her phone and oblivious to anything else.  she didn't appear to have heard the loud blasts.  she didn't even look up as i paused outside her door. i took a quick look behind me.  at the end of the hallway is a large window into an office which acts like a mirror because that room is usually dark.  the reflection of the hallway held no clues as to what the loud blasts were. 

as i came up on the bathroom door, i noticed it was ajar.  i paused before stepping in line with the door, gripped my pen a little harder, and pushed the door open, only to reveal an dark empty bathroom. i hadn't noticed that i was holding my breath but i let out a mouthful of air. 

there still wasn't any noise coming from the bossman's office, which was concerning me.  there was only a few paces between the bathroom entrance and the bossman's office.  i walked cautiously up to his door and listened, peering towards the entrance to see if i could see anything else down the hall, but there wasn't anything there. i gripped my pen again, peeked around the corner into my bosses office and there he was, slumped over in his chair...

slumped over in his chair with a cheshire cat grin on his face. obviously he could feel my presence in his office, with his eyes still closed he said you have the worst response time in the world!  all the anxiousness washed away, i threw my hands up in the air and replied i was scared!

i learned something about myself today.  are you ready for it?  heather + scary shows = scaredy cat in the nth degree.  i've always known i would make a terrible cop, i wouldn't want to be the first in to a situation, i would rather wait for back up. today, i really didn't want to walk down the hall and find something gruesome, or run into a disgruntled client on a rampage, i just wanted to sit in my office and wait for whatever was coming next armed with a classic blue bic pen. 

in case you were wondering, the two blasts came from the packaged air inside a box that was delivered today.  by the way, the human who thought to package air...genius.