Panic, drive, panic, drive, panic

I fell asleep on the waiting room couch last night. I was too exhausted to even dream. I remember closing my eyes, and the next thing I know hours had passed, it was morning and Henry was waving his phone in front of my face, saying I had a call.

It was my boss. The servers had fried out overnight and everything we had was lost. He was freaking out. Fourteen hours earlier, he told me everything was covered for the meeting tomorrow...now this. A power surge in the entire building fried a lot of the circuitry. What about the automatic backups, I asked. They only work with that exact brand of server, and replacement parts might take a day or two.

Then, the good news came to me. Last Wednesday, I copied the files over to my laptop to do a little work on them at home. I had the files with me right here.

"GREAT!!! Can you email them?" Hell, no! 381 Megabytes.

"Can you upload them to our FTP site?" Forgiving the fact that I have only a dial-up connection, and that even on a high-speed connection, it would take two hours. Besides, do they have access at the moment? "Um...no."

Shit. All this rested on me. I needed to drive back to Tulsa and copy the files over for them. I grabbed my laptop and went into Papa's room. Nana and Henry were there with him. I have Henry back his phone and told them all that I had to drive back to Tulsa for a few hours, but I'll be back this evening. I lean in to give Papa a hug. He fiddles around with his oxygen mask, trying to take it off with his shaky hands. Nana was quick to smack his arm. "Quit messing with that damned mask!"

Papa looked over at her with the evil eye. As hard as he could, he made a fist and waved it at her. She just shot him a who-are-you-kidding look. He lowered his fist and looked at me, frightened, as if to say "Help me out, here?" I straightened his mask and kissed him on the forehead.

"I wouldn't mess with her if I were you." I told him. "You've been married to her for fifty years, you should know that by now. Love you, Papa. I'll be back later."

I grabbed the rest of my stuff and drove back in record time, only stopping to pick up some coffee and a phone charger for my car. I let the phone charge for a while before I called ahead to the office to let them know when I'd get there to save the day (and my job).

Once I got to my office building, I started up the laptop in the elevator. My boss was pacing the hallway when I got to my floor. He was relieved, but still a little keyed up. We walked-well, I walked, he ran ahead of me clearing people out of my way-to my office. I set down the laptop on my desk and plugged to power cord into the wall outlet. My boss came unglued "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" He reached down and unplugged the cord and careful re-plugged it into a surge protector.

I told him to calm down. "I have spent the last three nights sleeping in a hospital waiting room. Wanna trade scars, here?"

I got connected to the network and copied the files to two separate computers, just in case. My boss assured me that my christmas bonus would be HUGE. As a sure sign of gratitute, he handed me a fifty.

The job was saved, and I left the office to thunderous applause from my co-workers. I went back to my apartment to take a shower and grab some more clothes for the next couple days. Once back in the car, I got a call from my brother. He asked when I would be back, I told him two hours and asked him why. Papa had just suffered a seizure.

I drove back as fast as I could, and got to the hospital an hour and 45 minutes later. A new record. I rushed to the ICU and found everyone in the room. It was soooo quiet in the room. I gave Nana a hug and held her hand as she prayed. I couldn't believe this was happening. I was a hero to my co-workers two hours ago, and now I'm preparing myself for the worst.