Your Time Is Up

Last Friday I was reminded that life can throw unexpected curve balls. Friday morning at the job was like any typical Friday. I came in the office, logged into the system, and prepared my breakfast of oatmeal with almonds. I then made my way to the cafeteria to get hot water for my breakfast and returned to my assigned jail cell, in other words, my cube.

As I walked back to my seat, I noticed that a crowd was gathering around a cube about 40 feet away from me. I noted that it was a bigger crowd than normal but made nothing of it. I settled back to my cube and noticed that co-employees were standing around murmuring about the crowd forming.

I realized that something was off. I asked Dan if he knew what was going on. He said he wasn't sure. We stared at the scene ourselves for a few minutes before resuming work.

Moments later I heard a loud noise coming from that area. I got up and looked again. I walked over to Dan's cube and we both stood up. I saw security and EMS folks running along that aisleway. They stopped at a cube. I was thinking of who sat there and realized it was MrsP, a co-employee that has worked with our group in the past.

The crowd had grown into numerous mini-groups that just silently watched the situation unfold.

At this point, I had no idea what was happening but I knew if EMS was there that it couldn't be good. A human resource rep started walking down the aisles, urging everyone to get back to their work at hand. Nobody really paid attention. What was happening was just a bit too surreal.

SLAB came over to Dan's cube and was a wreck. He worked closely with MrsP for a number of years. He found out that MrsP had apparently stopped breathing and basically EMS was working on reviving her. They couldn't really move her until she was revived.

The silence (other than the EMS workers) in the building was deafening, especially considering since the company's too cheap to have "white noise" installed, that you pretty much can hear every single conversation going on around you.

Witty came by moments later and pretty much rehashed what SLAB had said. At this point, all everyone was doing was sitting silently and waiting.

Eventually EMS took MrsP away after reviving her and things appeared to be back to semi-normal with folks resuming their conversations and work.

My group was planning to surprise Dan (who got married last year) with a baby shower/lunch. I wasn't able to go because I had another anniversary lunch scheduled that same day.

The lunch was excellent. It was held at an Italian restaurant I've never been at before. I enjoyed the food and my mind was taken off the earlier situation in the office.

After lunch I ran to Target to get a gift card and Hallmark card. I had the rudest cashier. This guy didn't even respond to my greeting and then after ringing me up, proceeded to scratch his ass (on top of his clothes thankfully...but still). Sick bastard! Then on top of that, after I paid with my credit card, he put the gift card and Hallmark card in a giant ass bag instead of the smaller bags that those usually go in. I was so pissed but I was in a hurry to get back to the office so I didn't really have time to bitch. But I sighed just thinking about the quality of people they're hiring.

Hemingway I got back to the office and went to borrow a pen from one of my bowling team members that works in the same building. He sits in a different wing of the building so he didn't see all the commotion going on earlier. However he had found out about it and he and another co-worker of his were grilling me on what happened. I gave them a synopsis and basically told them that hopefully MrsP was okay. The co-worker then shared a bit of information that I didn't know. MrsP died.

I was shocked. The co-worker felt bad because she thought I knew MrsP died. I told her it was cool since I would've found out soon enough.

The rest of the afternoon was really weird. We were told that we could go home early if we wanted to, but a lot of us stayed on. In a odd way, that's probably what MrsP, a known work-a-holic would've wanted.

From what I heard, MrsP worked 12-14 hour days (by choice). They tried getting her help but she wouldn't let go of any of her projects, all of which were heavy eaters of her time.

It was found out she died of a massive heart attack. She was in the middle of a conference call that morning when she stated to a co-employee that she felt like throwing up. Moments later when someone asked her a question and she didn't answer, that same co-employee went to check on her. He found her not breathing.

They did what they could to revive her until EMS eventually came. She died shortly after making it to the hospital.

It's just amazing how funny life is. Obviously you never know when your last hour will be. For MrsP, she died doing what she enjoyed doing. She was only 43. Scary!

When I eventually meet my maker, I hope I can say that I at least lived a full life. I hope I get to travel more, find the love of my life (though I don't think that'll ever happen...*LOL*), accomplish my personal goals, etc., etc.

Hopefully my shoes have a lot more miles to walk before my time is up.