Alarm Bells

Woke up at 6:44 this morning to find I had no lights.

I’d not forgotten to paid the bill, so that wasn’t it.

The microwave was powerless, as was the television.

After looking out the window and seeing no lights in any of the other units, I concluded we’d had a power outage.

What to do about breakfast, was my immediate thought. So with plans to go out for breakfast, hoping the outage didn’t extend as far as Starbucks, thereby cutting off my morning coffee fix, I ran a bath, prepared to get dressed and DING, I heard the microwave go on at 7:08.

Searching the internet, I found no information as to when the power went out, whether it was just this complex or an area outage, but thank goodness I was only powerless for 20 minutes or so.

When leaving my unit yesterday, heading down to the Community Room, I glanced over and noticed cobwebs on my neighbor’s door. Alarm bells went off in my head.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen or heard her coming in or going out, and the significance of the cobwebs was like newspapers piling up -- she’d not opened her door for some time.

Arriving at the Community Room, I mentioned the web and not being able to remember when I last saw the neighbor to The Seer, who keeps up with everyone’s comings and goings, “Did she mention going out of town to you?”

“No. Is her car in the lot?”

“I don’t know her car”, says I.

The Seer immediately called my neighbor’s cell. Getting no response, she left a message to call back … there’s concern as to her well-being.

I didn’t have that feeling of dread I’d felt when I’d gone down and asked for a welfare check on the previous occupant of that unit, who was later found deceased. This time, it was just a sense she might be inside ill – in need of assistance.

At any rate, I heard nothing further after returning to my unit – no one came up to check, The Seer didn’t call to say she’d not made contact, so I let it go until late last night when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

Opening the door to see if it was an Emergency Crew, there the neighbor was. She’d gone out of town to visit her sister for a week, was surprised at the phone call, but grateful we’d cared enough to notice her absence, check on her welfare, and promised to let us know of future extended absences.

It’s a good thing she wasn’t in need of assistance because it took me a week to notice she wasn’t around and, but for the spider web, no telling how much longer it would have taken me.