Don't Date Your Contractor* [Published - Sample Only]

Chapter 2 - Things that go Bump in the Night

Two days later, at about 0330 in the morning, Charlotte awoke to a strange sound. It wasn't loud, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was. She listened for a moment and decided that it was coming from the kitchen of the small house. She pulled back the comforter and stepped out of her bed and into about 1/4 inch of cold water. "Well crap on a cracker, this is not good!"

She reached over to turn on the light on her bedside stand and then thought that maybe a flashlight would be safer. It was at that time that she noticed that her bedside alarm clock was not on. She laughed. "Just like the simulator. Multiple emergencies at the same time!"

She reached into her bedside table drawer and removed a heavy four-cell aluminum Maglight which in a pinch could be used in other ways... She clicked on the flashlight and saw that her bedroom had water flowing in from the hall and onto the 100-year-old hardwood floors. She made her way to the kitchen and saw a flow of water coming from under the sink. "No worries, I'll just turn the water off at the valve and worry about it in the morning."

She opened the cabinet under the sink, moved the trashcan out of the way and turned off the hot and cold water valves. They were more than a bit rusty and quite tight but she was eventually able to get them both shut off. That's when she noticed that the water was actually coming from the wall behind the sink. Even with both valves off, the flow continued and even seemed to increase. "Not good. Okay, just like the sim this is a test of systems knowledge. Gramps showed me where the main shut off valve is. Let me see, yeah in the basement on the foundation wall towards the street."

Charlotte made her way down the creaky old steps and into the dank basement. She saw that it had almost a foot of water in it. The flow seemed to be dripping from the ceiling above. She sloshed her way through the cold dark water to the main shut off valve and tried to close it. It would not budge. She prided herself on being strong for a girl and tried it again but it would not turn. At that point, she put her engineering and physics knowledge to a practical test. She went over to her grandfather's old workbench and found a long screwdriver that she could use as a lever. She inserted it into the spokes of the valve wheel, and then carefully, very carefully used it to close the old valve. After about 540 degrees of rotation, the valve closed and the flow of water from above slowly started to decrease. She smiled thinly. "Okay then. We'll just fight what we see. It's just like in emergency procedures evaluation only it is my house and not a jet aircraft!"

She made her way back up the stairs to the hall behind the kitchen and noticed that the clock on the oven was also off. "Okay it looks like all the power is out in the whole house, but that is probably a good thing with all this water!"

She then walked down the cold and wet hallway back to her bedroom, put on a pair of jeans, a paint-stained sweatshirt and her worst pair of running shoes with no socks. Charlotte shined the flashlight down and observed that the water was not so high that she might not actually able to save the floors if she worked quickly. She tapped her phone which was actually working and saw that the time was now 0417. "Okay then, we'll see what we can do to take care of this water."

She did a survey of the small house, which was almost completely flooded in 1/8th to almost 1/2 of an inch of water and looked for the low spot. As it turned out, everything seemed to be flowing towards the basement stairwell. "Okay, can't do any more damage down there."

Over the course of the next two hours, she managed mostly dry the floors of her house with a mop and a squeegee which she had duct-taped to the other end of the mop handle. The basement was still a disaster, but she could deal with that later. About half an hour after sunrise, Charlotte was satisfied the old hardwood floors were going to be okay. She had used every towel from the linen closet as well as some old sheets to dry the floors. She looked around in the early morning light and said to herself. "I need to get something in here to get the air moving or this place will turn into a mold festival with me as the host!"