Page 76 of One Bossy Date
Anders stood to his feet, handing the situation over to them, then immediately turned to look for me. I waved him over to the corner where I was hiding out.
“Anders, you weren’t lying,” I said to him, as I watched the medics do their job with calm efficiency.
“About?”
“About things almost always going wrong on construction sites.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a dangerous work environment,” he said with a straight face, looking back at the medics doing their work.
“You don’t need to convince me.” I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves. Anders put a hand on my arm as he took in my pale face.
“Look, I’m sorry about this,” he said. “I didn’t mean to tempt fate. Let’s get you out of here.”
Holy sweetness.I realized he was worrying aboutmeandmynerves while all this was going on.Howsweetof him. He started to turn to find the site manager, but I stopped him.
“No, wait.” He stared at me in confusion. “I’m fine, Anders, honestly. Please don’t worry about me. I just stress too easily, it’s nothing new. Youknowthat.”
He assessed my features, trying to judge if I was truly okay. “You sure?” He cupped my face in his hands and brushed his thumbs over my cheeks. “You sure?”
There was so much tenderness in his eyes that in that brush, I almost didn’t hear his question. “Yes.” I nodded. “Completely sure. Go and finish your meeting. I’ll be right here.”
He lingered a moment longer, then nodded and walked back to the architects, who had recovered quickly, and had gone back to their business.
My heart! What a kind human being.
Steadily, my breathing normalized. I couldn’t even be sure if my heart was beating harder from the accident or from the warm and tender expression on Anders’s face when he’d checked up on me. I watched curiously as the medics temporarily bandaged the man’s hand and lifted him under the arms to get him down to the medic station for stitches. It was all rather unsurprising for the people around me, while I remembered physically freaking out, having a panic attack, and even crying when only a pipe had burst at the store.
This truly put things into perspective.
I considered that maybe my stress had an element of self-concern to it. As in, when something went wrong and threatened my life plan, I would freak to no end. But if I considered my situations in the frame of the bigger picture, maybe I’d be able to cool down, knowing that things could have been worse. Perhaps that was Anders’s secret. He’d been to other, less-advantaged countries in the world and had witnessed what they struggled with. Life-and-death situations, compared to some of our ridiculous first-world problems. He no doubt realized that circumstances could always be worse, and that the right thing to do was to calmly manage the situation.
When he’d finished talking to the architects, they stayed behind with the site manager, and Anders took me back down the external lift. Once we’d shed ourselves of the hard hats, reflective jackets, and boots, we strolled back to his driver who stood waiting beside the car.
“Now, did you learn anything new today?” His tone was humorous as if the answer was obvious.
“Ah, yeah. A lot,” I told him. “I’ve never thought about how extremely dangerous some jobs are. But obviously, there’s a big element of risk here.”
“True. These workers risk their lives for this job.” He stopped to stare up at the high-rise. “But, I’ve seen how proud it makes them as well. I’ve overheard workers before, talking about telling their kids one day that they built this amazing skyscraper.”
I looked up as well. “So it’s worth the risk then?”
He looked back down at me, lifting a shoulder. “That’s for them to decide. We do everything we can to keep it as safe as possible for them.”
“I guess it helps to put things into perspective.” In the car, I continued our discussion, brushing my fingers through my hair and gazing out the window while reminiscing. “I recently struggled with a burst pipe at the store, and I totally freaked out. No, really. I panicked. There was water everywhere! Until Jim ran in and switched the water off at the main valve. I didn’t even know that existed.”
“Well, now you do. Remember, focus on one task at a time. It’ll be easy then.”
“Easy, huh?” I said doubtfully.
“Yeah. Keep that in mind, and I promise you, next time something happens, you won’t be so panicked. Focus on one task at a time.”
“Hmm…one task at a time.” I repeated his words to myself. “I guess that’s true. I just realized how different things could have gone if I acted like you—cool when no one else is, focused on the problem at hand. Have you been through something like this before?”
“Oh, yeah, of course. But then again, I made sure to know a couple of things so I’d be prepared. Like first aid. Generally, I’ve always been careful.”
“I think the more that goes wrong, the more careful I get too,” I said. “I just need to manage the stress that constantly builds up inside me.”
“Yeah. Keeping a clear mind always helps.”