For almost ten minutes, I sat in that parking lot with my forehead pressed against the steering wheel.
My phone kept vibrating.
I didn’t look at it.
I already knew what some of the messages would say.
Sorry, man.
That was messed up.
Nick was furious.
Let me know if you need anything.
The kind of messages people send when they watched your life catch fire from behind a computer screen and were relieved the flames hadn’t reached their desk.
Then my phone rang.
My wife.
I stared at her name.
Rachel.
For one terrible second, I considered letting it go to voicemail.
Because saying it out loud would make it real.
We had a mortgage.
Two daughters.
Emma was eight.
Sophie was five.
Emma needed braces before the end of the year.
Sophie had just started speech therapy.
Rachel had gone part-time at the hospital because childcare cost almost as much as she was earning.
My paycheck wasn’t extra money.
It was the floor underneath our family.
And Nick had just kicked it out from under us.
The phone stopped ringing.
Then immediately started again.
I answered.
“Hey.”
Rachel knew.
She always knew.
“What happened?”
That was all she asked.
I closed my eyes.
“I got fired.”
Silence.
Not disbelief.
Not panic.
Just silence.
Then her voice softened.
“Why?”
I told her.
Everything.
The woman.
The roadside.
The ambulance.
The presentation.
Nick.
His exact words.
You were supposed to keep driving.
Rachel didn’t interrupt once.
When I finished, I waited for the question I was terrified to hear.
What are we going to do?
Instead she said, “Is the woman alive?”
I swallowed.
“I think so.”
“You stayed until the ambulance came?”
“Yes.”
“Then come home.”
I opened my eyes.
“Rachel—”
“Come home, Sebastian.”
“We can’t afford for me to be unemployed.”
“I know.”
“The mortgage—”
“I know.”
“Insurance—”
“I know.”
My voice cracked.
“I should’ve called somebody and left.”
Rachel went quiet for two seconds.
Then she said something I would remember for the rest of my life.
“No. You should have done exactly what you did.”
I covered my face with one hand.
She continued.
“Our daughters are going to grow up learning what kind of man their father is. I’d rather explain why money is tight than explain why their dad left a dying woman in the road because he had a meeting.”
That nearly broke me again.
“Come home,” she repeated.
So I did.
I spent the rest of that day pretending not to panic.
I updated my résumé.
Cancelled two subscriptions.
Moved money from savings.
Checked our checking account six times.
At dinner, Emma asked why I was home early.
Before I could answer, Rachel said, “Daddy helped somebody who was very sick today.”
Emma looked impressed.
“Like a doctor?”
I almost laughed.
“Not exactly.”
“Did you save her?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
She thought about that.
Then nodded seriously.
“You still helped.”
Children have a brutal way of making complicated things simple.
That night, I barely slept.
At 6:12 the next morning, I woke to an email from Nick.
SUBJECT: PERSONAL PROPERTY COLLECTION
Your belongings have been boxed.
You may retrieve them between 10:00 and 10:30.
Return building key and parking badge at reception.
No need to enter the main office.
No goodbye.
No thanks.
Three years reduced to a cardboard box and a thirty-minute pickup window.
At 10:07, I pulled into the agency parking lot.
I almost didn’t go inside.
There was nothing in that box I truly needed.
A framed photo of Rachel and the girls.
Two notebooks.
A coffee mug Emma painted at school.
A cheap desk plant I had somehow kept alive for two years.
But leaving it all there felt like letting Nick erase me.
So I walked in.
The receptionist, Jenna, looked uncomfortable the second she saw me.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
She pointed toward the chairs by the lobby.
“There’s been… a change.”
My stomach tightened.
“What kind of change?”
Before she could answer, the elevator doors opened.
Three people stepped out.
The first was a man in a dark gray suit.
The second was a woman carrying a leather portfolio.
The third was the woman from the roadside.
I stopped breathing.
For a second, I didn’t recognize her.
Yesterday, her face had been gray.
Her hair had been stuck to her forehead with sweat.
Her blouse had been twisted beneath the paramedics’ hands while they worked on her.
Now she wore a navy jacket over a hospital wristband.
Her face was pale.
But she was standing.
She looked directly at me.
“Sebastian?”
My knees nearly went weak.
“You’re alive.”
She smiled.
“Because of you.”
The lobby became completely silent.
Jenna stared at us.
The security guard turned his head.
Even the receptionist from the law firm across the hall stopped typing.
I took one step toward the woman.
“Are you okay?”
“I had a cardiac event.”
She touched the center of her chest.
“An arterial blockage. The doctor told me another ten minutes without treatment might have changed the outcome.”
I remembered her hand crushing my wrist.
Her lips turning blue.
Her whisper.
Please don’t leave me.
I felt sick just thinking about it.
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
She studied me.
Then her expression changed.
“What happened to your face yesterday?”
I blinked.
“What?”
“When the ambulance took me away, you looked terrified. But not because of me.”
I gave a weak laugh.
“I was late for work.”
The man beside her looked at me.
The woman’s eyes narrowed.
“And?”
“I missed an important presentation.”
“And?”
I hesitated.
“I was fired.”
Her smile disappeared.
Completely.
“For helping me?”
I looked around.
This was not a conversation I wanted to have in Nick’s lobby.
“It’s complicated.”
“No,” she said. “I suspect it’s extremely simple.”
The elevator opened again.
Nick stepped out.
He was moving quickly, fixing his jacket.
Then he saw the woman.
And froze.
I watched every ounce of color disappear from his face.
“Mrs. Langford.”
My head turned.
Mrs. Langford?
Nick immediately forced on a smile.
It was the same smile he used before big presentations.
Warm.
Confident.
Completely artificial.
“I didn’t know you were coming in personally.”
The woman did not return the smile.
“I’m aware.”
Nick’s eyes moved to me.
Then back to her.
Something passed across his face.
Confusion.
Then fear.
“Sebastian,” he said quickly, “why don’t you take your box and—”
“No,” Mrs. Langford said.
One word.
Nick stopped.
She looked at him.
“I would like Sebastian to stay.”
The man beside her opened his leather folder.
Nick swallowed.
“Of course.”
I stared between them.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What exactly is happening?”
Mrs. Langford turned toward me.
“My name is Evelyn Langford.”
She extended her hand.
I shook it automatically.
“I’m the founder and executive chair of Langford Home.”
The world seemed to tilt slightly.
Langford Home.
The account.
The account Nick said we had lost.
The biggest potential client our agency had pitched in years.
A national home-goods company with stores in twenty-six states.
I looked at Nick.
Then at her.
“You’re…”
“The woman whose company was supposed to hear your presentation yesterday.”
My mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Evelyn continued.
“I was on my way to observe the presentation without announcing myself.”
Nick jumped in.
“Mrs. Langford, yesterday was an unfortunate breakdown in internal scheduling. Sebastian was responsible for leading the pitch, and unfortunately he—”
“Stopped to save my life.”
Nick stopped talking.
Evelyn looked directly at him.
“Yes.”
Nobody moved.
She stepped closer.
“I was fifteen minutes from this building when my chest pain became unbearable. I pulled over. I tried to get out because I couldn’t breathe. Then I collapsed.”
I remembered seeing her sedan angled toward the curb.
The driver’s door hanging open.
Cars passing.
One after another.
People slowing down.
Nobody stopping.
Until me.
Evelyn’s voice became quieter.
“I remember several vehicles going around me.”
Nick stared at the floor.
“Then Sebastian stopped.”
She looked at me.
“He called emergency services. He kept me conscious. When I tried to stand, he made me stay down. When I told him he could leave after the ambulance was called, he refused.”
I had forgotten that part.
Or maybe I’d been trying to.
I remembered looking at the clock on my dashboard.
8:06.
8:11.
8:17.
Every minute screaming at me.
I remembered telling her, “My meeting can wait.”
Evelyn reached inside her portfolio and removed a phone.
“The hospital returned my belongings last night.”
She tapped the screen.
“I had called my son shortly before I collapsed.”
Nick’s head snapped up.
“My phone didn’t disconnect.”
The man beside her shifted slightly.
Evelyn’s son.
I recognized him now.
Andrew Langford.
Chief Executive Officer.
He had been one of the clients waiting yesterday.
Andrew looked at me.
“I heard most of what happened.”
My skin prickled.
He continued.
“My mother’s phone was connected through the car system. When she collapsed, I could hear traffic. Then I heard someone pull over.”
Me.
“I heard you ask if she could breathe.”
I couldn’t speak.
“I heard you call 911.”
Nick started blinking rapidly.
“And,” Andrew said, “I heard my mother tell you three times that you should go because you said you had an important meeting.”
I looked down.
Andrew’s voice hardened.
“You told her, ‘A meeting is not more important than your life.’”
The lobby felt suddenly too small.
Nick gave a nervous laugh.
“Obviously, knowing what we know now, Sebastian made the right call. There may have been some… emotions yesterday.”
Evelyn turned her head toward him.
“Emotions?”
Nick spread his hands.
“We were under pressure. Your team had left. We believed the account was gone. Sebastian arrived late. Words were exchanged.”
I felt anger rising again.
Words were exchanged.
That was how he was going to describe it.
Evelyn looked at me.
“Tell me exactly what he said.”
Nick’s face changed.
“Mrs. Langford, I don’t think—”
“I wasn’t speaking to you.”
She kept her eyes on me.
I hesitated.
Part of me wanted to let it go.
I had spent years avoiding conflict.
Smoothing things over.
Protecting people from consequences they had earned.
But then I remembered Nick standing inches from my face.
Was it your wife?
Your mother?
No?
Then you should have kept driving.
“He asked if you were my wife,” I said.
Evelyn’s jaw tightened.
“Then he asked if you were my mother.”
Andrew stopped moving.
“I said no.”
I looked at Nick.
“He told me that because you were a stranger, I should have kept driving.”
Nick exhaled sharply.
“That is being taken completely out of context.”
“No,” said a voice behind us.
Everyone turned.
Maria, one of our senior account managers, stood near the hallway.
She looked terrified.
But she kept walking.
“I heard it.”
Nick stared at her.
“Maria.”
She swallowed.
“You said exactly that.”
Behind her stood Kevin from design.
Then Alisha from digital.
Then one of the interns.
They had apparently been listening from the office.
Nick’s eyes hardened.
“This is not a staff meeting.”
“No,” Evelyn said.
“It isn’t.”
She nodded toward the conference room.
“It’s a client meeting.”
Ten minutes later, I was sitting at the same table where I should have presented the day before.
Except I wasn’t presenting anything.
Nick sat across from Evelyn and Andrew.
His hands were locked together so tightly his knuckles were white.
Beside them sat the third person from the elevator, a woman named Claire Donovan.
General counsel for Langford Home.
That did not help Nick’s breathing.
I sat near the door because I still wasn’t sure why I was there.
My cardboard box rested beside my chair.
The stupid plant stuck out of the top.
Evelyn looked at Nick.
“Yesterday, your company told us Sebastian had an unexplained absence.”
Nick shifted.
“That was the information available at the time.”
Andrew leaned forward.
“You also told us he was unreliable.”
My eyes went to Nick.
He didn’t look at me.
Andrew continued.
“You said this wasn’t the first time he had failed the team.”
“That was not what I—”
“You said,” Andrew interrupted, “‘Sebastian has struggled with accountability lately.’”
My stomach turned.
It was a lie.
Not an exaggeration.
A lie.
I had never missed a client presentation.
Never received a disciplinary warning.
Never even been late more than a handful of times in three years.
Evelyn opened a folder.
“That concerned us, so this morning we requested the personnel background of the team assigned to our account.”
Nick looked confused.
Claire spoke for the first time.
“Your operations manager provided performance records.”
Nick’s face went still.
I knew immediately he had not expected that.
Claire looked at me.
“Sebastian received the highest client retention scores in your agency for the last eighteen months.”
I blinked.
“He brought back three accounts that had given notice of cancellation.”
I had.
“He worked twenty-one weekends last year.”
I hadn’t realized anyone counted.
“He received no formal disciplinary actions.”
Nick’s mouth tightened.
Claire looked at him.
“So when you characterized him as a recurring performance problem less than one hour after terminating him, you created a credibility issue.”
Nick leaned back.
“This is absurd. I run this company. I made a management decision.”
“You absolutely did,” Evelyn said.
Then she closed the folder.
“And we made ours.”
Nick’s eyes flicked toward her.
“Our account will not be placed with this agency.”
His shoulders dropped.
There it was.
The loss he had blamed on me.
Only now it was real.
But Evelyn wasn’t finished.
“We also contacted two members of your ownership group this morning.”
Nick’s face changed again.
That got my attention.
Ownership group?
Nick always called it his agency.
But he only owned part of it.
Two silent investors had financed the company years earlier.
Andrew placed a document on the table.
“Your partners were disturbed by the circumstances.”
Nick’s voice became quieter.
“What circumstances?”
Claire answered.
“The termination itself.”
She paused.
“The false description of Sebastian’s employment record.”
Another pause.
“And your email to the client yesterday stating that Sebastian had knowingly abandoned his professional obligations for ‘a personal matter.’”
I stared at Nick.
He had written that?
While I was being fired?
Nick suddenly stood.
“This meeting is over.”
“No,” another voice said.
The conference room door opened.
A man in his sixties stepped inside.
I had seen him twice before.
Thomas Reed.
One of the agency’s investors.
Behind him was another woman I recognized from company holiday events.
Patricia Cole.
The second investor.
Nick went completely silent.
Thomas closed the door.
“We need to talk.”
Nick looked from Thomas to Patricia.
Then to Evelyn.
Then to me.
“You called them?”
Evelyn didn’t answer.
Thomas did.
“Langford Home called us.”
Nick’s face twisted.
“This is my company.”
Thomas shook his head.
“No, Nick. You own thirty-eight percent of this company.”
The room went dead quiet.
Patricia placed a folder on the table.
“And your employment agreement includes a conduct clause.”
For the first time since I had known him, Nick looked small.
Not angry.
Not arrogant.
Small.
“This is insane.”
Thomas sighed.
“We already reviewed the lobby security audio.”
My heart skipped.
Nick stared at him.
“The lobby?”
“No,” Thomas said. “Yesterday’s office recordings.”
Nick’s face drained again.
Apparently, after a threat from a former employee two years earlier, the agency had installed security cameras covering common areas.
Including the main workspace outside the conference room.
The same workspace where Nick had fired me.
Thomas continued.
“We heard everything.”
Nick looked at me then.
Not with regret.
With hatred.
As though I had somehow engineered all of this.
As though I had made him say those words.
“You planned this,” he said.
I almost laughed.
“I didn’t even know who she was.”
“You think you can take my company?”
“I came here for a coffee mug.”
That shut him up.
For half a second.
Then his temper snapped.
He pointed at me.
“You were late!”
Andrew stood so quickly his chair rolled backward.
“Because he was saving my mother.”
Nick slammed his hand on the table.
“He didn’t know that!”
Evelyn stared at him.
“That is the entire point.”
Nick froze.
Her voice was calm now.
Almost sad.
“If Sebastian had known who I was, helping me would prove nothing.”
Nobody spoke.
“He believed I was nobody.”
Her eyes moved around the room.
“No title.”
“No account.”
“No money.”
“No value to his career.”
Then she looked at me.
“And he stayed anyway.”
Something tightened in my chest.
Evelyn turned back to Nick.
“You believe that makes him irresponsible.”
She paused.
“I believe it tells me exactly who he is.”
Thomas looked at Nick.
“Effective immediately, you’re suspended from operational authority pending a board review.”
Nick stared at him.
“You can’t do that.”
“We just did.”
Nick laughed.
A strange, hollow sound.
Then he looked around the room as if waiting for someone to defend him.
Nobody did.
Not Maria.
Not Kevin.
Not Jenna.
Not me.
He grabbed his phone.
“This place collapses without me.”
Thomas’s expression barely changed.
“We’ll find out.”
Nick stormed toward the door.
He stopped beside me.
For one second, I expected an apology.
Instead he whispered, “You’ll regret this.”
I looked up at him.
“No.”
My voice surprised even me.
“I think I already regretted working for you.”
He left.
The door slammed.
Nobody moved for several seconds.
Then I remembered something important.
“I’m still unemployed.”
Andrew laughed first.
Then Patricia.
Even Evelyn smiled.
I didn’t.
“I’m serious.”
Evelyn folded her hands.
“So am I.”
She slid a document toward me.
I didn’t touch it.
“What is that?”
“A proposal.”
“For what?”
“Yesterday, we came here because Langford Home needs a new national marketing strategy.”
I looked at the folder.
“We are not giving the account to this agency,” she continued.
Thomas’s smile faded slightly, but he nodded.
“I understand.”
Evelyn kept looking at me.
“We’re giving it to Sebastian.”
I actually laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because my brain rejected the sentence.
“I don’t have an agency.”
“You understand our business.”
“I made one pitch deck.”
“You built most of the pitch.”
I looked at her.
“How do you know that?”
Maria raised one hand from the side of the room.
“I told them.”
I stared at her.
She shrugged nervously.
“You did.”
Evelyn continued.
“You developed the customer segmentation model. You proposed the regional rollout. You designed the retention strategy.”
“That doesn’t mean I can service a national account by myself.”
“No,” she said.
“It doesn’t.”
She glanced toward Thomas and Patricia.
Thomas leaned back.
“We have a separate proposal.”
Now I was really confused.
Patricia turned the folder toward me.
The agency had been losing accounts for months.
I knew that.
What I didn’t know was how bad it was.
Nick had hidden several client departures from staff.
He had also taken out expensive short-term financing to make the company appear healthier than it was.
The Langford account had not merely been an opportunity.
It had been intended to save the agency.
Without it, the company was weeks away from cutting nearly a third of its staff.
I looked toward the glass wall.
Outside, employees were pretending to work.
People with mortgages.
Children.
Medical bills.
People who had watched me get fired and said nothing because they were afraid.
I understood them better now.
Thomas leaned forward.
“If the board removes Nick permanently, we need new operational leadership.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
He blinked.
“I haven’t even finished.”
“I know where this is going.”
“Do you?”
“You want me to come back.”
“Yes.”
“As Nick’s replacement.”
“Potentially.”
I pushed the folder away.
“No.”
Evelyn watched me carefully.
Thomas frowned.
“Sebastian, this would come with equity.”
“No.”
“A significant compensation increase.”
“No.”
“Control over the Langford account.”
“No.”
Rachel’s voice echoed in my mind.
Our daughters are going to learn what kind of man their father is.
Thomas stared at me.
“Why?”
I looked through the glass again.
At Maria.
Kevin.
Alisha.
The interns.
Then I looked at the table where Nick had humiliated me twenty-four hours earlier.
“Because yesterday, everyone in that room heard him tell me I should’ve left a woman to die.”
Nobody spoke.
“And nobody said anything.”
Maria looked down.
I shook my head.
“I’m not blaming them. Nick built a company where people were too scared to speak. If I sit in his chair tomorrow because I benefited from him falling, nothing actually changes.”
Thomas studied me.
“What would change it?”
I had no answer.
At least not immediately.
Then Evelyn said, “Start over.”
I looked at her.
She leaned back.
“You said you don’t have an agency.”
“I don’t.”
“You have a client.”
My pulse jumped.
She smiled slightly.
“And judging from the number of people standing outside that conference room pretending not to listen, you may have a team.”
I turned.
Maria was standing by the glass.
Then Kevin.
Then Alisha.
Then Jenna.
Even two junior employees I barely knew.
Thomas’s expression became complicated.
“You’re suggesting they leave?”
Evelyn shrugged.
“I’m suggesting adults decide where they want to work.”
Maria opened the conference room door.
“I’ll go.”
Thomas looked at her.
She swallowed.
Then repeated it.
“I’ll go with Sebastian.”
Kevin raised his hand.
“So will I.”
Alisha nodded.
“Me too.”
I stood up.
“This is crazy.”
Maria looked at me.
“No.”
Her eyes were wet.
“What was crazy was sitting there yesterday and saying nothing.”
She took a breath.
“I have hated myself since you walked out.”
“You had a job to protect.”
“So did you.”
She looked at Evelyn.
“And he risked his.”
One by one, people started speaking.
Not everyone.
Not even most.
But enough.
Five.
Then seven.
Then nine.
Thomas finally held up a hand.
“Nobody should make employment decisions inside an emotional meeting.”
He was right.
Evelyn nodded.
“Agreed.”
Then she looked at me.
“So don’t decide today.”
But apparently life had one more surprise waiting.
My phone rang.
Rachel.
I almost silenced it.
Then I answered.
“Hey.”
Her voice sounded strange.
“Sebastian, are you still at the office?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a woman there named Evelyn Langford?”
I stared at Evelyn.
“How do you know that?”
Rachel started crying.
Not softly.
Actually crying.
My body tensed.
“What happened?”
“There are people outside our house.”
I stood immediately.
“What people?”
“A news van.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“And someone from the hospital.”
Everyone in the room was watching me now.
Rachel tried to catch her breath.
“Sebastian, somebody posted a video.”
I felt cold.
“What video?”
A driver behind me on the roadside had recorded part of what happened.
Not the rescue.
The argument afterward.
When another motorist had shouted at me for blocking the shoulder.
The video showed me kneeling beside Evelyn.
One hand under her head.
The other holding my phone while the emergency dispatcher talked me through what to do.
It showed cars passing.
Dozens of them.
And it captured one sentence clearly.
Evelyn saying, “You should go. You said you’re already late.”
And me answering:
“If I leave and you die, I’m going to be late for the rest of my life.”
Someone uploaded it.
By noon, it was everywhere.
But that still wasn’t what changed everything.
Three days later, Nick’s board review uncovered something nobody had expected.
Not even Thomas.
Nick had been falsifying agency performance numbers.
Moving revenue between quarters.
Hiding client cancellations.
Charging personal travel to company accounts.
The Langford loss had threatened to expose the hole.
That was why he had exploded when I missed the presentation.
I hadn’t destroyed the company’s biggest opportunity.
I had accidentally removed the final thing hiding his fraud.
Nick was terminated.
Then investigated.
The agency survived, but barely.
Thomas and Patricia offered positions to everyone who wanted to stay.
Nobody was punished for talking to me.
And me?
I did not take Nick’s office.
I didn’t take his title.
I took Evelyn’s proposal.
Six weeks later, in a rented room above a dental practice, with secondhand desks and one conference table we bought from a closing furniture store, seven of us opened a new agency.
Maria came.
Kevin came.
Alisha came.
Four others followed.
We called it Northstar Creative.
Emma designed the first logo with a purple marker.
It was terrible.
We used it for three months anyway.
Langford Home became our first client.
Not because I saved Evelyn’s life.
She made that very clear in our contract negotiations.
“You don’t get a multimillion-dollar account for being a good person,” she told me.
“You get the chance to compete for it.”
So we competed.
We worked.
We made mistakes.
We fixed them.
We won.
Within eighteen months, Northstar had twenty-three employees.
Then thirty-one.
Then forty-six.
I stopped counting after that.
But the moment that stayed with me happened almost two years after the roadside.
I was driving Emma to school.
It was raining.
Traffic was terrible.
I had an eight-thirty meeting with the biggest client we had ever pursued.
Millions of dollars.
Months of work.
The kind of meeting that once would have controlled my entire morning.
Emma was beside me practicing spelling words.
Then she pointed through the windshield.
“Dad.”
A car had stopped awkwardly near an intersection.
An older man stood beside it.
One hand pressed against the roof.
He looked confused.
Cars were moving around him.
Nobody stopped.
I looked at the clock.
8:04.
My meeting was twenty-six minutes away.
For one second, the old fear returned.
The schedule.
The client.
The consequences.
Emma looked at me.
“Dad?”
I put on my hazard lights.
Pulled over.
And called my office.
Maria answered.
“You close?”
“No.”
She sighed dramatically.
“What happened?”
I looked through the rain at the old man.
Then at my daughter.
“Somebody needs help.”
There was a pause.
Then Maria said, “Okay.”
That was it.
No anger.
No threat.
No question about whether the stranger mattered enough.
Just okay.
“We’ll start without you,” she said. “Drive safe.”
I hung up.
Emma smiled.
“You always stop.”
I looked at her.
“No.”
I thought about the person I had been before Evelyn collapsed.
The man who believed loyalty meant never being late.
The man who thought a job could measure his worth.
The man who had poured everything into a company because he was terrified of losing the security it promised.
“No,” I said again.
“I learned to.”
The old man turned toward our car.
I opened the door.
And before I stepped into the rain, Emma asked one last question.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“What if your meeting gets mad?”
I smiled.
Because two years earlier, that question would have terrified me.
Now I knew the answer.
“Then it’s the wrong meeting.”
I stepped out.
Rain soaked through my shirt almost immediately.
Behind me, traffic kept rushing past.
Ahead of me, a stranger needed help.
And for once, I didn’t look at the clock.
Not even once.
