Trigger warning: This post discusses two very high stress situations. Please proceed with caution.

Dear Reader, I try to avoid using this blog to vent (Rant, yes. Vent, no.) but I’ve had two really bizarre, scary, and downright unpleasant morning experiences in a row, and frankly, the adrenaline dump has me sitting here feeling kind of nauseated. I don’t know about you, but I rely on a certain amount of routine in my life, and when situations are thrown at me from unexpected angles, it’s all I can do to duck and cover. It’s especially hard for me when I’m going through these things by myself, with no one to process it with. I envy those who have a ride or die person. I’ve never had one. So you drew the short straw! Here goes.

Yesterday Morning (at the time of this writing):

For those who are unaware, I am a bridgetender. But I don’t just open my drawbridge for vessels. I also help to maintain the bridge in good working order. Yesterday, I got to work a bit early, at 6:45 am. The sun wasn’t even truly up yet, but I decided to crank out my maintenance right away. I figured it would help me wake up. Truer words were never spoken.

I take pride in doing my maintenance well. I love my bridge, and I truly believe that if I take care of it, it will take care of me. All the machinery on my drawbridge is below street level. There’s a vast, multi-story warren of rooms down there that most commuters are completely unaware of. This is my domain. On this day, I planned to clean the excess grease off the trunnions and buffer cylinders (just take my word for it. An in-depth tutorial on bridge machinery isn’t necessary for this story), so I went to the supply room and grabbed about 20 shop towels, some gloves, and some simple green, and I headed off to do my job.

I see it now. Do my job. Such confidence. Such self-assurance. And indeed, I’ve probably done this 1,000 times before without a problem. I could do it blindfolded (but that wouldn’t be my best idea). If I were a whistler, I’d have been whistling. That’s how sure I was that everything was going to go the way it always does.

I walked into the enormous room where the buffers are, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed that something wasn’t right. A gate was open. A gate that no one, and I mean no one ever leaves open. I turned toward the gate and froze. Yep. It was open. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. A thousand thoughts raced through my head.

Someone had been here. And they might still be here. Someone who had no business being here. Someone who would not be happy to see me here. And your average, law-abiding, substance-free citizen doesn’t choose to hang out in the greasy, damp, cold underbelly of a bridge.

Suddenly, this was not my domain. No. I was a woman, all alone, below street level, so early in the morning that very few people were crossing the bridge. But that hardly mattered, because from down here, no one could hear me scream, even if the sidewalk above were filled with pedestrians. Or if they did, it would be muffled, and they’d have absolutely no idea where the sound was coming from.

I tried to convince myself that I was being paranoid. I had been watching too many true crime shows. No one has ever come in here. You’d have to be really determined, extremely athletic, be a good swimmer or own a boat, be fine with walking through years of accumulated pigeon poop, have no fear of heights, and no access to the millions of other more comfortable and appealing places to be on earth. Nah. I was just being silly.

That’s when I saw the junk food wrappers.

My next thought was that if they were still here, and I hadn’t seen them yet, the only place they could possibly be was…behind me. There’s a nook back there where the counterweights are. They could be in there.

It took everything in me to overcome my paralysis. I had to mentally wrestle down the panic attack that was screaming to come to the surface. I turned around. Very slowly. Very quietly.

The problem with this nook is that the only way to be sure if someone is in there is to walk right up to it and stick your head in and look both ways. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Maybe I should call the police.

Yeah, right. I can’t even get them respond around here when I am looking right at someone lying unconscious on the sidewalk. They’re not going to come out to see if maybe, possibly, someone is in a nook.

Call a coworker? No. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously as a woman on this job without screaming to be rescued from what might turn out to be an empty space.

So I walked over, took a deep breath, and looked in. And nobody was there. And just like that, my legs felt weak, and I had to sit down on the step and gather myself and my thoughts.

One of those thoughts turned out to be that maybe the maintenance could wait until tomorrow. I went back to my nice, warm, comfortable bridge tower, and wrote the report. I made a few suggestions regarding increased security, which will probably be ignored, but we’ll see. I discussed the experience with a few people, and then went about my day, business as usual. Except I think maybe “doing my job” won’t ever feel quite the same.

Today (at the time of this writing):

As you can imagine, I had some very strange dreams last night, but I did get some much-needed sleep. Even so, I wasn’t happy when the alarm went off. Who is?

Still, I managed to do my morning routine. I got ready for work. Work. That place where I do my job. The thought of that on this day made me move a little slower, so I left the house about 9 minutes later than usual. No worries. I always arrive obscenely early anyway. But I would mentally beat myself up about it during the drive.

I hopped in my car, and as this was a weekend day, I anticipated a relatively stress-free commute. Google maps seemed to agree with that assessment. Onward. Off to bring home the health insurance. My Viking ancestors would be so proud.

I listened to an audiobook on my way, as is my wont these days. The news would only put me in a foul mood. After yesterday’s adrenaline, I just wanted to hear good things.

About 2/3rds of the way there, I noticed this guy in a big white pickup truck, the kind with a full back seat, riding my bumper. He didn’t like that I was going the speed limit. For God’s sake, there are 3 other lanes, all of which were currently empty. Go around me, stupid. But no. He was content to bully me down the highway. His problem, not mine.

When you reach Seattle proper, there’s a point where the interstate becomes double-decker. The express lanes are on the lower level. They also happen to have the exit ramp that lets out closest to my drawbridge, so I take the express lanes every chance I get. Today was no exception. Sadly, White Truck remained on my tail.

I got over to the far right lane as quickly as I could, to give him the opportunity to get past me, but he did as well. Weird. But at least he was now following at a relatively decent distance. I stopped thinking about him, though, when I saw a crash attenuator truck up ahead, parked in my lane, with its lights flashing. They’re usually protecting a construction zone, but I had seen no construction signs.

I, of course, pulled out of my lane. That’s when I saw the debris all over the road. Broken plywood and 2×4’s. And, what are those? Grey shoeboxes? No… oh my god… concrete blocks. Scattered all over the road. Every lane!

From then on, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I slammed on my brakes and pulled over to the left shoulder. I looked up and saw that the scaffolding that had been affixed to the underside of the upper deck of the highway, put there so workmen could repair that upper deck, had fallen into the road. Oh my God. And then, worst of all… here comes White Truck.

He didn’t even slow down. He hit a concrete block that was in the lane beside me at top speed. Really loud bang. I watched the block disintegrate. It was epic. A cloud of dust full of chunks of shrapnel, if shrapnel could be said to be made of concrete. All in slow motion. I swear I could see each individual shard.

Then time went back to normal again. I turned to see White Truck fishtailing down the road. And I thought, “Oh, shit. I better get out of here. More cars will be coming soon.”

So, I carefully wound my way through all the debris, praying that I hadn’t run over anything that could puncture my tires. I then got out of there as quickly as I could. Adrenaline again. Two mornings in a row!

Not too far past that catastrophe, I saw the truck pulled over on the shoulder. Ahead of him were 4 or 5 other vehicles, with broken windshields. I’m guessing those poor people had been at ground zero when the scaffolding collapsed. I hope no one was hurt.

Falling concrete blocks could kill a person quite easily. Later, it dawned on me that if I had left the house on time that day, that person might have been me. I’m getting shivers as I type that.

If someone isn’t in a whole lot of trouble behind this, they jolly well should be. But the funny thing is, I’m sitting here 12 hours later, and there’s not a peep about it anywhere online. Nowhere. The only red flag is the fact that the express lanes were closed for a while, but no reason was given. I’m sure it was to clean up the debris. But they’re open again.

So, nothin’ to see, here? Tell that to my adrenal glands.

Update: And to add insult to injury, when I came out the next morning to go to work, I discovered my tire was, indeed, flat. A slow leak that was, fortunately, easy and cheap to repair, because when I contacted the state DOT that would be responsible for said scaffolding, they claimed it was debris that had fallen from a truck.