Instead she pulled me into a room, drew my blood with her own hands, ran the panels herself rather than sending them into a queue where they’d take days and raise questions, sat with me while the results came up, and then, instead of dissolving into horror the way a lesser friend might have, became the calmest and most useful person in my life.
She thought in steps.
Sample, camera, documentation, backup.
She turned my panic into a to-do list, which is the single most helpful thing anyone can do for a person whose world has just come apart.
Twenty years of friendship, and I had never known until that morning that she was the person you’d want beside you at the end of the world.
Every story like mine needs one, I think — one person outside the poisoned house who is simply, unshakably, on your side.