Tuesday morning around 9am I decided to go for a quick walk and get away from my desk for a few minutes. I grabbed my MP3 player and headphones and walked a mile lap around the center.

Rounding the final corner on my way back to my building I was almost run down by one of our security trucks, lights-a-flashin’. That truck was followed by a smaller security kart, with two more security peoples inside. As I approached the building’s front door the trio, walking briskly, walked up behind me. I held the door the open and stood aside. “Y’all are in a bigger hurry than I am,” I quipped.

Once inside the building, the three of them must’ve thought I was trailing them. As they walked to the end of the hall, so did I. They walked downstairs. I followed them. After making a few turns they began heading toward my room, with me still in tow. As I followed them into my room they and I saw the same thing at the same time; Johnny, my co-worker and buddy, lying on the floor surrounded by paramedics.

The next few minutes are kind of a blurry combination of employees asking, “What happened?” and paramedics trying to get information from both Johnny and the rest of us. Even though I arrived late to the party it was obvious Johnny was in a lot of pain, which was hard to watch. Using a pain scale from one to ten, Johnny was reporting nines and tens. Probably due to my recent first aid training, I found myself disassociating from the situation at hand and instead dissecting the actions of the rescue personnel. One of the things we learned in class is to go stand where you can be seen when more rescue personnel are arriving. When I heard the Oklahoma City paramedics were arriving I did just that, moving out into the hallway where I could wave them into the room.

Initially Johnny was showing symptoms of having a heart attack, even though he’s already been down that road and has had his heart checked recently and everything looked just fine. After pumping him full of painkillers, Johnny was on his way to Mercy Hospital. Emily rode in the ambulance while Paula, Susan and I followed them in my truck. It is always frustrating watching how slow ambulances drive with someone in the back. I found myself continually riding my truck’s brakes to avoid ramming the rear of the ambulance.

After hanging out in the hospital for fifteen minutes or so Johnny’s wife Stephanie arrived, relieving Emily and myself of bedside duties. From there we joined Susan, Paula, and one of Stephanie’s co-workers out in the waiting room. After waiting for an hour, we were informed that they wouldn’t know anything else for two to three hours. We decided that was a good point to break for some lunch and go pick up Johnny’s truck. As I later told Johnny, “When we thought you were dying, we came here. When we found out you weren’t dying, we went to go eat BBQ.”

After a couple of hours of tests, they turned ol’ Johnny loose. Their tests point to GI issues, which makes sense as he just had his gall bladder removed a couple of months ago. Johnny and Stephanie left the hospital right around 2pm, and the rest of us headed back to work.

I thought a lot about this the following day on Thanksgiving. It’s easy to say that you’re thankful for your health, but to see something like this up close and personal drives the point home. We sure are thankful Johnny’s okay and look forward to seeing him return to work next week.