10. Theo
10
THEO
I watch the water pooling in Mia’s yard, and the guilt hits me hard. This was my project, my responsibility, and now her property is a mess because of it. I stride over to where she’s standing, her eyes wide.
Before I can reach her, she disappears inside. I don’t know if she’s running from me or just the situation in general, but I let her go. I need to focus on the problem at hand. Right now, the mix of rocks and grass underneath my feet is already turning into a muddy mess.
I make a call to one of the numbers on my list. I don’t have control to shut off this water, but it clearly has to be contained. As I’m waiting to speak to someone, I shout at my contractor, “Get some sort of temporary patch on that pipe! I don’t know how many houses on this street it leads to. Get it under control!”
Everyone is moving quickly, and I know they’re doing the best they can, but they are fired. They are absolutely fired after this. We were able to fix the minor damage done a few days ago, but this kind of damage can’t be done accidentally. They ripped almost a third of the piping off.
Water seems to be bubbling up under my feet, and I stop moving, annoyed by the sloshing noise of the yard under my feet.
Someone finally answers my call. “Yes, hello! We need someone down here immediately to shut off the water until a pipe can be fixed. We’re experiencing flooding.” I give the address of the property, and a couple of people are dispatched immediately. I shove my phone in my pocket again and stare at the damage. With how quickly this water is pooling, it could probably rise to a dangerous level in a couple of hours. I have to remain confident that things will be turned off and patched up before then.
Mia reappears on her porch, and she grips the railing tightly, looking out over the yard with shock on her face.
“Mia, I’m really sorry about this. I’ll pay for the damages and get it all fixed. This shouldn’t have happened. I didn’t know these guys couldn’t drive an excavator, or I wouldn’t have hired them for the job.”
She narrows her eyes at me, her arms crossed defensively over her chest. “I don’t want your money, Theo. I just want this fixed before it causes any more damage.”
Her stubbornness is back in full force, and the flirtatious spark I felt just earlier is nowhere to be seen. She’s all business, focused on the immediate problem at hand.
Mia hops off the porch, and I realize she’s changed into some ridiculous black, rubber boots. I wonder where she got them because they don’t look like her style.
She hurries over onto my property, ignoring the property line completely. I jog after her, splashing mud up the back of my shirt.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
But she ignores me and goes right over to the burst pipe. She evaluates it, and I realize she’s trying to fix it. I want to tell her there’s no way she’s going to be able to deal with the pipe until the water is turned off, but I don’t think Mia wants to hear anything I have to say right now.
“Can’t you patch this?” Mia shouts at one of the nearest construction workers. He shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head, and takes a few steps away from her and her frantic questions.
Mia gets down on her knees and starts trying to gauge the size of the hole, but the water it’s spurting isn’t gentle.
I grab her shoulder and pull her back.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to stop this thing. Can’t we turn off the water somewhere or cover it up so the water can’t leak everywhere?”
“That’s what I’m working on. I’ve called someone to turn off the main valve. I don’t have access to it. Once that’s done, we’ll stop the water from leaking. There’s nothing we can do about it until then.”
Mia jerks away from my grip and falls to her knees again, but she’s not reaching out and trying to stop the stream of water now. She’s just sitting there, staring at the pipe sadly.
Finally, she gets up and trudges back to her property. I want to go after her, but I have to stay here and deal with this.
Someone must have called Steve because he shows up wearing suit pants and a dress shirt. He’s always been a “stay in the office” kind of guy while I’ve never been afraid of getting my hands dirty. He stands on the very edge of the property, his shoes still in the street as he surveys the mess.
I make my way over to him and realize there is already standing water up to my ankles everywhere.
“Who’s responsible for this?” Steve asks as soon as I’m within hearing distance.
“Those contractors—Sun something. They’re done. Believe me. This is one mistake too many.”
“Why are they just standing around?”
I roll my eyes, disliking Steve’s tone when I already feel stressed. I purposely step a little harder than necessary on the last patch of grass as I reach him so a couple of mud droplets splash up on his pants.
“We have to wait until the main water valve is shut off. We don’t have access to that.” I hear a siren in the distance and watch as a fire truck comes down the street. It stops by a box, and someone hops out.
Another fireman comes over and begins talking to us about what happened. After a moment, the flow of water slows and then stops.
Even though I feel relieved it’s finally been shut off, the open space around Building A is swamped, and when I glance over at Mia’s property, I see a level of water in her backyard that makes me sick.
Once I’ve finished talking to the firefighter about what happened, I leave Steve to deal with firing the contractors and replacing them.
I need to make sure Mia knows she’s not going to have to pay to drain her yard or replace the grass. I’ll take care of all of it.
When I round the back of Mia’s house, I see she’s back on her porch. Her boots are soaked, and there is a layer of mud around the bottom inch of them. She stares catatonically at the pipe that is no longer spurting water.
“It’s off,” she announces.
“Yes, the water has been turned off. We’re going to have to replace the pipe completely before doing anything else.”
“What about my yard?” Mia snaps out of her catatonic state and turns angry eyes on me. “This place has been absolutely flooded. You can fix your pipe and move on with your life happily, but what about me? I don’t have a huge budget to deal with the fact that my backyard is a mud pit now.”
I realize simply offering money isn’t going to cut it. She needs action, not empty promises.
“Alright. Let’s fix this together.”
She blinks at me, clearly surprised. “You? Help fix a busted pipe?”
“Yes, I’m not just going to give you money and make you deal with contractors who may or may not know what they’re doing. I’m going to help you fix it.”
Mia hesitates, then finally nods. “Fine. If you are actually going to help me, then let’s do it. Did you see one of my pipes burst from the flood?” Mia points to a spot in the backyard where there appears to have been a whale spout coming up from the ground.
I follow Mia to the garage where she pulls out some tools. I grab a wrench, a shovel, and some pipe tape, my mind already running through the steps we need to take. This isn’t my area of expertise, but I’m determined to help. Together, we kneel by the busted pipe.
I dig away at the mushy ground so we can see the pipe clearly. Based on the color of the tubing, this is a direct offshoot from the large pipe that burst on my property. I wonder if this pipe burst first, then the huge one burst. We just didn’t notice this one because it was still fully buried. Maybe it has been quietly leaking into the soil since the first day my team messed up the pipe.
“Alright, let’s figure out how bad the damage is,” Mia decides, helping me push away the last of the dirt.
I’m relieved to see it’s a clean break, probably from the pressure of the digger. I glance at Mia, who’s already focused on the task at hand.
“Looks like we need to replace this section. I don’t have any pipes, though.”
“I’ve actually got some. Give me a second.” I jog back to my property and to the shed that is holding all the bits and pieces until we are done building. Sure enough, there is some extra piping from when the builders were doing the bathrooms in Building A.
I grab a few different lengths and sizes and hurry back to Mia’s property. She nods, accepting my peace offering. She pulls a measuring tape out of her pocket and begins measuring sections before she finds the one that is the closest both in length and diameter.
“I need the piper cutter. The water is off, isn’t it?”
“It stopped flowing out down there, so I think so.”
“Yeah, it also stopped flowing out of my sink.”
I pass Mia the pipe cutter and watch as she carefully cuts out the damaged section. I can’t help but admire her skill.
“Here,” she says, handing me the old pipe. “You can be responsible for getting rid of it.” Mia starts to measure, but I notice she’s holding the tape measure incorrectly. She’s measuring from before the zero.
I gently tug at the tape measure and show her how it should be done. Mia bites her bottom lip, probably embarrassed but not wanting to say anything about it. “Yeah, you’re right. I think I’m so shaken from what’s just happened that I can’t even remember basic things.”
She re-measures the pipe, then cuts a new section that will perfectly fit onto the old.
Once we’ve reset the pipe in place, I help Mia by collecting the tools and setting the old pipe in a separate pile.
Mia brushes one of her wavy, black strands of hair out of her face. “Alright, let’s test it out.”
I head to her front yard and try to mess with the valve. Each time I do, I shout back to Mia to see if anything is happening. It seems like nothing is leaking, but when she goes inside to test the water flow, nothing comes out.
“They turned off the valve down the street,” I finally realize. “You’ll have to wait to know if it worked until they turn that back on.”
Mia stands up and brushes at her dirty pants. “Well, at least I’ve done my part.” She looks around at her muddy yard.
“I’ll take care of the yard. If I need to pay for you to have new grass put in, I’ll do it. Or whatever you need to get this place back into shape.”
“Thank you, Theo. I didn’t think you’d actually get your hands dirty.”
I shrug, trying to play it cool. “I couldn’t let you handle this alone. Besides, it’s my fault it happened in the first place.”
She laughs softly, and I feel like her frustration is starting to ebb away “Well, I appreciate it. And I’m sorry for being so stubborn.”
“No need to apologize. I get it.”
She hesitates. “You must be hungry. I was about to make dinner before all this happened. Would you like to stay and eat?”
I’m surprised by the offer, but I quickly recover, a genuine smile spreading across my face. “I’d like that. Thanks.”