I had to go in to the office tonight to work on some server issue. It was nearly pitch black outside tonight because of a slight misty rain had been falling. I rounded a curve in my car on our campus by our only empty building and out of the corner of my eye I saw someone’s leg as they leapt over our security fence getting off the campus. It seriously freaked me out but I didn’t panic. I called our companies CEO to alert her on what I saw. I then called the police. I then had the staff check that all our kids were safe and then told them to go check and lock their car doors in pairs if they were not locked. Within a few minutes a cop showed up. I walked the grounds with the officer. I checked doors with him. Thankfully he showed up within a few minutes of my phone call. We did a parameter sweep of the whole campus.

I walked up to one of the building on campus as the officer checked another part of the campus. I checked a side door. It was locked. I checked another door and it wasn’t. It should have been. I work as a IT director four our campus which is a psychiatric residential treatment facilities for 5 to 12 years old that live on our campus 24/7 year round. Every building on campus is suppose to be locked down like Fort Knox. As that knob that should have been locked wasn’t my mind raced. This building had been empty for a couple of weeks as we shut down the program that had been running in it.

I carefully backed away and walked over to where the officer had moved to. He was still doing a perimeter check when I told him about the lock. In a brief moment a thousand thoughts flooded my mind. What if someone beside whoever hopped the fence was still in there or what if that person had come back? Why would they have been there? Some of those kids have cases so severe it would make you throw up if you heard them in detail. I couldn’t bare the thought of someone trying to get on that campus to possibly harm one of them.

Then for a flash of a second I thought what if I got hurt? I was strangely at peace. In my mind I saw the other me who is often safely at home with his wife. As I thought for just a second that something possibly could have happened to me, I saw the man Will who is the husband to Olivia. If something happened to me I might not see my wife again. I and my wife are both believers. When we die we believe eventually we will be in Heaven again together. Death really doesn’t scare me. We know we will always be together but we believe that marriage does not continue in to the life to come. Honestly I hate that.

The idea of not being her husband saddened me. I love being her husband. I love that she is my wife. In that brief moment as a door that should have been secure wasn’t I saw five and nearly six years of our life together flash before me. My life for six years has been filled with a woman that has defined me like no other human ever has or ever will. She is the love of my life. I was reminded in that brief moment then that in her is the other part of me. I wanted to hold her so terribly bad right then. It reminded me how precious our time together really is.

The officer came over when I called for him. He was about my age. He was wearing a ring. He didn’t like the fact that a door was open either. I joked if I had just decided not to come in to work late then neither of us would be there. I said I’d rather be home with my wife. I could see on his face something was going through his mind. He said something like I think that ever night. We waited for his backup to arrive and they searched the building room by room in the dark. I had keys on me to open any doors that may have been locked and stayed behind them. I wondered what was going through their minds as they searched room by room in a dark building.

Thankfully we didn’t see anything else out of place other than a unlocked door. Tomorrow we will attempt to figure out if someone was in there but we may never know. Whoever hopped the fence and for whatever reason may never be known. What I do know is I respect cops even more now and I am going to be thinking more about the other me that I saw in that moment that door knob opened.