Suzette almost made it to work. Almost. But almost isn’t actually arriving there on time if at all, and this particular morning she was stressed enough without her car issues. She was so close when the light at Main and Branch turned yellow and she was forced to slam on her brakes.

“Oh no. Oh please God, no.” Not being a person given to asking for help from anyone, not even the Almighty with whom she was barely on speaking terms, she surprised herself when the God begging slipped out. She knew, at that precise moment that she was going to lose it. She needed this job desperately and knew she was on thin ice with her supervisor who had given her the evil eye last week when she scurried in fifteen minutes late because Jamison had been in one of his two year old tantrums and refused to get dressed which meant she had to carry him into daycare kicking and screaming which of course made her late to work. Again.

So here she was, stopped at this light absolutely knowing the motor was going to die in three....two....one...... Yup. Dead. She banged her head on the steering wheel feeling the tears well up and then the cacophony of car horns behind her while she tried desperately to restart her 14 year old Honda Civic. All she got for her trouble was some kind of useless grinding noise and then a wisp of smoke from under her hood.

She was scrabbling around for her phone when someone tapped on the window. Wiping her snotty face with one hand, she cautiously rolled down the window about halfway and was looking into the face of one of the village police who did morning traffic duty. Suzette knew him, of course. Her husband had been a paramedic and when he died two years ago, the guys in the police station and local EMTs had been incredibly kind to her and Jamison.

“You okay, Suzette? It’s me. Judd Patton. Can I help you?”

By now Suzette was practically hysterical, talking great gulps of air as she explained about the car, her god awful morning, and her job issues. She knew she sounded like a crazy woman, dumping all over this guy, but he just stood for a minute, letting her unload.

“Well first, let’s get you out of the way, okay? Can you put it in neutral and I will push you to the shoulder. Okay?”

“Y-y- yes. I think so.”

“Okay then. You take a deep breath, keep your foot on the break and put it in neutral. When i bang on the trunk, ease off the brake and just steer to the side, okay?”

“Okay.”

She saw him signal to his partner in the cop car behind her, and this big guy got out and nodded at whatever Judd had said. A minute later she heard a smack on her trunk and the car began to move and soon she was off the highway and safely on the shoulder.

Judd came back over and leaned in. “Look, Suzette, do you need to be somewhere? This car is not going anywhere any time soon, but my partner John and I can drop you off and I will be glad to arrange for a tow. Here. Take this and wipe your face. It’s all going to be fine.”

He handed Suzette a handkerchief and then helped her out of the car. “My boss is going to be furious,” she said, starting to cry again. “I just can’t seem to get anything right.”

“You are doing remarkably okay, Suzette. We all knew Paul and he was a great guy who was always there to lend a hand or a shoulder to lean on when things got bad sometimes. Let us help here. I’ll go in and talk to Mrs. Stinson. She’s a friend of my mother, and she is a lot more bark than bite. I’ll smooth it over.”

And that’s how it went down. She was escorted into work by the two patrolmen while her boss and fellow workers gaped at her, and then she saw Judd have a long conversation with Mrs. Stinson who came over to her desk, put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Suzette, you could have shared some of your pain with me and I am sorry I did not know what was fling on. We’ll work around your schedule issues as much as we can. “

The day smoothed out and Judd and John took care of the car, finding a friend who fixed it for a nominal fee, and they even took her to daycare to pick up Jamison who was awe struck by the attention of not one but two policeman and got to ride home in their police car. Suzette felt like she could breathe for the first time in six months since Paul’s death.

Was it her desperate plea to God sitting at a red light with a dead car that turned things around? Did it really matter? All she knew was that without the help of these new friends, it could have been a much more difficult day.