The first time I saw Eleanor after the review ended, she was standing outside the building with a paper cup in her hand.<\/p>\n
The air was cold.<\/p>\n
She had wrapped a scarf around her neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cChristopher,\u201d she called.<\/p>\n
I walked over.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow are you feeling?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBetter,\u201d she said. \u201cThe doctors are pleased.\u201d<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad.\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked at the traffic moving beyond the parking lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still think about that morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo do I.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember seeing you check your watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was late.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were worried.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was.\u201d<\/p>\n
She turned toward me.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you regret stopping?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
The answer came without effort.<\/p>\n
She smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeither do I.\u201d<\/p>\n
We stood there for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then she asked how the girls were.<\/p>\n
I told her about the trip, the museum, and Lucy\u2019s astronaut.<\/p>\n
She laughed when I described the lost glove.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad you got to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo am I.\u201d<\/p>\n
I had come to understand that the job had not been the only thing I feared losing.<\/p>\n
I feared the mortgage.<\/p>\n
I feared disappointing Sarah.<\/p>\n
I feared telling my daughters that I could not keep a promise.<\/p>\n
Those fears had been real.<\/p>\n
But they had not changed what I knew was right.<\/p>\n
When Eleanor returned inside, I stayed by the curb.<\/p>\n
Cars passed in both directions.<\/p>\n
I watched them until the light changed.<\/p>\n
Later that week, I drove the same road where I had found her.<\/p>\n
I did not need to go that way.<\/p>\n
I chose it.<\/p>\n
The shoulder was empty.<\/p>\n
The grass had grown along the edge of the pavement.<\/p>\n
I remembered her car pulled over with its hazard lights flashing.<\/p>\n
I remembered the phone in my hand.<\/p>\n
I remembered telling the dispatcher where we were.<\/p>\n
I remembered the way Eleanor had tried to apologize while she was struggling to breathe.<\/p>\n
I had told her not to.<\/p>\n
I had told her to stay with me.<\/p>\n
There had been no grand plan.<\/p>\n
No promise of a new job.<\/p>\n
No knowledge of what would happen after the ambulance arrived.<\/p>\n
There had only been a person who needed help.<\/p>\n
And a choice.<\/p>\n
That evening, I picked the girls up from school.<\/p>\n
An elderly man stood beside his car near the entrance road.<\/p>\n
The hood was raised.<\/p>\n
He looked uncertain and embarrassed as vehicles passed him.<\/p>\n
I slowed.<\/p>\n
Sophie looked out her window.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad, are you stopping?\u201d<\/p>\n
I pulled over.<\/p>\n
The man explained that his car would not start.<\/p>\n
I helped him check the battery and called roadside assistance when we could not get it running.<\/p>\n
The girls waited beside me.<\/p>\n
When the tow truck arrived, the man thanked us.<\/p>\n
I told him it was nothing.<\/p>\n
As we drove away, Lucy looked at me from the back seat.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou stopped because he needed someone.\u201d<\/p>\n
I glanced at her in the mirror.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
She smiled.<\/p>\n
And I understood that my life had not changed because Gavin fired me.<\/p>\n
It had changed because I stopped to help Eleanor.<\/p>\n
I would make the same choice again.<\/p>\n
Source: kaylestore.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n The first time I saw Eleanor after the review ended, she was standing outside the building with a paper cup in her hand. The air was cold. She had wrapped … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sharestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10779,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10766\/revisions\/10779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nClick here to continue reading: PART 13: The Small Choice<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"