Sharing

"Will John or Jenny Rolland please report to their cabin...Will John or Jenny Rolland please report to their cabin?"

Well...it wasn't really a question that we heard over the ship's loud speaker today.

It was around 5:20pm and I was still in the OR, but about ready to meet the family in the dining room for supper. A few minutes before, though, I got a page on the beeper and the number displayed was our cabin number. I suspected that the page was from John and that he wanted to know when I would be ready to meet them. Then...everyone on the ship was silenced by the "BONNNNNG" that means "shhh...there is an announcement coming". And announcements over the ship's paging system are not granted lightly!

My eyes got really wide, I might have said "CRAP", and then I couldn't decide weather to run to the phone or up the 3 flights of stairs to Deck 6 and our cabin. OK, phone. The line went straight to voicemail. OK, stairs. Up, up, up..."someone must be hurt...where's John?...it must be serious for them to have paged..." When I got to the top of the stairs on deck six, I had a clue as to what was the matter. It was on the floor outside of the captain's cabin and I had to step over it very carefully as to not get stomach contents on my OR shoes!

John had already made it to the cabin, our friend, Juan, was dialing the duty housekeeper and another friend, Joan, was in the cabin and had assisted David from the hallway to our bathroom. David was dazed and pale, but felt better after his stomach had been emptied on the deck! John ended up doing the clean-up and had just finished when Bethany asked if he had gotten the spot in the hallway on Deck 5. Nope, it was still there! Mop to Deck 5. Finally, the clean-up was complete and three fifths of the family went to the dining room for supper!

I felt very famous in the dining room as many people gave me a glance and raised their eyebrows as if to ask, "what was that about?" Several did ask and were not surprised to discover that the bug-of-the-month had visited our cabin. That's the thing...we live in such close community that we share EVERYTHING! We love our neighbors, though, and believe that we ought to share each other's burdens. So, David is just doing his part!

But, really, we are very thankful for those around us who share our burdens even on days like this! Thank you to our friends who helped us out and enquired about our well being. It's nice to have such a big family here on the ship that looks after us!

Jenny