they found val! and she's alive!!!
i don't think i've even mentioned this here, because it was too fucking depressing to think about, but here's the nutshell version: my friend and coworker valerie has been working extra shifts at a hospital about 3 hours away on weekends, because they are in desperate need of staff. she worked saturday's shift, and didn't show up on sunday. she was last seen by staff at her hotel at 9:30 sunday morning, then apparently... vanished.
the town she was working in is literally in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by thousands of acres of dense bush. it's all logging roads and camp roads that lead to nowhere. there have been searches by both police and civilians, land and air. the dogs were out with the emergency response team. there were fliers and news broadcasts.
we all feared the worst. as more time went on that she was missing, we became more and more concerned, mostly convinced that she had killed herself. hindsight's always 20/20, right? we all started to think back and find the "signs" they say someone demonstrates before they take their own life. it was pretty grim in our department at points over the last week.
yesterday afternoon, her car was found, abandoned about 25 km from the town she was working in. we got this news at about 3:30pm. it was pretty much the worst end to a shift/week one could imagine. i held it together pretty well at work, but when i got home i had a little bit of a meltdown.
my phone rang this morning at 9 o'clock. it was lindsay, with the news that our boss had just called her to say that they'd found val alive, and that was all she knew. my boss called me 5 minutes later to repeat the same thing. i got out of bed and checked the facebook group dedicated to her, their message was the same: she was found, and she's alive. that's all we know.
i feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my chest. i can breathe again. i have always hated the way the word "closure" gets thrown around, but i certainly understand it.
i have no idea what state val is in, mentally or physically. essentially she's been in the bush (with or without her car) for nearly a week. why she was out there is still a mystery. perhaps she tried something and it didn't work. maybe she had some crazy mental break and just lost it. who knows? regardless, i hope that any damage she's suffered is something she can recover from, and that she gets whatever help she needs.
i'm so glad she's alive. i love her. |
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