About 2:15, Kate went into the restroom at the Atlanta airport. As is my custom, I waited for her right at the entrance where she walked in. Ten or fifteen minutes passed (which is not unusual), and I began to be concerned. Our flight was scheduled to depart at 3:00. I started to look around the area to see if she might somehow have gotten out without my seeing her or her seeing me. That seemed impossible. Then I looked to my left and noticed another entrance/exit to the restroom. It hit me. She had come out that exit. Since she didn’t see me, she just walked out. Where she went was the question. I asked a couple of women who were going into the restroom to make sure she wasn’t still there. Then I approached an airport employee who suggested I ask a Delta agent. I walked over to the gate across from the restroom and saw two other airport employees. They both went into the restroom looking for her and calling her name. No luck.
In the meantime, I walked all the way down to the gate where our flight to Dallas was to board. Because her habit is to wait for me to find her, I looked at and around the seating area at each gate. I didn’t find her. Next the airport employee suggested that we page her. We went to a Delta help desk where they did that.
I decided to walk down to our gate one more time and look for her along the way. I discovered that our flight was about ten minutes late in boarding. That made me feel a little better. The employee who had been helping me walked to the gate. Then the two of us headed in the direction of the restroom, each of us looking at and around the seating areas. As we were nearing the restroom where all this drama began, I saw her sitting in one of these areas. She was very calm. She was simply waiting patiently for me to find her. What a relief.
By then, I thought surely we were too late to board, but we walked back to the gate. We got there as they were loading the last few passengers. As we waited in line to get on the plane, I asked Kate if she had been worried. She said she hadn’t, that she knew I would find her. I told her I had had her paged. She said, “I heard it. I thought it was a come on. Didn’t you think of that?” I told her I hadn’t. She said proudly, “Well, that was the first thing I thought of.” We got on the plane without anyone’s realizing there was a problem. We are now in our seats, and the plane is taxiing to the runway for departure. A near catastrophe averted.
