a friendly moment of panic

A friend of ours is visiting and working on her thesis. Early yesterday evening she came downstairs with the look of one martyred and suffering nobly for her cause and handed me her phone so that she couldn’t check Twitter or FB while she was supposed to be working on her thesis.

Several hours later, just before bedtime, she retrieved the phone and went into her bedroom. Moments later she came back out saying, “Catie? *CATIE*?!” in increasingly alarmed tones. Ted ran out to see what was wrong...