When Paths Cross Again (Prof./Student)

Chapter 6 - Dammit Alice

Yes, this better be a real emergency. This better be worth it.

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Surprise! It was not. 

The minute I had arrived in front of my mother's house, I saw her standing outside talking to someone and I pulled my eyebrows together to read the inscription of the car that was parked next to the sidewalk.  

Garden supplies. Anything you need to create your own oasis.

What the heck did we need garden supplies for? The garage was already full of equipment.

"Mom", I called out as I left my car and walked towards her, a big question mark on my face.

"Ah! There she is! Alice, sweetheart, I'm so glad that you could come. Willy, here only has ten minutes left and because I can't help him, it would take too long", she explained but I became even more confused.

"Help him with what?", I asked and gave the man a quick nod as a greeting before I stared expectedly at my mother.

"I decided that the bark mulch needs to be replaced with new one. It doesn't look good in the garden anymore so I ordered new one. You just have to help him unload the truck and carry the bags behind the house since you said you could only start in a few days", she said nonchalantly and I looked at her with an open mouth.

"And that's what you call an emergency? I can't believe it! You tell me that I just ditched my class to unload a freaking car?! Couldn't he just come by on another day where he has more time? You...Argggghh...forget it. Where're these bags?", I struggled to stay collected and not start a scene but damn was it difficult. 

The man gave me a sympathetic look as he gestured to the white truck and I followed him only to gasp at the loads of bags in front of me. 

"How many bags are these? Are you sure that you even calculated correctly? Do we really need this many? And what about the costs? This must be pretty expensive?", I spit out all the questions that were crossing my mind as I looked at the big pile. 

"70 bags. And, seeing your garden, I believe you really need this much", the man spoke next to me as my lovely mother was nowhere to be seen anymore. 

Great. 

I sighed but rolled my sleeves up to get it done. However, as I tried to pick up the first bag it almost immediately slipped out of my hand as it was quite unwieldy and weighed literally 20 kg! I tried again and it turned out that I could hardly even carry one on my own without setting it down every few meters. 

Fantastic. 

Willy started with getting all the bags out of the truck so that he could actually leave when he had to. The ten minutes flew by and quickly I found myself alone with what had to be at least fifty heavy bags to carry behind the house. 

Brilliant! 

If this was my mother's understanding of an emergency, I would never again react to one of her messages unless there was at least some sort of an accident with the need of a doctor involved. But who knows, if I was clumsy enough or simply exhausted from carrying all of this freaking weight around, maybe this would actually end with me in the hospital. Okay, I really shouldn't be all sarcastic about this..

Now, it certainly didn't surprise me that ten minutes wouldn't have been enough. I had barely finished half of the pile in an hour and, becoming weaker by the minute, I knew that it would only take longer from then on. 

After another two hours, I was finally finished and sat down on the ground, breathing heavily. The worst thing was that this wasn't even the end of the story. I was the one who had to take off the old mulch and replace it with the knew one. Gosh, this would take at least a week. And I didn't have time for that! I had barely enough time for everything else...