Two days later, at about 0330 in the morning, Charlotte awoke to a strange sound. It wasn't loud, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was. She listened for a moment and decided that it was coming from the kitchen of the small house. She pulled back the comforter and stepped out of her bed and into about 1/4 inch of cold water. "Well crap on a cracker, this is not good!"

She reached over to turn on the light on her bedside stand and then thought that maybe a flashlight would be safer. It was at that time that she noticed that her bedside alarm clock was not on. She laughed. "Just like the simulator. Multiple emergencies at the same time!"

She reached into her bedside table drawer and removed a heavy four-cell aluminum Maglight which in a pinch could be used in other ways... She clicked on the flashlight and saw that her bedroom had water flowing in from the hall and onto the 100-year-old hardwood floors. She made her way to the kitchen and saw a flow of water coming from under the sink. "No worries, I'll just turn the water off at the valve and worry about it in the morning."

She opened the cabinet under the sink, moved the trashcan out of the way and turned off the hot and cold water valves. They were more than a bit rusty and quite tight but she was eventually able to get them both shut off. That's when she noticed that the water was actually coming from the wall behind the sink. Even with both valves off, the flow continued and even seemed to increase. "Not good. Okay, just like the sim this is a test of systems knowledge. Gramps showed me where the main shut off valve is. Let me see, yeah in the basement on the foundation wall towards the street."

Charlotte made her way down the creaky old steps and into the dank basement. She saw that it had almost a foot of water in it. The flow seemed to be dripping from the ceiling above. She sloshed her way through the cold dark water to the main shut off valve and tried to close it. It would not budge. She prided herself on being strong for a girl and tried it again but it would not turn. At that point, she put her engineering and physics knowledge to a practical test. She went over to her grandfather's old workbench and found a long screwdriver that she could use as a lever. She inserted it into the spokes of the valve wheel, and then carefully, very carefully used it to close the old valve. After about 540 degrees of rotation, the valve closed and the flow of water from above slowly started to decrease. She smiled thinly. "Okay then. We'll just fight what we see. It's just like in emergency procedures evaluation only it is my house and not a jet aircraft!"

She made her way back up the stairs to the hall behind the kitchen and noticed that the clock on the oven was also off. "Okay it looks like all the power is out in the whole house, but that is probably a good thing with all this water!"

She then walked down the cold and wet hallway back to her bedroom, put on a pair of jeans, a paint-stained sweatshirt and her worst pair of running shoes with no socks. Charlotte shined the flashlight down and observed that the water was not so high that she might not actually able to save the floors if she worked quickly. She tapped her phone which was actually working and saw that the time was now 0417. "Okay then, we'll see what we can do to take care of this water."

She did a survey of the small house, which was almost completely flooded in 1/8th to almost 1/2 of an inch of water and looked for the low spot. As it turned out, everything seemed to be flowing towards the basement stairwell. "Okay, can't do any more damage down there."

Over the course of the next two hours, she managed mostly dry the floors of her house with a mop and a squeegee which she had duct-taped to the other end of the mop handle. The basement was still a disaster, but she could deal with that later. About half an hour after sunrise, Charlotte was satisfied the old hardwood floors were going to be okay. She had used every towel from the linen closet as well as some old sheets to dry the floors. She looked around in the early morning light and said to herself. "I need to get something in here to get the air moving or this place will turn into a mold festival with me as the host!"

Her stomach grumbled she found a still dry box of granola bars in the pantry and happily crunched one down. "Gods would I like a cup of coffee about now."

She looked over at the Keurig machine and decided that turning on the power was still a bad idea. "Well, the co-op is only a few blocks away. I'll take a walk, get some coffee and a scone and figure out what plan A or B is!"

Charlotte went out of the back door of her little house, past the vacant studio apartment above her garage and made her way four blocks east and six south to the co-op. She got the largest cup of coffee to go [in a rice paper cup of course!] and thought that the barista had been a bit snarky when she ordered it black with nothing silly. She took a different route through the neighborhood as she walked back to her semi-flooded house. About five blocks give or take from home, she stopped to observe a construction site. An old house like hers, but nowhere near as nice was raised 8 feet in the air on a huge stack of 6X6 cribbing. A team of men and one woman, all wearing hard hats were carefully removing the crumbling brick foundation under the old craftsman style house. It was then that she noticed the sign and logo on a late model Ford F-350 work truck. The sign said Justin Crawford Construction and Remodeling, LLC. She watched for a couple of minutes and then Justin came out from behind a small Bobcat which he had been using to move a bucket full of bricks to a larger pile of old bricks in the back yard. He did a double-take and walked over to her and smiled. "Charlotte, I mean Ms. Janssen, good morning."

Charlotte raised her coffee. "Just Charlotte or Char is fine Justin, that's what my friends call me."

He smiled and took in her disheveled appearance. "Hi, um, what are you up to this fine morning. Is everything okay?"

Charlotte sipped her coffee and shook her head. "I needed coffee. Had a bit of a rough night. My basement is flooded and the power is out. I'm going back to you know, formulate a plan."

He raised his brows. "Flooded you say?"

"Yeah, a pipe burst in the wall sometime in the middle of the night. On top of that, the power is out and I'm afraid to turn it back on."

"Good call, do you need a hand. I can come over and take a look."

Charlotte turned away as if to say no and changed her mind. "Yes Justin, that would be awesome. I would really appreciate your expert opinion. It's a real chocolate covered mess!"

Justin looked at Charlotte a moment and he could not help but notice the contrast between her gray eyes and her short black hair. She also filled out that 437th Airlift Wing T-shirt quite nicely. He managed to stammer. "Yeah, um, okay. Give me a sec to talk to my foreman and we'll hop in the truck and drive over and I'll take a look."

A couple of minutes later, Justin returned and gestured for Charlotte to get into the passenger seat. He had to clear away two sets of plans, a clipboard full of permits and an empty Five Guy's burgers bag he grinned sheepishly. "Sorry about the mess, this truck is kinda' my office."

"Dude, I could tell you stories about what the mission planning room looks like in the middle of the night over in the sandbox."

Justin started the truck and turned in the correct direction towards Charlotte's house. She asked. "You know the way?"

He nodded. "Same house you lived in when you were in high school right?"

She nodded and smiled to herself that he remembered. A couple of minutes later, Justin pulled his truck into a vacant spot near the front of the house. He opened the door and commented. "Nice place, how long have you, I mean has it been in the family?"

"Yes, thanks. Gramps bought it in the 70s when he was stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base the first time. He knew then that he and Gram wanted to retire here to Boise and they did."

Justin put on his tool belt and removed a large portable spotlight from the back of the truck. "Power's off right?"

"Yeah, went off the same time as the animals started lining up two by two."

Justin looked puzzled. "Animals..."

Charlotte chuckled. "You know, Noah's flood?"

"Right!"

Charlotte led the way through the open front door. Justin noticed that all of the windows and the back door were open to the warm summer morning. He looked down to the oak floors, leaned over to touch them and then touched his finger to his thumb. "They are mostly dry Charlotte, you did a good job keeping the windows open, but we definitely need to get some fans in here if we want to save, and trust me, you most definitely want to save these quarter-sawn oak floors. They don't make them like this anymore!"

"I know. The water was mostly in the kitchen, bathroom, and both bedrooms. The living room was dry so I moved all the furniture, rugs and chairs and my bed in there. So anyway, it kinda' looks like King Tut's tomb with everything piled up at random."

Justin smiled. "Good thinking, I can tell from here that the kitchen and hallway side of the house has settled a bit so the living room was left high and dry." He then gestured to the half the house where the furniture piled up in the living room. "You moved all of that stuff by yourself, this morning?"

Charlotte smiled and flexed her bicep dramatically. "Sure did! Do you want to go downstairs and see the worst of it?"

With a sweep of his hand, Justin said. "Lead the way, Ms. Janssen."

Charlotte gestured to the stairs leading to the basement. She picked up her Maglite off the kitchen table, checked that it still worked and led the way down to the basement. The two of them stopped at the third step from the bottom as Justin surveyed the situation. He was silent for a moment as he observed the 6 to 9 inches of water in the basement of Charlotte's family home. "Okay, this is a mess, but not a catastrophe. You did shut off the water right?"

Charlotte shined her Maglite onto the valve on the brick foundation wall nearest the street. "Yeah, that one right there. It was a bit tight but after a few turns the water stopped so I think I got it."

Justin shined his bright spotlight around and asked. "And the electric, where is the circuit box you know the main power panel?"

Charlotte shook her head. "It's upstairs in the laundry room. I did not touch it. In the Air Force, I was taught a thing or two and one of them was electricity and water do not mix and that you can reset a circuit breaker or fuse one time if you don't think anything is broke!"

"And in this case Ms. Janssen?"

Charlotte shrugged. "Yeah, my house is most definitely hard broke so I didn't touch anything."

Justin looked at her in the dank and gloom of the flooded basement and thought for a microsecond and once again observed how smart, funny and attractive Charlotte Janssen was. "Okay then, the first thing we have to do is drain the basement. As it turns out, I happen to have a gas-powered pump in the back of the truck. With your assistance, we can muck out your basement in an hour or so."

"You'd do that for me?"

Justin looked at the disheveled but somehow beautiful woman in front of him. "'Course I will. You're family after all. You are godmother to my nieces and for some reason, their little brother who does not like anyone seems to like you!"

Charlotte leaned over and kissed Justin in a sisterly fashion on his cheek. "Okay, I won't turn you down. How do we get started?"

Justin paused again and decided that his sister's old high school friend was not just another pretty girl! "Absolutely, no problem let's get to work."

Justin then made his way out of the basement and then out the front door to his truck and retrieved a heavy pump unit and a pair of 50 foot long, two-inch diameter hoses "Char this is what they call a trash pump."

Charlotte nodded knowingly. "Right. We delivered a whole pallet of these for hurricane relief in Puerto Rico a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly they can remove water and muck and whatever other nastiness is in it."

Justin nodded. "Exactly. So all we have to do is get the intake to the low spot in your basement, place the outlet hose uphill of the storm drain in the street and then we'll fire this baby up!"

As Justin easily lifted the well over 100-pound machine out of the back of his truck, Charlotte could not help but notice the muscles in his arms and back.