November 16 had begun like any other Monday for Alison, and she was in confident spirits. The barista had put precisely the right amount of hazelnut syrup in her double skinny latte,  and the University of Washington department of whom she was an administrator was right on schedule for the completeion of its new mission statement.

But that evening, standing in the cold wet night air at the 15th Avenue bus stop, Allison got a bit more than she'd bargained for.

Through the blowing rain, she could make out the outline of her bus, its glowing orange letters shining in the night. Like clockwork, the 48 bus to Rainier Beach would glide down the hill each evening  at exactly 5:15, followed by the 43 which would take her, like a secure warm womb, only with seats and no entangling umbilical cord, to her Capitol Hill home.

But tonight, something was different. Something was not right. She briefly entertained the comforting hope that it was a mere illusion brought on by the rain, but as the bus drew closer, she could no longer deny the truth. Perhaps it had been the power of her own will, of what she had desperately wanted to see, that allowed her mind to fill in the blank spaces on the second digit. But it was too late for that sort of idle speculation now. No, something was seriously wrong. She shuddered as a distant, traumatic memory struggled to surface, but as tenuous as it was, she had resolved to stop letting past traumas keep her from enjoying the present. But below her superficial bravado, she knew she was fooling herself. Her dread was like the fault line deep beneath the city, invisible and rarely thought of, but ready to spring into horrible action at the least expected moment.

It was not only Allison who had noticed something awry that evening. Gerald, a Program Assistant II from Applied Physics, was also a regular at the Allision's stop. Each evening after leaving his office, he would walk by the espresso bar on the way to the stop, and buy himself a molasses spice cookie. Gerald was a stickler for the law. As he exited the shop, he came to the red light at the empty crosswalk, and patiently stood as the raindrops stung his skin, chewing thoughtfully, waiting for the light to change. His calm was not cavalier; it was borne of nearly a decade of timely mass transit service. As long as he could remember, the confident approach of the Number 48 had served as his advance warning, the signal to place the remaining two thirds of his cookie back into the wax paper wrapper and neatly fold the opening to prevent the sugary, fragrant crumbs from spilling out into his man purse. Food on the bus was, after all, a punishable crime.

In fact, he had often noticed Allison as she waited pensively for her bus to arrive, her soft mousey brown hair blowing in the wind, the occasional strand adhering seductively to her moist, pale cheek. He'd often agonized over the thought of sitting next to her, but there were always too many empty seats remaining for it to appear coincidental. Besides, even if he did sit next to her, what would he say? He was the kind of man who would cross over to the other side of the street when he saw a woman walking alone, to spare her the discomfort of having to choose between looking at him or pretending not to notice. Perhaps he was preserving his own comfort as well and wondered if he should be a little more bold, without being forward. Yet he knew in his heart that if it were to be, his opportunity would present itself and would not need to be forced.

And suddenly, with no warning, the unthinkable had actually happened. As the number on the bus materialized through the rivulets of water streaming down the window, they both realized at the same instant, that this night was not like other nights. Frantically, Gerald stuffed the cookie into its envelope. There was no time for careful folding; he clumsily rolled up the free end enough to keep the sticky morsels out of his Blackberry, and like wedge on an arctice icebreaker, his words split the silence.

"Hey, that's not the 48."

"You're right," said Allison, "usually the 48 comes first, and then the 43."

"Yep. I wonder how that happened? How did the 43 get ahead of the 48? It has to get all the way from Ballard, you know. Well, technically, it's not the 43, it's 44 until it gets to University Way, but..."  His words trailed off as he realized he had nothing else to say.

"I couldn't believe it, this never happens" said Allison, mercifully delaying - though not for long - the awkward silence.

 "Yeah," answered Gerald, trying hard to keep thoughts of the sudden chaos visited upon his man purse at bay. "They really should separate the schedules, space them out a bit, to avoid this kind of confusion."

"Yes, you're absolutely right!" Allison agreed. "They really should do something."

In the space of that brief instant, they both realized that the world was no longer like it had been just a moment before. And they knew that together, with the support of their family, friends and each other, they would suvive.