and then there was thunder.

April 2007.

I sometimes get feelings that things aren't right; that I shouldn't be in a certain place, or should be doing something else. Well, this day I had the same feeling. I haven't learned how to handle "this feeling" because it makes me feel unbalanced and very anxious. Thus, Zack and I ended up having a fight. We were going camping with our friends and everyone was trying to leave, but of course waiting on me, well, more like us, since we were fighting. We bickered back and forth for awhile with me proclaiming that I didn't want to go anymore. Well, with my nature to please everyone, I went and the fight became forgotten about. So,we all did the camping thing: went for a hike and cooked and set up tents etc...

A week before, we had come to obtain a ouija board. (It's every bit as creepy and unsettling as it seems). So we already had the fire built and everyone was getting bored, so we decided to play. It took awhile for the triangle to get moving, but once it did, it really moved. So we asked every question imaginable until our friends got bored and skeptical. Zack and I were the only ones left and we asked more in-depth questions than we probably should have. We were really creeped out and decided to ask "is there anything else you want to tell us" and the ouija board proceeded to spell P-R-A-Y.
I am not a religious person. I was raised Catholic, but I have too many questions and not enough answers to fully believe. So when the ouija board told us to pray, we immediately packed it up and went to sleep, trying to hide how creeped out we really were. The next moring, everyone was already awake before me. No surprise there. I hadn't slept well because my phone kept beeping, alerting me to missed calls and a voicemail. So I looked at my phone, already anxious (my phone always does this to me; my thought is no news is good news), and noticed my Dad had called twice at 5:30 in the morning and I had a voicemail. I started to panic. When I listened to the voicemail, expecting my Dad's voice, I heard an unfamiliar women stating that she was from St. Mary's hospital and that my Dad was there.

Well if the Ouija board's message wasn't clear before, it definitely was now. St. Mary's was the name of the church I went to growing up, coincidence? After much crying, I finally calmed down and called the number the nurse had given me. I got transferred and put on hold for five minutes, and finally when I was about to scream at the next person that they transfered me to, I heard my Dad. He sounded groggy and far away, but it was him.

I only talked to him for a few minutes. He told me he felt like he'd had another stroke, but he was feeling better than he had earlier in the morning and was waiting for them to do tests. We hung up and I told him I would be there soon. Well, we were four hours away from home, and I had to ruin everyone's time by leaving right away. Everyone understood and packed up faster than I thought was possible. After much convincing, our friend let us take his truck, and we were off.

It was a very long ride, but it always is when you are trying to get somewhere fast. I had talked to my brother and sister and they were on their way too. No one had called my Mom; she was in Springfield for work. But somehow she found out and was on her way too. This wasn't the type of family reunion I had hoped for, but at least we were all going to be together.

When everyone was at my Dad's house, we all rode together to the hospital. It was pretty emotional to see my Dad laying in the hospital bed. I held it together for most of the visit, until we were getting ready to leave and my Mom stayed and talked with my Dad. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I could hear that they were crying. Could this be what I had hoped for? That it took something like this to bring them back together? In the end, it didn't.

While my Dad was in the hospital, Zack and I stayed at his house for the weekend to see him and take care of Brando, his dog. During one of our visits my Dad told me he had had Chinese food before his "episode" and we could have the leftovers if we wanted. So we did, when we got back that night. I found an extra fortune cookie, and inside it said, "A special visitor will soon make things easier." I didn't think much of it and pushed the tiny piece of paper in my pocket. Eventually Monday came, and we had to be back in Macomb for classes.

The week progressed as normal as possible, until Thursday. The stress of classes and worrying about my Dad finally took its toll, and I was about to explode. Since Zack is usually the closest person to my, guess where I displaced my stress? Now, I can't think of what caused the fight, but whatever it was made me want to run away. It wasn't the fight with Zack, or classes, or worrying about my Dad, but everything at once was too much for me to handle.

I got into the truck and started driving. I didn't care that we were in the middle of a massive storm. It only fueled my mood. I had only made it half a mile out of town when I saw something running next to my truck. I slowed down to get a better look and I thought it was a fox or coyote. Then, whatever it was decided to sit in the middle of my lane. I slowed down just in time and pulled over to the left side of the two-lane highway. Finally I could see it was a dog and it started running down the other side of the road. So, I got out and whistled for the dog to come to me, just so it would avoid getting hit by other cars. The dog came running right to me, and without even thinking I opened the truck door and picked up the big, soaking wet dog. I sat there for a few minutes, letting the moment fully sink in. What had I just done? This huge dog was looking at me with the sweetest face I'd ever seen, and in that moment I knew I would do anything to keep this dog safe.

Since, I was parked on the wrong side of the road a cop pulled behind me and asked if everything was ok. I said I was fine, and that I almost hit the dog in my backseat, and that I was going to take him back to the shelter that was only a couple hundred yards away. The cop wished me luck and went back on his way. But I knew I couldn't put the dog in one of those outside cages, because that's where he'd probably just escaped from. So I called Zack. I had no idea what else to do, and whatever I was angry about before didn't matter, I just wanted to show him my amazing discovery.

Zack was just a hooked as I was the moment he saw him. So we drove to Wal-Mart and got some food, a leash and a new collar. The one he had on had three pieces of rope wraped aound it and it looked like he'd broken free each time. So we called the same friend who had let us borrow his truck to go see my Dad and asked if we could stop by his apartment because he was the only person we knew that lived off campus. He wasn't allowed to have any pet in his apartment, let alone the building, but there was a covered porch where we could keep him dry for a little while until we came up with another plan.

The dog seemed so happy to have people petting, and loving him. I wanted to call him something, so we started throwing names around. He didn't respond to any of them. So we gave up for awhile. The storm was getting worse and there was a huge boom of thunder. It startled me and I turned to Zack and exclaimed, "Did you hear that thunder!?" Out of everything we had said in front of the dog, it was the first time he responded. He perked up every time we said thunder, and just got more and more excited. So it stuck.

It was time to start thinking of a new plan, because it was getting pretty late and the storm wasn't stopping. So we got back in the truck and headed back to the dorms. I was going to sleep in the truck all night if that's what I had to do. But Zack had the idea of getting a cart from the front desk, putting him in there and sneaking him in the building. Well, that didn't work. He hoped out as soon as he was in there. So the next plan was to go around and try and find a side door and staircase, and walk him up fourteen flights of stairs. And that's exactly what we did.

He layed down all night and never made a sound. I woke up the next morning so excited, but I knew we had to make the journey back down all the stairs and make it out of the building with no one seeing us. Surprisingly we made it. We walked Thunder around campus for an hour trying to decide what we were going to do. We were already in love with him in the short time we'd spent together, and didn't want some family to really be missing him. So we took him to the shelter. I cried my eyes out the entire time and made sure that the people who worked there had all our information and if no one claimed him in the allotted time that we wanted to keep him. We would figure out the rest later.

We visited him everyday for a week, taking him for walks and playing with him. We were fully attached, and knew it wasn't going to be the two of us anymore. Finally the day came. No one had claimed him, let alone made any calls about him. Seventy-five dollars later he was mine.