Dorothy had just bought a brand new house and was ready for a new beginning. The ambience and sophistication in this neighborhood made her feel very grateful having grown up in turbulent neighborhood as a teenager. The future seemed bright but their were no celebration nor a single soul to welcome her in this part of town. Everybody seemed busy minding her own business and nobody seemed to care. It seemed as if everybody avoided her residence like a ghost house.
Time has audacity to heal and reconcile but as days turned into weeks and months, nobody had said a single word to her. Lonely and alone, her health started to deteriorate. Every time she got home from a busy schedule at work, she experienced shortness of breath.
Prescribed medicine did not solve any of her ailment because she started feeling fatigue and wheezing. At this point she had no other option than go to the hospital.
After a week in the hospital she felt better as a fiddle. Hospital beds are boring and she did not waste any time to get back to her house. Her struggle with poor health usually begun at the threshold of her house again. She started feeling weak, out of breath and wheezing again and she a sequence of visit to the hospital and back to her house again.
Curious neighbors started noticing what they feared was happening
One evening her tub clogged when she was taking a shower. Feeling weak and tired, a plumber was a welcome respite.
I got a call from the dispatcher and I informed her that I will head towards her direction after lunch. As soon as I finished my lunch I dialed Dorothy and informed her that I was thirty minutes away from her house.
BRIDGIT THE KAREN
As soon as I arrived at her residence, she welcomed me and walked me to the bathtub. She explained her situation and excused herself to go and get a bed rest. I immediately knew the correct tools for this job. I told her not to lock the door because as I will be making several trips to grab my tools and equipment. As I got started and walked outside. I met this lady I learned her name was Bridget. She was waiting calmly besides my truck.
“This house needs cleansing more than a plumber.” she said while I nodded with a smile thinking it was just a joke. She wasn’t joking. Dorothy saw Bridgit from her window and wondered if she was bothering me. She walked out to try and talk to her. I took my tools and decided to get started while the ladies had a brief conversation.
I pulled out the toilet ready to carry out video inspection. I ran the video until images started to get blurry because of the sludge. While I was doing this I heard Dorothy walk inside her house furious and hysterical. she banged the door and let out a cry.
“That lady is a terrible human being!” She opined firmly. I looked around hoping she was talking to somebody else but we were just the two of us.
‘I am a plumber not a therapist.’ I thought.
“Can it wait I finish what I am doing, save the story for later because I am busy.”
“I am going to do a little bit of digging into this lady and you can proceed.” She said.
‘I am also doing a little digging to find out what is going on with your pipes.’ I thought as I walked out side to find the crawl space entering. I removed the opening of the crawl space. Akin to military ‘leopard crawl’ armed with arsenal, I crawled with my light observing the pipes until I came across an obnoxious and grotesque sight and decided not to pursue further.
Her pipe pipes were really old built in the fifties and sixties. They were insulated with asbestos and this was hazardous. I could not do anything because I feared for my health and I had no protective clothing because asbestos causes mesothelioma which can cause cancer of the larynx, ovary or lung. I had to replace all the pipes with abs pipes and copper.
I walked back explain the situation and gave her estimate for doing the plumbing again. She looked at me amazing and gave me a hug believing that is the reason she had been getting sick all the time. As I was writing the estimate I asked her what the reason she hated Bridgit?
It turns out Bridgit was in the committee of home owners association. She wanted to be the mayor in the coming election because she has been in this town long enough. She claim to know every detail of the city planners. She claimed to know how, when and where each road got its name from. She wanted that when the history of this pristine city is written her name is recognized as one of the heroins. She claimed to have been in almost each adult lives by being in their birthdays, adolescent, puberty, marriage and at some point burial.
She had started an online conversation claiming that a lot of death had taken place in Dorothys house because she knew the previous owner, the person who lived their before and before and they all had died. She had also tweeted with suitable gusto that Dorothy would die because her house is haunted and jinxed causing mixed reaction. Her first priority if elected mayor was to demolish the house since it had bad memories. She brought attention and fear in equal measure.
Dorothy moved out to the nearest hotel as she tried to find finance to remodel and replace her plumbing issue. Her health improved drastically as she started educating the city about hate crime. In return people apologized and embraced her.
Bridgit the lady that begun this conversation, the lady that desperately wanted to eliminate and get rid of Dorothy’s house now desperately established a Go fund me convincing people to help pay for her remodeling. She showed no iota of remorse or regret as she smiled all the way to the bank