366: One Story Per Day (2024)

Day 66 - Thirty Minutes

     Sarah's pulse raced with worry as the bus rumbled down the familiar route to college, her mind whirling with terrified ideas and feverish calculations. She looked at her watch for what seemed like the umpteenth time, her heart racing as she realized how late she was running.

     Thirty minutes. That was all she had left before her first lesson of the day, and each second seemed like a knife to her already frazzled nerves. Sarah's nervousness grew with each stop the bus made, her breathing coming in quick, shallow gasps as she mentally counted the minutes passing.

     Thirty minutes may not seem like much to others, but for Sarah, it was the difference between success and failure, being on time or losing out on critical information. She knew her professor was stringent about attendance, and being late might result in losing precious participation points or, worse, being marked absent entirely.

     As the bus crept through traffic, Sarah's thoughts raced with all the things she needed to accomplish once she got to university. She mentally rehearsed the reasons she'd offer her professor—traffic was heavy, the bus was late, her alarm didn't go off—but she knew none of them would work.

     Thirty minutes. All she had to do was go to class and dash across campus to the lecture hall. Sarah refused to give up hope, even when the mission appeared to be insurmountable. She tightened her hands, determined to make the bus go quicker, to defy the laws of physics and get her to her destination in record time.

     But as the minutes passed and the bus moved slowly, Sarah's hopes faded. With each passing instant, the weight of her tardiness pushed down on her shoulders, threatening to break her spirit and disrupt her well-set plans.

     Thirty minutes. It was sliding away from her, passing through her fingers like grains of sand, and there was nothing she could do about it. She closed her eyes against the avalanche of terror that threatened to swallow her, taking deep breaths in an unsuccessful attempt to calm her racing heart.

     Even as she attempted to calm the building tide of worry, Sarah couldn't escape the nagging feeling of dread that had crept into the pit of her stomach. Thirty minutes may appear trivial to some, but it was everything to Sarah—a valuable thing that might make the difference between success and failure, between attaining her goals and falling short.

     And when the bus came to a stop outside the college gates, Sarah realized her fight against time was far from ending. With steely resolution, she grabbed her bag and jumped off the bus, her pulse thumping in her chest as she prepared to dash toward her destiny, determined to make every moment count without taking one last look at the time.