Another day....... concluded

 He's driving west headed back to town and back to his world. Eight hours on the mountain was all he could spare on such short notice. The search, for him, was tedious and fruitless, as it usually is.
 He tried to enjoy the rare opportunity to be out in the daylight on a perfect, clear, crisp, sunny, Fall day. Just as he began to enjoy some success in his daydream, the cell phone rang. He pulled it off his belt, saw the name on the screen and slid off the road onto the shoulder. He tapped the 'answer' button on the phone and said "Hi Chief! What's up?" The voice on the other end was concise: "We found him, he was mostly naked, cold, and fairly stiff. He almost made it back home and he was found in an area that was searched yesterday. Probably got back there last night. Just thought you'd want to know. Thanks for you help today." He frowned, "Thanks for the call Chief, tell the crew to be careful coming off the mountain, it's pretty steep up there. I'll see you tonight. Thanks for the call."
 He hung up and pulled back on the road with his thoughts. He passed through town and pulled into his fire station and went in to quickly change into his 'business casual' clothing. He didn't want anyone at the job to suspect that his time off for 'personal business' was spent in the woods. He jumped back in the truck and headed into his paying job to try and be on time for his meeting and the phone conferences that were scheduled for the afternoon. For him, the only difficulty in making the transition was avoiding the casual conversations going on everywhere about the lost person and all the resources that were coming into the county from all over the state to join the search.
 He always found the transition from emergency scene to conference room a difficult one. Today was just another one of those days.
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