Gone Baby Gone

"I have to poop."

From my sister's face, it looks fairly urgent. We're strolling around Perissa popping in and out of shops. There are definitely no bathrooms around. Also, in Greece, the public WCs sometimes lack western toilets...meaning she was going to have to poop over a hole if she was even able to find a public toilet.

I feel for her. You know, sometimes you just want to poop on a regular toilet in the privacy of your hotel room. "We're pretty close to the hotel. You can just go back to the room, we shouldn't be long." I hand her the key.

"Where is it?" She asks. I tell her "just go out the door and take a right. It is right on the road, maybe half a mile back." My mother and sister generally never remember the name of the hotels we are staying in, the road we are on, or the sites we are seeing. They're just along for the fun ride. I'm responsible for literally every single step that we take. Nicole's young so she doesn't really have a developed sense of direction. My mom really has no excuses, she has the worst sense of direction I have ever encountered. If I lost my mom and we didn't have phones, I'm certain that I would never see her again.

Nicole quickly takes the key and leaves promptly. There's a real sense of urgency in her steps. Mom and I stayed in the store for about another 15 minutes, then leave. I walk to the door and take a left to head back to the hotel.

A LEFT!!!

I guess I got turned around in the store and lost my perspective on the directions. When I walked out the door I knew instinctively that the hotel was to the left.

15 minutes!! Oh my god, she doesn't have a phone, she doesn't know the hotel name, she's just going to keep going right until she walks off the cliffs of Oia.

I'm never going to see my sister again and the last conversation we had was about poop!

I stop and my mom sees something is wrong. "I sent her in the wrong direction." My mom knows what this means because she immediately understands what would happen to her if I sent her in the wrong direction - She'd never be seen again.

I'm actually really worried. Like really really. I know it seems simple. That she will probably turn around when she realizes she is heading in the wrong direction but how can I know that for sure! How am I going to track her down? Maybe she turned around, maybe she didn't. I send my mom in the direction of our hotel so that she can be there if Nicole returns. I start running in the direction I sent Nicole.

After a little bit I find her, crying in the arms of an older Australian couple. They're happy to see me. They explain how they planned to track me down. My sister cries and tells me that she first tried getting help from a German couple but they didn't understand anything she was saying. She tried telling them about how she needed to poop, how she was lost, how it was my fault. I can only imagine how this must have sounded from the perspective of the German couple. That's where the Australians came in. The Germans tried to help Nicole, but ended up handing her off to the first English speaking couple they could find.

I thank everyone for helping me find my sister. I would have felt awful if I had lost her. I mean that's a pretty big thing to lose.

As we're walking back, I realize she doesn't look like she has to go to the bathroom. I asked her if she found one.

"I was so scared, I stopped having to go."