29
MISSING PERSON

On my first business trip, I was travelling with a much older coworker. We worked non-stop and agreed to meet in the hotel lobby on a Saturday morning to work after breakfast. He was relatively healthy but had trouble sleeping due to the jet lag. He complained about barely sleeping for the entire first week of our trip and also about tightness in his chest. I encouraged him to go to a doctor, but he said that the sleep issues and chest tightness happened to him on occasion. Since he was past retirement age and had a lot of experience,  I figured he knew his health situation best.
The next morning, I went to breakfast and sent him a message that I’d catch up with him in the lobby as I assumed he had already eaten. He was the kind of person to respond to emails within milliseconds, so I found his lack of response to be odd. I ate my breakfast in peace and quiet, then went to the lobby. I assumed his phone was dead or that he hadn’t connected to the wifi perhaps. I couldn’t find him in the lobby, so I figured that I misunderstood our meeting time and point. I checked the other lounge, breakfast tables and meeting areas in the lobby area to no avail. I went back to my room to double check if I had missed an email exchange with a new meeting time and spot. No such luck. At this point, I became worried based on his chest pain complaints the last time we spoke. It was over an hour since our agreed meeting time, so I tried calling him. His phone went straight to voicemail. I then sent an email asking him to message me when he had a chance. No response.
After another half hour, I tried phoning his room - hotel room phones have deafeningly loud ring tones - in hopes it would startle him awake or alive. No response on his room phone, and shortly thereafter, a local colleague called to ask if I had heard from our missing colleague. He too understood that we were supposed to have met in the lobby and hadn’t gotten a hold of him. We were both extremely worried and I told him to meet me in the lobby and suggested that we ask the hotel staff to check on his room. In the time that my local colleague transited to the hotel, I was fretting - what if he had died? Would I have to deal with Japanese authorities and provide a statement? Would I have to contact our company and his family? There’s not really a company protocol for missing or dead colleagues on business trips. 
As I was in the thick of my worry spiral, I received a call from my older, no-longer-missing coworker. He had taken a sleeping pill and slept for 15 hours straight, which explained the lack of responses to my various attempts at communication. What a relief. The good news is that he and I both lived to tell the tale off how I thought he died on my first business trip!