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WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR Cell Phone Battery is Low and You Can’t Charge
If you’re trying to talk in a place where the phone has to roam to stay connected, the battery gets used up faster, even if you had it well charged before accepting a call. One way to save battery power is to turn off any unnecessary features (especially avoid using the camera) and your phone’s back light feature. Also, vibrate uses more power than a ringtone—but do keep the ringtone at the lowest possible volume for you to hear it. Turn your phone off, but only if you’re going to leave it off for several hours, as turning it on and off to check for new messages actually uses up your battery faster. Some phones have a low usage feature to save power but it won’t kick on for at least thirty minutes. If you can’t get a signal where you are, turn the phone onto airplane mode. Turn down the screen brightness, turn off GPS if you can, don’t surf the web, and of course make shorter calls.
* * *
“LIEUTENANT JOHNSON, can you hear me? My battery is about to die,” Kate said, then immediately regretted using the last word. They had been hiding more than half an hour already, and during the last ten minutes, the lieutenant hadn’t come on the line at all. However, the chatter she heard in the background sounded like the police might be closing in.
Just when the three of them decided she needed to hang up and call back to leave a message while she still could, they heard a cheer go up in the background, and the lieutenant picked up the phone again, “Mrs. McKenzie, it’s safe for all of you to return to the Tillman farm. The fugitive has been apprehended.”
“Will I get my van back? He took off in it remember. We have no way to get home.”
“Uh...” Johnson covered the speaker. When he returned, he said, “I’ll see about getting an officer out there to get you to get to a rental car agency. Your van will need to be serviced before it can be driven again.”
Kate didn’t know what scared her more, the fact that he hadn’t said if the van had any body damage, or how big the bill would be since he’d focused only on it needing service. She hoped she didn’t have a new engine or transmission in her future. “Thank you, Lieutenant Johnson.”
The hike back felt longer, but Liz said it was because they’d used up all their adrenalin. She offered to let them borrow her truck, but Kate knew they’d just be driving it back in the morning and she’d have to rent something then. “You need your pickup. I’ll see what my options are tomorrow about the van.”
When the patrol car arrived at the farm, the officer did have both of their purses with him, and the organizers eventually headed for home in a rental Camry a few years newer than Meg’s. When Kate tried again to get information on her van, the officer looked away and said, “I’m no expert about vehicles. Do you have insurance?”
Kate sighed.
“I’d been looking at new models,” Meg said as they eventually drove away in the smooth riding Toyota. “But this wasn’t the way I wanted to do a test drive.”
“I’ll second that opinion.”
“What are you going to do about your van?” Meg asked.
Kate set the cruise control and leaned back in the seat, fatigue hitting her big time. “Have Keith follow us tomorrow in the Jeep. Then while we do any last minute additions to the shoot list, he can get some brave officer to give him the police report on the van so the insurance will process our claim—whatever it is—and when we’re ready to go home we can turn in this rental car and Keith can chauffeur us in the Jeep.”
“Delegate. I like that idea,” Meg said.
“Me too. Not sure how well Keith will though.”
Gil was home when they hit the cul de sac. Meg had left her cell phone off since she’d forgotten to charge it last night, and with Kate’s completely dead, her low battery was all they had if any new trouble came their way. He’d heard about the manhunt at the paper, and hurried home when he couldn’t raise his wife on her phone. Keith finally called the lieutenant and learned the wives were fine, just shaken up and having to come home in alternate wheels.
“Next time you call me when you’re in the middle of a situation like that,” Keith said, nearly ripping Kate’s arm off as he pulled her out of the car to hug her.
Gil was more restrained, but the worry showed on his face. Meg held his free hand with both of hers, while his left stayed around her shoulders as both couples sat on the sofas in the Berman family room and covered all the parts of the stories that hadn’t hit the wire services. As the story ended, Kate realized she didn’t hear the kids upstairs in the game room.
“Where’s Sam and Suze?”
“I hired Tiffany to take all of the kids for ice cream so they couldn’t see how stressed out their fathers were when their mothers were incommunicado,” Keith said. “She’s keeping them busy at the park until six.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kate said, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Once we knew Josh was captured and we could leave, coming home was all we really thought about. And with my phone dead, and our concerns about Meg’s battery not making much of a call if we did need it on the way home, we didn’t even think about borrowing a phone to call you before we left.”
“Yeah,” Meg said. “We thought we’d be home close enough to regular time and be able to breeze in and say, ‘Wow, you would not believe the day we’ve had.’ But old Breaking News Gil over here stole our thunder.”
“Right, that’s exactly what I did.” Gil frowned at Meg and pulled a twig out of her red curls. “You might want to go take a shower and wash your hair.”
Meg snorted. “See.” She waved a hand at her husband. “He’s such a romantic.”