Want It Back

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Chapter 3

Tom scrabbled to grab the phone as it bounced down several steps. His first reaction was to go check whether the woman was alive, but if so he also knew time might of the essence. As he picked up the phone in one hand, with the other he was unclipping the hand mike on his shoulder attached to the portable radio on his belt.

“Base, this is unit 4! I’m on site. There’s an unconscious and bleeding female just inside the doors – looks like she fell. Contact local emergency services stat and tell them they’ll need a spine board and head immobilizer!”

Marty replied, sounding shaken but remembering to keep it official since this was being recorded at his end and would undoubtedly be turned over to local police for their later investigation:

“Base to 4: I’m sending an alert message to Malden 911 now. Is the girl alive? Are you alone except for her?”

“4 to base: unknown to both questions. The building lights are out and the alarm is still on. I locked the outside door behind me so I’m going back down to unlock it for the emergency crew.”

“Base to 4: stay outside at the bottom until someone official arrives – you don’t know whether she was pushed or attacked. If she was and that person is still in the building he could attack you next trying to escape! Leave everything for the cops to check out.”

“Roger, Base,” Tom replied. But after unlocking the inner doors again plus wedging one of them open with that usually useless traffic cone he started up the stairs.

He knew that if this poor woman was even still alive he shouldn’t try to move her – the chances were quite good that the fall could have broken her neck or spine. Moving her without a back and neck brace could cause further damage and even result in total paralysis if she wasn’t already doomed to that.

But the thought of leaving someone alone while they could be dying wasn’t something he could stomach. Tom wasn’t a seriously religious sort of guy but he did believe that humans, and all beings, are more than just the sum total of a collection of physical cells, DNA, skin, blood, etc. There must be some animating factor – call it spirit, or soul, or whatever – that is present when we call something “alive” and absent when the shell it once inhabited and animated dies.

When he was 10 he had sat in the bedroom with his grandmother Yezti as she was slowly dying. At first he thought it was pretty weird when his mother told him to go in and keep her company:

“But why, Ma? She hasn’t spoken to anyone or eaten in days – she could be dead already! That’s creepy!”

“Thomas Andrew, you WILL go into that room. You will sit quietly and keep Grammy Yetzi company. She has not yet left, but if you are very fortunate you may witness her going. Before that happens, though, she may have something to tell you.”

“How can she tell me anything? She’s not even awake!”

“Thomas Andrew, people communicate with many more methods than just words spoken out loud. And even if you learn nothing from her in her last hours, know that you give her a great gift by giving her your attention as her spirit moves on.”

Tom had never quite understood what his mother thought his grandmother might have given him, but as he sat in that room with the old woman he came to realize that she was there even though he couldn’t talk to her in words. And when the next morning he was awakened by his younger sister telling him “Grammy’s gone” he remembered a bit of an odd dream: a young girl, who nevertheless was his grandmother, rode an old fashioned bicycle down the road ringing a bell on the handlebars and waving to him cheerfully as she passed by and disappeared into the distance.

With those thoughts of his grandmother in the back of his mind, Tom sat on the stairs next to the motionless body and shined the light from his phone on her. He could see that the blood was from a shallow gash on the back of her head – thus it wasn’t something he needed to attempt to staunch. It wasn’t in itself life-threatening, just messy as it dripped into her mop of brown hair. It looked like she had fallen backwards and head first down the stairs, striking the back of her head as she landed and then sliding a bit further down before coming to a halt. He thought he could see some chest movement indicating she was breathing – and he didn’t “feel” like the body was empty.

As of yet Tom had not heard any sound of sirens heralding the imminent arrival of police, fire or other emergency services. But given that it was the middle of the night they were probably running silently through the empty streets unless they encountered traffic en route. It felt like such a long time had passed since he had called in the situation to the dispatcher – in actuality it was probably only a minute or less since he got off the radio.

“Hey, there,” he said softly to the unconscious woman, “Just hang on – an ambulance should be here any minute now.”

He cursed himself for leaving the first aid kit with its protective gloves in the Civic’s trunk. Though how was he to know he’d want them? “But it should be okay,” he thought as he reached out to touch the woman’s limp hand for reassurance, “I’m not coming into contact with any bodily fluids…”