Somebody Is Someone, So Say We All
Once upon a time I walked out the front door for a walk around town. Ten steps down the street I tucked the iPod away in my jacket pocket. It was too nice of a February day not to listen to the breeze. Music could wait for another time on another day.
In upstate New York, the shortest month of February seems endless because it’s usually so cold and grey. This February has been quite different as it feels like spring. I’ve been calling this spring-like weather in winter, sprinter. Though sprinter is a bit alarming, I have selfishly enjoyed the mild weather.
The walk I took was part of a de-frak-ing process. I had just crushed two seasons of Battlestar Galactica. The two-season-in-one-week-frak-athon was made possible by a generous grant from the New York State department of labor, Netflix instant and a viewer like me. In the show there are just under fifty thousand human beings left. The humans float around in space battling machines they had created called Cylons. In between battling Cylons, the humans are attempting to locate a new planet to colonize as warfare had made their home planet uninhabitable. Needless to say, this ‘futuristic’ show speaks of, and to, conditions we find ourselves in right now: man versus machine, survival of the human species in a nuclear age, a collective existential struggle to find meaning and purpose as emergent systems dissolve old paradigms. These are some of the very topics I ponder for ten hours a day when working outside. For me, it’s easier to joust the mysteries while being outdoors than it is during an indoor Battlestar binge.
I love being outdoors. I can’t wait to get back to work. And even though spring has sprung, I must patiently wait for the now arbitrary official date of spring to arrive so I can be rehired to work that landscape job again. The clarity I find while working outside is unparalleled, the peace I experience so hard to interr—
“Somebody help,” someone yelled, five minutes into my walk.
I stopped in my tracks. The shout had come from behind me. I thought, what the hell was that? Probably just some kids horsing around. But what if it’s not? I better go see.
I turned around and backtracked towards the voice, peering over hedges and into front yards. I finally spotted somebody a few houses down, an old black lady dressed in Sunday’s best on a Monday. She flailed an arm, waving me over, as she spoke frantically to a 911 operator on the phone she held.
“It’s my husband,” she said to me.
She sped walked towards her house, leading me to the front door that was swung wide open. I followed her inside. A minute earlier I was taking a walk, de-frak-ing. A minute later I found myself in a stranger’s living room, wondering what the frak was happening. The old lady was in tears, staring at her non-responsive husband on the couch while trying to field questions being asked by the 911 operator.
“He’s my husband,” she said to the operator. “He’s 72. Somebody please come.”
She rambled a bit into the phone trying to make sense of the situation. But there was no making sense of it, not there, not in that moment, not as she watched on helplessly. Her husband was limp on the couch, his head keeling back, mouth salivating, unable to respond to anything anyone was saying.
“There’s spit coming from his mouth. I think he coughed some blood,” the lady said into the phone.
I looked at her husband. Though his eyes were open, he looked checked out. The driver was no longer behind the wheel. Sitting across from the husband was another guy, sitting on another couch. That guy looked paralyzed in his own sort of way, scared, shocked and unsure, as was I, of what it was we were witnessing.
“There’s a fire house right down the street. Should I run down… see if there’s an ambulance there?” I asked the shocked guy.
“I don’t know… She’s on the phone with 911… I don’t know,” was all he could muster.
I headed towards the door, telling the lady I was going to check the firehouse for an ambulance. I jetted outside and sprinted down the road. I ran up to the firehouse and rang the doorbell. I waited a second or two. No one answered. I flung the door open.
“Hello hello,” I yelled. “Hello hello,” I repeated.
My hellos echoed off the walls. No response. Suddenly, emergency alarm tones sounded off. A dispatcher came over the loudspeakers and broadcasted in the empty firehouse the emergency call for the house I had just ran from. Time to run back.
While running back I thought, I don’t know what the hell I should do. What the hell could I do? Maybe I could wave the emergency vehicles down when they come into view so they don’t blow past the house? I just don’t know…
On my way back, I heard sirens. I arrived just as a fire truck did. The firemen entered the house. An ambulance showed up seconds later. The paramedics scurried into the house toting bags of medical gear. I walked up the steps, onto the porch and peered inside the living room. Should I be here anymore? I don’t want to be in the way. I don’t want this lady to be scared. I don’t want this man to die. I don’t want to leave without saying “good-bye.”
As I stood on the porch, the medics talked to the husband on the couch. He didn’t respond verbally. From where I was standing, I couldn’t tell if the husband had given any response, any physical signs of hope. The nice old lady saw me. She came outside for a second.
“Thanks for all your help… Please come back some time… Knock on the door… To see what happened,” she said, her eyes filled with tears.
“Okay, I will…”
I wanted to hug her, but didn’t. I walked down the porch steps, across the yard and back to the sidewalk. Back to my walk. Back to de-frak. I thought about how gracious that lady was for thanking me.
We walk around and pass people. We drive around and pass houses. We throw up walls, physical and psychological. We differentiate some times, tricking ourselves into thinking we do not have much in common with the people we cross paths with. But when we realize the bodies we inhabit are mortal, that their time here is finite, then front doors get flung open, strangers become fellow human beings and all of those somebodies become a someONE.
As of right now, I have no idea if that 72-year-old man is alive. But I do know that I’m glad my eardrums weren’t distracted by earbuds. I’m not a hero. I didn’t save a man’s life. I didn’t do much of anything. But maybe I was able to help in some way, to help this nice old lady, if only for a second, not feel alone, not give up hope, by simply being there for a moment.
I’ll ring the doorbell some day. Hopefully the nice old lady will open the door and her husband will be sitting on the couch. He’ll turn to see me. We’ll all smile and laugh about that strange sprinter day when we met under such strange circumstances. Yes, hopefully we’ll rejoice that he got a second chance--to live happily ever after.
