The moment my life changed was the moment she started banging on the bathroom door.
I’d been inside for half an hour, but so what. I was sick, and on the phone. With my doctor.
“One second”, I yelled.
“sdfs DHAM DHAM DHAM dfsd”.
“Can’t hear you…ONE SECOND!”
“adsdfs DHAM DHAM DHAM DHAM dsdffd”
I cut the call and came out. “What is it?”
A man on a scooter had rung the bell of every house on the road, and finally landed at our doorstep. He had told Tara the basics: a fall, an injury, an ambulance. And then, without saying anymore, he insisted she call for me – her husband, the man, the friend.
In that moment when she was trying to break down the bathroom door, I had no premonition or sixth sense about any of it. It was only later, when I replayed the precise beats of the morning – in the days, the weeks, the months, the years…that follow – that I would notice just how ominous the banging was.
Tara always knocked.
Having lived long enough with a man who had a digestive illness, she never caused alarm. Her knocks were a considerate tapping that said, “how much longer, darling?”, “you okay?”, “uhh… I also need to go but no rush”.
That one, though – the DHAM DHAM DHAM DHAM DHAM – that one said, “Come Out”. “Come Out Now”. “You Need To Come Out Now.”
I ran down to the gate in my boxers without brushing my teeth. The man on the scooter was waiting.
“Uhh..tall boy, curly hair, white shirt, red shoes, gone running… your friend?”
“Yes, my friend.”
“Something has happened…they’ve taken in ambulance. You go.”
“Okay”, I said, but stood there. I knew there was more. This much he had said even to Tara. And she had said to me.
What followed was a moment of grave silence in a morning taken over by adrenaline. And then, “Go fast. Uhh… He…he may be… may be gone.”
Did he think a woman was too weak to handle that last bit? Or could he simply tell that I, was next of kin.
I got to the hospital twenty minutes later and identified his body. Tall boy. Curly hair. White shirt. Red shoes.
Yes…my friend.
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