I work with people who suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome. This short story tells of an experience that a friend of mine had. He has seen much tragedy. Let's visit a bit of his misery.
Edward walked up steep stairs that bowed in the middle as he made his way to the door on the third floor of a building that needed to be condemned. He knocked. No one answered. Then he pounded, still no one answered. He looked around hoping to spot a curious neighbor, when he heard voices on a television from within the apartment. Edward turned the door knob and the door opened away from him. He called out several times then moved cautiously inside. As Edward walked into the apartment, he saw trash on the floor, flies buzzing around the kitchen sink and the smell of spoiled food assaulted his nose. Grimy yellow paint peeled off the walls. An old woman using the wall for walking support slowly moved towards him tracing a dirty palm-print path waist-high along the wall.
“Hello, maam, I am Officer Martin. I came by to check on you. There was a 911 call that said that someone was climbing out of a window from this apartment this morning.”
The blind, elderly, homebound woman maneuvered around a straight back chair and gestured for him to sit down. Edward sat down at the rickety kitchen table and watched the unkempt woman seat herself. At first, Sadie Moore did not trust the strong voice coming to her from across the table. A lot of characters – nurses, doctors, cleaning people – came in and out of her life and some of them were not who they said they were. She wasn’t quite ready to talk with this new guy.
“Did you say you are from the police?” She reached out and touched Edward’s uniform sleeve and felt the patches sewn there.
“Yes, maam”, Edward answered, not moving away from the wandering hand. Hesitantly, Mrs. Moore nodded her head; then, said “there are peoples selling crack around here and they steal from us helpless people to pay for the stuff. My neighbors steal my money. They take my check right out of my mail box. My key don’t even work on the box no more; the lock has been broken so many times”. She cleared her throat and continued, “No one that I know of visited me for days and if someone was seen leaving my apartment through the window, it would have to be a criminal”.
Officer Edward Martin sat across from the sad lady trying to understand what her everyday existence must be like. He made a mental note to call social services and ask them to send out a social worker. The old lady jumped when Edward’s radio crackled loudly and a hoarse female voice entered the room.
“Office Martin, there is a report of an injured child in the alley outside the Allison Building, can you respond?” Edward replied, “I am on my way.” He looked at the old lady; paused before leaving and said, “I got to go. I’ll call social services and have someone stop in to see you soon. Maybe they can help you get a better place to live”.
The old lady reached out, caught his hand and said,” I hope they can do something before I am called home to heaven”. Edward squeezed her hand slightly then hurried out of her apartment.
Nikko Gomez was four years old. He lay among the squalor in the alley surrounded by a pool of his blood. Nikko fell seventy feet onto the asphalt in an alleyway. His skull shattered like a melon. Minutes earlier, his mother had told her live-in boyfriend to get out, that she never wanted to see his face again. The boyfriend screamed that he’d give her something to remember him by. He ran into Nikko room, picked up the sleeping child, and hurled him through the window.
Edward stood back as a paramedic rolled the obviously dead child onto a backboard. He saw a woman leaning out a window several floors up screaming. With a side glance, Edward saw a young Dominican male running out of the back of the building. He was red-faced with anger, breathing heavily, and wiping tears with his shirt cuff. He looked over to see Edward watching him. Speaking Spanish, Edward approached him and shouted, “Hola, como esta ”.
The man hesitated, looked towards the alley, as if he knew what had just happened, and sprinted off. Edward anticipated this response and was on the assailant in an instant. He tackled him, put handcuffs in place and snatched him to his feet. As the men started back to the building, a Hispanic woman came running up the street screaming, “Gorge, how could you do that? You are a monster, my baby, my innocent baby. Dios mio!.” The cuffed man began to sob and dropped to his knees. Edward hoisted him up and propelled him towards the patrol car. Who throws a child out of a window?
Edward’s head pounded. He knew that a fierce migraine was just getting started. He was glad that he was at the end of his shift. He transported the suspect to the station, completed the processing and started home. Since his return from Iraq, Edward felt haunted. He knew what being on a battlefield was like; he had been there in 1991 and had gone on multiple army special operations assignments during his sixteen years of military duty. But the Iraqi experience from 2004 to 2006 left him damaged. He was in constant pain physically and mentally.
Maybe younger men recovered better from exposure to war. Edward was 44. Understanding military politics and wartime strategies taxed him as he watched undisciplined National Guard troops be placed into positions of combat for which they were not prepared. He was frustrated when he received inadequate combat equipment, poorly made weapons and vehicles supplied by non-military personnel. He was angry that Americans were forced to fight without honor because of poorly defined purpose. Even in his quietest moment, he could not relax. He longed for peace and harmony.
Edward lingered under the shower trying to wash the events of the day down the drain. He took time to dry himself then looked hard at his face in the steam-coated mirror before he shook out tablets of Ambien time-released formula into the palm of his hand and tossed them to the back of his throat and swallowed. He walked slowly into his bedroom, turned back the covers on his bed and slid his naked body between the sheets.
