Alone on the Sidewalk

It was a little after 10 pm and I found myself alone on the sidewalk staring at my neighbor's house between the two ambulances, wondering if it was he, or his wife. I knew it was bad who ever it was by the way the paramedics kept running from the house to grab more equipment from the trucks then dashing back into the house.

We've had our share of incidents on the street and I've never seen these guys run like this. Five..., six...., seven trips so far, for more bags and boxes of equipment and medications not counting the trips they made while I was still in my house looking out the window.

My wife and I were watching television when the red and blue lights began flashing off the wall in front of us. Our couch backs up to the big picture window because it's the only wall long enough to fit it. We peeked out to see an ambulance unloading a stretcher. Waiting to see who would be brought out, ten to fifteen minutes passed, watching as they hurried back and forth several times between the house and the truck.

We met Rick and Mandy shortly after moving in to this house. I wouldn't say we're great friends but we're good neighbors. We help each other out, watch out for each other and each others stuff. Actually, Rick does most of the helping.

In the winter when it snows, Rick snow blows four of five of our driveways including his own because he likes it. I've told him he doesn't need to do ours but he continues on.

When I was transforming my front yard into a garden, Rick came over and offered some of the plants from his yard if I dug them up, I said deal! He showed which ones I could have and suggested how much soil to take with it. He said I could take the purple one if I wanted but they almost never transplant well. You have to water them a lot and they still may not make it. I took two of them and watered them and they did survive. Now they've multiplied.

Mandy and I over they last two years have contemplated the drug house next to her, across from me. We've met in my front yard to discuss it, we've met in her front yard to discuss it. The loud music, the fights, the constant flow of cars in and out. We laughed about it at times and ultimately did nothing but complain to each other about it.

Another tank of oxygen...the cold from the concrete seeping through the souls of my shoes, I stood watching the side door of Rick and Mandy's house for twenty minutes or more, still no sign of who was in distress. My dogs would bark through the window every so often, at me, or the paramedics when they come out of house.

More minutes passed, fifteen probably. I paced back and forth trying to decide if I should go over and see if everything was okay when one of the paramedics stepped out of the propped open side door of Rick's house holding his cell phone. He wandered around the grass on edge of the drive away from the door for about ten minutes talking intently to someone on the other end of the phone.

It was then I got a bad feeling and went back in my house to talk to my wife to tell her what I saw and warm up a little. Minutes later we heard a door close outside and looked to see them loading someone into the ambulance. I went back out and waited until they cleared most of their equipment from the side of house by the door before heading across the street to see what happened.

I crossed the street slowly and glanced quickly into the vehicle to see Mandy's pale legs on the stretcher and continued toward the side door but waited on the grass out of the way while the paramedics continued to pack up their equipment. After a few moments Rick stepped outside looking dazed.

"Oh, hi Mark."
"Hey, Rick. What happened?" I asked.
"My wife...I don't think she's going to make....."

I won't tell you everything that he told me because it was bad, really bad, but it also made realize that I hadn't been over to see either of them in a while. He told me Mandy had been previously diagnosed with cancer and gone through treatment and it had come back in June in her throat and spread to pulmonary artery. She started coughing, then she couldn't breath and then the bleeding started. Mandy died a little after 11 pm Sunday, December 7th, 2014.

I'm going to miss yelling, "Hey neighbor!" to Mandy and hearing her yelling it back at me, because that was our thing.

(Rick & Mandy are not their real names)