Looking out my window

Trying to erase from my memory the sounds of today.

Filling the stairwell of my apartment building, Annie cried "DON'T DIE ON ME I NEED YOU OH NO!"

Annie's father died today.

While some of us puttered around doing nothing, thinking we were doing something, the old man on the third floor dropped dead of a heart attack.

The fire trucks and ambulances appeared outside my window. The firefighters and medics filed in to the building. I opened the front door of my apartment to see a grim parade of uniformed young men headed upstairs.

Annie yelled "YOU CAN'T BE DEAD IS HE DEAD?"

The medics, perfunctoraly, assured her "We're working on him."

10 minutes later I looked out the window again and saw Annie standing in front of the building, her face raped by tears, joking about her (and her dad's) illegally parked car. "Look at that! Our car is there! Haha!"

The body lies where it expired until a detective arrives to investigate and rule out foul play. Natural deaths receive lowest priority over murders and drug-related circumstances. Sometimes the family stares at the corpse until blood and pus burst from their father's eyes. Police assistants clean the blood from the body's face so the daughter or son can give their father or mother a good-bye kiss.

The old man's body could be lying there now, exploding, 10 hours on, and Annie could be forced to sit there with him.

She is with family somewhere else.

I looked out the window expecting to see the body hauled to the ambulance.

I saw youngsters walking past, gossiping, as the empty ambulances disappeared.