Always on Your Side (NaNoWriMo 2019)

8.

"9-1-1, can I have your address please?"

"Please; my brother might be dead, you need to send someone right - "

"I need your address please."

"I'm at home - "

"Ma'am, I need your address."

"Siri, where am I!?" Marina's urgent voice cuts in, and Siri on Marina's phone blurts out my address, the address I didn't realize I had forgotten. I don't realize it when Marina tries to pry my phone out of my fingers, I stare at her dumbly when she takes it from me and shouts my address into it. I am useless, I realize. I can't remember my address, I can't save Brendon, I can't look -

A second of static comes before the 9-1-1 operator's next words: "Thank you, ma'am. What's your emergency?"

"Suicide."

The static goes quiet for a second.

"Hello?" Marina pleads

"All right ma'am, are you in need of medical attention?"

"Yes - maybe - no, not me, the boy, my friend's brother - I don't know if he's still alive." Panic settles into her voice.

"All right, ma'am, we have the police and an ambulance en route. Can you tell me what you saw?"

"We didn't see, we heard - heard this bang, and it wasn't normal; it was way too loud. So we went to ask him, the boy, if he heard it too, and - he was in his room - in a plastic bag. And there was a paper on the bag, and it said, 'Don't look, call the police, I'm sorry – '"

Ignore the paper, I urge myself. Look inside. He could still be alive. You could still save him.

But I can't do it. I can't say this, I can't do this, I can't move my hands, not even to let go of the TV remote which had been in my hands as I heard the gunshot. Can't remember my address.

I'm helpless.