Gary Hobson was a man on a mission.  Ever since exiting the EL he had taken to running at a steady and easy gait in the direction of his last save of the day.  Turning down a lane, nothing much more than a short alley leading off of the main street, he finished the last leg of his quest at a walk. The building for which he had searched stood out clearly.  In process of being completely renovated, it was windowless and encased in TinkerToy-like scaffolding.

The workers had gone home for the day, leaving the area abandoned and silent.  Less than a standard block off the busy main street, no noise dared reach this desolate construction site.  Even the wind shooting through the open windows kept its sound down to a gentle yet incessant 'swoosh.'

Hesitating only a moment before squeezing through the gap in the chained security gate, he wandered around the structure until he found the stairway. Taking the stairs cautiously at first, he progressed upward.  The last floor required him to ascend a ladder to reach it.  At the top of the ladder, he called, "Justine!  Justine?"  Stopping only briefly to listen for some answer, he left the ladder to look for the child.

At last he received a response to his call.  A frightened voice came back in answer, "Is somebody there?"

"Justine, I'm comin', he called, hope flaming up in his heart.  'Not too late,' his mind rejoiced, 'Not too late.'

She called back, pleading, "Will you hurry?"

"Okay, hang on there, honey," he said in what he hoped was a friendly tone, "Just hang on."

The innocent and trusting voice answered, "Okay."

He headed over to the glassless window overlooking the area he had crossed when approaching the building.  On the scaffolding just outside the third floor was the little girl the paper described, "Girl, 9, Critically Injured in Fall."  As a secondary headline it read, "Schoolyard Dare Takes Tragic Turn."  This morning's edition of tomorrow's Sun-Times gave the rundown on the disaster.

Her name was Justine Pollard, age 9, her parents' only child.  Apparently she had responded to the dares of classmates.  The friends had left in a hurry when they saw that she acted on the dare, never waiting to see whether she was able to get down safely.

Now, here was little Justine, abandoned by her so-called friends, frozen in fear, clinging to the upright support on the scaffold framework.

Gary smiled out to her, hoping to provide a consoling voice, saying, "You, ah, you came out here on a dare, huh?"

A tear slipped from the side of each eye as she said, "Yeah."

He said some more things as he assessed the situation; then saw the danger in asking her to come to him.  "Whoa," he muttered aloud, then to her, he warned, "Stay right there."  Heights were not Gary's favorite spot on this earth.  He dreaded leaving the solidarity of the skeleton of the building, but out he climbed, hesitant to release his hold on the windowsill.  "Okay now," again he was speaking mostly to himself, "Okay.  Okay.  It's alright."

Her teeth were clenched in fear.  With the wind whipping through the building she was feeling cold right through her jacket.  Attempting to boost her morale, he kept up a running banter, "C'mon, I gotcha.  C'mon, hang on a second.  Alright."  He took hold of her, hefting the almost sixty-pound child through the window opening.  Just as he was about to join her inside the building, she said, "No.  I can't leave without Harriet.  I've had her since I was a kid."  She pointed out to where she had been perched and Gary saw the well-worn teddy-bear still sitting near the upright.

He was impressed at her faithfulness to the precious little stuffed friend that she had treasured since she 'was a kid.'  Reaching her furry friend was accomplished and Gary was about to climb back through the opening after handing Harriet over to Justine.  Just then he happened to look out from the building attracted by a glaring light shining in the distance.   A beautiful woman, seemingly out-of-time, appeared in the ephemeral foggy light, then
disappeared just as quickly.

Whatever he did then was not all that clear, but he trusted to grasping and leaning his weight on the safety railing of the structure.  It failed to hold, abruptly breaking away sending the barkeeper-hero to a pile of debris thirty feet down and slightly away from the building.  He heard himself yelling with the horrible surprise of finding himself flying without a net. The actual time was only a couple of seconds before his body joined the pile of construction rubble at ground level.

Impact with a stationary surface stole his breath away and he found that he was lying on his back, one leg bent at an odd and ominous angle from the rest of his torso.  He lay there at first, gasping and unable to believe that he was actually alive!  Alive!  Now there was a word.  It means nothing until it is an inch away from becoming 'dead.'

Once he was able to breathe properly he started to take inventory of his injuries.  It didn't take a doctor to diagnose his broken leg.  Moving it was not a question.  He couldn't, not at all.  Being able to feel and move his other leg alleviated the fear that he might have broken his back, landing on it as he had.

Justine had seen the horror of her savior falling, from the height of where she was, to the ground.  As he was yelling, she, too, was yelling.  His voice stopped and her yell transformed itself into a sobbing sound.  Fear he ld her for the moment.  She was alone.  She hardly remembered how she climbed down the ladder and stairs after that, but found her heart beating in rapid staccato as she found herself at the chained gate once again.

Her parents had always made the decisions of what to do and when to do them. "Mommy.Daddy," she yelled plaintively.  Over and over she called out to
them.  A gentle weeping overtook her as she realized that they weren't coming.  They couldn't hear her and they weren't coming no matter how loud or how long she called.

She ran to the opening in the gate, intent upon running home as fast as possible, when she thought about the dark-haired man who had rescued her. Looking up at the window again, her eyes followed the building on down until she spied a still form on the top of a mound of trash.  Slowly nearing the site, she called out, "Mister!  Are you dead?"  The word caused some more sobbing.

He heard her quivering voice and called back, "Hey, Justine.  Can you, can you help me?"  Hearing the sound of his voice frightened her too, but she made her way part-way up the stack of trash upon which he was lying.  Seeing her face this near was so much of a relief to Gary that he couldn't prevent a tear from escaping his eyes.  "Justine, honey, can.can you get someone to help me?"

She stood there staring at him.  Maybe it was the blood coming from a cut on the side of his face that scared her, but she started backing away from him, down off the pile.  "Justine!  Don't leave without telling someone."

"I can't tell," she said as tears began to flow again.

"Yes, you can.  You can!  They'll believe you.  Tell your mom that I need help.  She'll call someone to help me."

Her voice was stern, as she insisted, "No!  I can't tell.  I'm not supposed to be here.  Daddy said never to come here.  Never!"  She raised her pointer finger and shook it just as her father must have done when he warned her.

Shock was setting in and Gary was feeling a chill as he tried again, "Please.  Please.  Your daddy will be pr.proud of you if you, if you help me."  As she backed away, then turned to run, he called out one more 'please,' then leaned back against his hard and uneven bed and tried to rest.

The sun was beginning to set and, even though it wasn't particularly cold, he was alternating between being too warm and shivering with cold.  His leg was a solid block of pain by this time and he was wishing that he could pass out just to escape for a while.  Sleep was out of the question.  He lay there, trying to concentrate on other things.

At home, Justine washed up and went down to dinner.  Her parents were sitting at their places when her father began the blessing, "Heavenly Father, we thank thee for all these gifts before us.  We thank thee for our little family and the love we share, caring for one another.  Please bless those for whom we should pray, especially the homeless and those who are ill."

At these words, Justine broke out in huge sobs and left the table, crying. Her mother stood and said that she would see what was troubling their little Justine.  She found the child in her bed, clutching her teddy bear tightly, still crying.

"What's wrong, honey?"  Her mother sat down next to her on the bed, placing her arms around the distraught little one.

"I can't tell you," Justine sobbed out.  "Daddy will be mad." 

This was alarming to her mother in many ways.  "Daddy will not be mad," she assured her, "You and I will talk about whatever it is that you're upset
about and you'll see that Daddy and I love you too much to be angry with you."

Justine buried her face in her mother's chest, wrapping her arms around her and sobbing, "He's dead, Mommy.  He fell and now he's dead."

Her mother was way past alarmed; she was petrified and asked, in as calm a voice as possible, "Who's dead, Justine?  Your teddy?  Who?"

"No.  The man.  He's dead."  She wept in a quieter manner for a few moments.

"A man?  How do you know he's dead, sweetie?  Maybe he's just sleeping, like the man we saw at the park last week.  Where is he?"

The little girl turned very serious, sat up away from her mother's arms and confessed, "I've done a bad thing.  And now he's dead."  Her eyes held her mother's as she explained, "I played in that empty building that Daddy told me not to go in, the one behind the flower store."  She looked up to her
mother, searching for her reaction.

Her father arrived at her doorway in time to hear something about the empty building.  Justine, though fretful, retold her story, filling in all the previously untold portions, even about her needing help from 'the man'. Because she would not be content with her parents having consoled her with the idea that someone must have found him by now, the trio took a ride over to the building site.  They parked the vehicle and allowed the nine-year-old to direct them.

When she found the place where he had fallen, she called out, "Mister! Mister, my mommy and daddy are here to help you."  Though they shone the
flashlight to the place she pointed, nothing was evident.

"See, Honey, someone must have found him and helped him.  Let's go."

Her father reached to take her hand when something moved and they heard a hoarse whisper, "Help.please help me."

He directed the beam of the flashlight towards the plea for help, revealing the face of Gary Hobson, then moved it down to the obvious injury.  Justine's father handed his wife the light and turned to go, saying, "I'll go get help.  Stay with him; I'll be right back.  Don't let him move.  That.that leg is.well, just don't let him move!"

Within fifteen minutes an ambulance arrived and carefully maneuvered Gary off of his bed of pain and onto another type of bed of pain.  After receiving the very kind of attention that he dreaded, Gary was treated, kept for a few days, and released to the 'custody' of his friends to recuperate in his own apartment.  He did get a chance, though, when her parents brought Justine to visit, to say how thankful he was for her bravery in becoming his saving heroine.

Now all he had to do was relax in his loft and wait for his leg to heal. Read.  Eat.  Sleep.  Nothing much to worry about, just calmly let time go by.  Whoever said that didn't know Gary Hobson.

The End

Email the author: arcane@nethere.com
 

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