Here and Now, There and Then

Evelyn had taken the subway to the Empire State building and ridden an elevator all the way to the observation desk, a famous tourist destination for the millions of visitors to New York each year.  It had been a tough year, one thing happened after another, sometimes several at once.    She can’t even remember what the first real thing was that started the whole cascade; maybe it was Bradley walking out, the realisation she was pregnant and having to face a termination on her own.  Seeing him with someone else just added to the despair.  When her car wouldn’t start and her dog died in the same week, it was a bridge too far.  The winds of change had blown upon her and now there was no grief, no tears left to give.  Evelyn felt renewed, she felt like she had taken back the power she had lost. 

Earth Wind and Fire belted out ‘After the Love Has Gone’ in the lift in some cruel send-off ballad as it sped towards the viewing platform.  She stepped out of the confined box into a swirling breeze that whipped up chocolate wrappers and plastic in all directions. The small group already present on the deck were engaged in photo taking and peering through binoculars. Nobody noticed the dark-haired twenty-something woman exit the elevator and make towards the opposite side of the deck, that side of the building now coated with shades of grey from the failing late afternoon sun.  Evelyn took a moment to look at the ground far below, unintelligible black dots appearing to follow some predetermined route moving like a colony of ants. 

Without the fear or hesitation she expected to feel, she gripped the fence and hoisted herself up with just enough strength in her nimble fingers to reach the top and clamber over the barrier, her fingers savaged by the sharp metal fragments.  She placed herself on the ledge, eyes closed.  And jumped.  The sound of a scream remained on the one hundred and second floor and for a moment she was on the back of Bradley’s Honda as it sped down the freeway, hair lashing her face and the wind screaming in her ears. 

Evelyn awoke .  Through one blurry eye she could see security personnel, paramedics and firefighters and an elderly couple who looked distraught. The pain in her right hip stung like a bitch and she dared not move.   Snippets of radio chatter faded in and out like shortwave radio and it made about as much sense.

“a stretcher…86^th floor... suspected hip frac..”, the firefighter said in to his handpiece.  

 “Someone’s lookin’ after ya”, said the paramedic tending to her, “a cross-wind is the only explanation I have for what happened”, she continued, almost as shocked as Evelyn. 

From the bottom of the tower she looked up before she was placed in the ambulance.  The top looked no bigger than a fingernail.  There was no wind.

Andrew Hawkey

*based on an actual event in 1979