Walking the Thin Line of Reality

By Maria anna van Driel, (a fictional short story)

The evening has fallen and the darkness of the night is grabbing hold of the evening more and more. This unnatural white light spread by a lamp post standing across the road is creating a distorted image in the cold rainwater that is gathering in small puddles on the ashes.

Barefooted she walks along the road, her head bend slightly to keep the rain pelting her face. Her jeans, white T-shirt and denim jacket are soaked from the rain what, like a transparent curtain, is surrounding her.  In a haze she sees a car rushing past carrying optical signals.   Disorientated, cold and exhausted she wraps her arms a little tighter around her chest. Her long dark hair hanging over her shoulders like frayed rope.  The night is grim and, with every step she takes, the rain becomes colder and the wind stronger.  How she would love to lie down, fall asleep, and forget all the misery of the past hour.

Her body seems to work on autopilot and has taken over her mind, and with every beat of her heart, a new rush of survival-drift runs through her veins.

Another car approaches her, slows down and drives at walking pace with her. The window opens, ‘What happened?’, the driver asks. ‘Can I help you with anything?’ She stops walking but does not look at the man behind the wheel. ‘Could I perhaps offer you a ride?’ he asks.  With her head still slightly bend and her arms tightly wrapped around her chest, she passes in front of the car and silently gets in. The gray fabric upholstery of the passenger seat eagerly absorbs the rainwater from her drenched clothing. Within a few seconds the chair has turned dark gray in color. ‘What is your name?’ he asks but is not receiving any answer.

Her hair, weighed down by the rain, falls forward covering her face. He presses the button of the interior lighting and sees that her T-shirt contains watered-down traces of blood. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asks concerned.  He carefully removes the hair from her face, ‘My name is Alex, will you  tell me yours’, he asks in a friendly tone. Alex can see several small and shallow cuts on her face from which blood is dripping. ‘Who did this? What happened to you ?’ But his passenger does not move and remains silent. The only movement he can trace is the shaking of her body as she fights an incipient hypothermia.  Alex grabs his coat from the backseat and drapes it around her shoulders. ‘The hospital is nearby’, he says and turns the car heating on the highest setting.

After twenty minutes they drive into the hospital parking lot. Alex, who has already called the hospital on the way, drives without any hesitation to the entrance of the emergency room. Two nurses rush towards them pushing forwards a stretcher. Alex gets out of his car and says hurriedly to the nurses, ‘She has hypothermia and several small cuts on her face. Prepare an examining room for her and call the police so they can find out her identity.’

One of the nurses guides the still unknown woman through the spotless white hallway to one of the treatment rooms.  Shortly after Alex walks in. He has exchanged his sweater for a three-quarter-length white coat, a pager and a stethoscope. Dr. A. Green she reads on his nameplate.  Alex rolls a chair over to the hospital bed and sits in front of his patient.   ‘Let me introduce myself properly, I am Dr. Green. I see they have given you clean and dry clothes. Will you tell me what your name is?’  She lifts her head and looks at him with a frightened look.  ‘Melanie’, she whispers, pressing her arms firmly against her chest.

‘Is the blood on your t-shirt coming from your chest?’ Melanie slowly shakes her head as a sign that she doesn’t feel any pain. ‘Will you tell me your last name, so I can contact your family.’ Melanie lowers her head.

A male nurse sticks his head through the doorway, ‘I have been in contact with the police and they are on their way.’  ‘Thank you.’ Alex says while reaching for a clean gauze from a drawer behind him.  ‘I am going to clean your face so I can see if any of these cuts have to be stitched.’  Melanie agrees with a gentle nod in silence, as if she is afraid to make a noise.

Alex supports Melanie’s chin with his hand and begins wiping away the blood from around the cuts. Then the pager in his coat goes off. He looks at the number that has appeared in the small display… ‘I will be right back, I have to make a call to my brother.  He is the sheriff at the station.’  Melanie looks startled, grabs Alex by the arm and start shaking her head violently.’ ‘Don’t be afraid, Alex says, you are safe here.’  With a slight hesitation she lets go of his arm and bends her head again as if she is giving up.

Alex walks back to where he left Melanie 15 minutes earlier. Suddenly a strange feeling of dread creeps over him. He looks into a now dark treatment room.  Then a bright flash of light with a loud bang almost immediately after as if someone fired a firearm.  “Melanie!” he shouts and runs into the treatment room where the sound of the fluorescent tubes, flickering on and off, can be heard.  On the empty hospital bed, like a silent witness, a shining yellow police badge is laying, reading the name ‘Green’.

One hour earlier…

Bleeding profusely, she sits in a narrow dead end alley, in the pouring rain of New York.

‘Is this how it is all going to end?’ she thinks and frowns indignantly. She leans against the iron garbage container that rests against the outside wall of the pizzeria. Her hair is soaked and hanging over her shoulders like frayed black rope. Her T-shirts and denim jacket are slowly absorbing the blood pouring out of the wound in her chest.

Dazed, she watches the raindrops fall down from the black iron fire escape and burst onto a pair of garbage bags. In the distance she hears two cars come to a stop in quick succession with their tires skidding in front of the only entrance to the alley. The bright light from the headlamps creates a grim and cold image in the alley. She hears the car doors slam and the voices of the men looking for her.

She tries to pull her legs towards her but her jeans has absorbed too much rainwater. Exhausted from the chase, she let her head rest on her shoulder. Her legs fall back into the shallow pool of rainwater she sit in and hears the water splashing when her legs hit the cold wet ground, but she doesn’t mind anymore.

Breathing becomes more difficult. The pain in her chest intensifies with every breath of oxygen she takes. She tries to suppress the pain by crossing her arms around her chest.

The red and blue light from the optical signal on the roofs of the police cars reverberate like a glare against the wet walls. Two police officers are carefully walking into the narrow alley with their weapons drawn. One of the detectives has her in sight and with his firearm drawn, he walks towards her. “She is over here!” He shouts to his colleagues who are now running in his direction. 

In a haze she hears the splashing sound of the rainwater caused by their shoes while approaching her. Instinctively she reaches for the small firearm lying next to her in a shallow pool of water. A stabbing pain shoots through her chest as she tries to raise her arm.  She looks glassily at the young police officer standing in front of her. Slowly the image starts to fade and her eyes get heavier. ‘Officer down, officer down!, he shouts, ‘call an ambulance, she got hit!’

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