Witness

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Witness
“Can you hear me?” Jesus, he’s a mess. This guy is hurt. He’s lying just off the street, not a very busy one, in a narrow alley or passage between two old buildings, somewhere between conscious and not. He has a gash on his forehead and his right hand is bloody, but from its own wound or from grabbing at the source of his pain I can’t tell. His left hand, pressed into the pavement and holding his weight against the wall, has turned gray from the pressure. Otherwise, he is African black. He’s not talking, but he is breathing and moaning. He moans a little and tries to talk. I can’t tell if he can hear me. At least maybe he’s aware someone is with him. I need to call for help. Not carrying a phone in my pocket is part of being in Paris for me, away, time off. If you want to reach me, there’s a phone in the apartment or you can send me an e-mail. I bring my laptop—I’m never that away, that off—but it’s about as portable as you would be if someone stuck a handle on your head. And anyway, I don’t like carrying things, which may explain why I’m never quite prepared to write down lists or offer a spare hanky or call for help no less than a weakness for women with oversized handbags. Two steps and back on the street, I see a few people, passersby or maybe badauds—people passing by, but going nowhere in particular, which ordinarily is my ideal of taking a walk. Does anyone have a cell? Un portable? There’s a hurt man here, he’s bleeding. People pass. A couple of them look into the little tight alley and keep going. I’m shouting now for a phone, for someone to dial 15 and get an ambulance. They keep passing, all of them, going their way or nowhere.  Who knows how long this has been going on when a man stops and takes a phone out of the pocket of his tweed overcoat. Without thinking, I reach for it. He steps away from me quickly and trots across the street, looking back at me. I turn toward the corner—the street there is bigger and busier—hoping for better luck. Does anyone have a phone? We need an ambulance. Maybe it’s strength in numbers—a crowded street is safer. But yes, people suddenly have phones—and what’s the matter? I explain. Where is the alley? Down the street, twenty metres or so. A man’s bleeding. Could I see, please? And could I? Me too? I lead a flying, or rather a stately, wedge down the street to the alley. Who is he? I don’t know. Do you know him? No, I just saw him. This seems a bit perplexing to them until I say we need to call the SAMU, and a middle-aged woman puts down her heavy shopping bag and starts digging in her purse, staring down a man who has his out of his pocket already—diva to the rescue. She finds her phone. She wonders if I know how to unlock the keyboard. Yes I do and, having learned something, explain to her which key to press. She presses the release key, then asks if it’s 15 or 16 she should call. There is no 16, I tell her, but a man says there is: it’s for the coast guard. Oh, no, no, says a younger man, that’s 1616. Then what’s 16? Oh that, says a good looking thirtyish woman, tonalité d’occupation all the time, and busy signals is all I’m getting anyhow. The woman thinks it might be 18, but that we all assure her that’s the fire department. Please, madame, appuyez sur le un et le cinq, and I will be responsible for the results. She presses one and five and tells the emergency operator there’s a man bleeding in an alley. “What? I don’t know. Wait, please.” She turns to us, asking what’s the street name. We all look up for a street sign on the building. She tells the phone, “I can’t tell. There’s an awning, you see.” The young man who knew about the coast guard bounds into the street to get a view over the awning, says there’s no plaque here, and sprints for the corner with the good-looking thirtyish woman following at a safe distance. At the corner he looks up, reads the name, and shouts it out to the young woman who relays it back to us at the top of her lungs. Thirty years into the digital age, we are relying on smoke signals. But the woman with the phone hears the name, repeats it into her phone, says a little more, than abruptly hangs up—well, no, she doesn’t, but that’s what we still say, thirty years into the digital age. “They’re coming,” she says and, after a process of magnificent awkwardness, packs her phone into her handbag, picks up her cabas, leaves—and so do the others, singly rather than in a wedge or a unit. I crouch down by the man in the alley, try talking to him again, but he’s barely moaning. The pulse in his neck under my first two fingers is about forty, according to my sense of passing time, but not my watch because it has no second sweep, and the pulse could be a lot better. We both wait. When the ambulance comes, with the cops in its wake, the first man out asks me what happened. I don’t know and I don’t know him, either. I just saw him. Okay, and he and his partner shoo me out into the street and get to work. A cop stops me. He points toward the alley and asks, “Who is he?” Again, I don’t know. You don’t know him? No, I don’t know him. But you called, didn’t you? Not exactly. What does that mean? It means I have no phone and I had…
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