LICENSE by Bill Vernon

 

Sarwer e Kainat Welfare

LICENSE

I'd been hibernating, having my groceries delivered at home for three years and two months, avoiding downtown until the day before my driver's license expired. 

Surprise! The streets were nearly empty of traffic, and I even found a parking spot on Third Street in front of the County Administration Building's public entrance. So the trip there was okay, but now I had to go inside, which had always been crowded when I was in there before. 

The heavy metal door shut behind me, clanging with an echo off the concrete walls of the lobby, which seemed empty of people. However, I sensed a humming, like from a bee hive, then slowly discerned individual but subdued noises, scraping, typing, coughing. The insides seemed to be purring with a nearly hidden rhythm. 

Memories led me to what I wanted, circling from the southeast to the southwest wall, then north, around the elevator and stairway shafts rising in the building's center like a spine. The rubber soles of my shoes squeaked, gripping and releasing the floor like pleas for help, inducing none of the heads I glimpsed inside the cubbyholes I passed to look up and my way. Dark, moveable, shoulder-high walls separated them from me like armor. Printed signs at knee-level directed me to an "open window." 

Reaching it, I coughed across a counter through metal bars loud enough to startle the human on the other side. He swiveled his chair in my direction and smiled. "Can I help you?" 

Before I could answer, he grabbed his chest, slumped left, and fell from his chair so forcefully that it slammed backward against the wall, creating shrill echoes of the crash.

"You okay, Mister?" No movement.

I glanced around. The other sections of his driver's license looked empty, except for machines, computers, and such. A voice somewhere said, "What's goin' on?"

The man just lay there unmoving, so I panicked, unlatched a half-door, swung it open, and yelled, "Man down! You need a medic here! Call an ambulance. Anybody here know CPR?!"

I pushed the chair away and knelt beside the man. He was flat on his back, arms on the deck. I said, "Say something. Keep breathin'. Don't give up."

His eyes turned my way, and he reached toward me. I took his hand in mine. "I got you, buddy, Andrew, I mean," using the name on the laminated ID pinned to his white shirt. 

His fingers squeezed so tightly that mine started going numb. "Hang in there," I said. "You got all kinds of help here. All your colleagues are racin' over to us." I could hear movements around me.

A blue-uniformed security guard rushed up and knelt on the other side of Andrew.

I said, "Andy don't want to let go," personalizing the man, using my Dad's name. 

"Hold onto him," the guard said, putting an ear near Andy's mouth, then pressing two fingers against Andy's neck. 

Looking over at me, he said, "He don't seem to be breathin'. I don't feel a pulse either."

"I think it was a heart attack. He cried out, grabbed his chest, and fell off his chair. When I got to him, he grabbed my hand like he didn't wanna let go."

The guard said, "The EMTs are comin'. They'll bring an AED."

The guard straightened Andy's legs, lifted his head back, positioned it just so-so, checked Andy's mouth, then fingered out the tongue, which I could see was curled back in his mouth. 

"Talk to him," the guard said. " That might help."

As if Andy's soul could hear. The guard had more faith than I did.

What followed was nothing but Love. While I jabbered, the guard pinched Andy's nose, covered Andy's mouth with his own, breathed into Andy, then bent above Andy and pumped both hands down and up by Andy's diaphragm, counting in a low voice. Then he repeated all that.

Looking at me again, he said, "He's got a pulse. I can feel it." There were tears on his cheeks. Within seconds, EMTs arrived, and he told them, "He's breathin' now. He wasn't breathin' before."

The new guys pried my hand loose, checked Andy, then took him away on a stretcher. I laughed in relief, wiping my eyes with my newly freed hand.

Outside the heavy front door I'd entered, the guard watched the emergency guys descend the concrete steps and load Andy into the ambulance double-parked next to my car. It took off across the bridge over the Great Miami River, the siren blaring back at us for a few minutes, the emergency lights flashing, running through the shadows.

The guard faced me. "That was so sudden. Just out of the blue." 

"Yeah! And you were great." I squeezed his arm through the thick blue cotton of his uniform. "You brought him back to life. You woke him up."

"You helped," he said, "holding onto him and talking, yelling the alarm that got me moving."

I reached for his hand, but he avoided it and hugged me. There, downtown, in front of the 10-story County Admin Building, we embraced. Strangers. A White man and a Black man. Brothers, stripped to the core of our humanity.

Smelling Old Spice sweet on his cheeks, I said, "They must be going to St. E's Hospital, just south of here by the river. I'm gonna go see if he makes it."

"You knew Andy?" the guard asked.

"Never met him before."

"I'd like to know how he does, too."

"I'll be back. I still have to come here and renew my driver's license."

He smiled. "I'm here 'til we close at 5:00. Look here." He pointed to his ID badge.

"Henry Smith," I read aloud. "I'll look for you when I get back here, Henry."

Hurrying to my car, hoping that Andy had recovered, I felt revived too.

© Bill Vernon

Bill Vernon 

Bill Vernon spends time writing, hiking, folk dancing, and babysitting. His novel OLD TOWN (Five Star Mysteries, Thomson-Gale) connects the expulsion of the original inhabitants of southern Ohio to the lives of its residents today. His shorter fiction has appeared in Synkroniciti Magazine, Northwest Indiana Literary Journal, and New Feathers Anthology.

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