close as death

This morning I woke up to the sound of my alarm as usual. I took a shower, got dressed, checked my mail, and stepped out the door. I made a quick stop at the local Hi-life to grab a quick breakfast drink. I was late already when I got out. When I stepped onto campus, I saw a small ambulance car, a cop, and two paramedics bent over the form of a limp body, face turned down. I thought it was a drill at first, maybe they were doing EMR training. I stepped in closer, maybe 5 feet away from the scene, to find that it was not a drill. The body was real, and there was blood. I watched them turn the body over. It was an Asian girl, her face seemed peaceful enough, but there was only blood from the nose down. I looked up, she had jumped off of our mandarin center building, must have been the top floor. It was all very real, I mean of course. But this wasn’t the movies. The blood wasn’t thick, it was watery and there was a thin pool of it next to her, already trailing off through the cracks in the brick tiling. I didn’t stay too long, just enough to feel close to death. Afterwards I took the elevator up to my classroom floor. Before going to class I stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the scene. They had lifted her shirt and were doing CPR now. For some reason it felt strange for them to be doing that. I didn’t know people who jumped off buildings could be revived so easily. I stepped back and went into my classroom, it turned out that many of my classmates who had gotten there a little earlier than I had didn’t even know anything happened. I guess what that meant was, the girl leaped off the top floor only minutes before I got there. So close.

It is now the evening of, 12:22am. I just set my alarm and the thought occurred to me. As I ready myself for bed, a girl my age lies dead. Tomorrow I will probably wake up and go on with my life, barely noticing the loss. I was so close to death today, and in less than 24 hours, I have already forgotten the chill.