text: Did You See It? By Heather Ann Martinez 6 AM Ryan realized his alarm never went off because he forgot to set it. He scrambled to get dressed and ready for work. He brushed his teeth while attempting to shave. He slapped aftershave and cologne and decided to skip breakfast as his face was burning. He ran down the nineteen steps of his apartment building and threw the door open towards the bus stop. His mouth was dry. He smelled fresh ground coffee and periodically turned his head to see if he could pinpoint where the intoxicating aroma was coming from. He knew he didn’t have time to stop if he were to make it to his bus stop that would take him to the commuter train and then the trolley to his workplace downtown. He kept running and was nearing his bus stop when he heard it. He was so shocked at hearing it that it didn’t register when he saw what came next. The scream startled him. The silence after turned everything else in his life on its head just for that moment. He thought that he needed to check in with his parents. He needed to check on his elderly neighbor who lived just above him. When the police arrived, one of them asked him if he saw it. All Ryan could do was nod his head. “What did you see?” The police officer asked. 6:02 AM Jolee finished her morning run. She took a shower, ate breakfast and walked slowly to the bus stop. She was thumbing through her emails on her phone periodically looking up. She left her house early and was trying to catch up on work before actually getting to the office. She looked up from her phone, saw it and focused on her phone again when it chimed. Then she heard the scream, people shouting at her to call 9-1-1. She panicked and started dialing emergency services. Her heart was racing and she was hoping she wouldn’t have to hear his voice. She was hoping she would get one of the other emergency service operators. It had been six weeks since their break up and she didn’t want him to think she was desperate to speak to him. She heard his voice as he answered. He asked her if this was a real emergency and she told him that it was. All of his phone lines and those of the other operators started to light up. Vic asked Jolee if she was at the scene. She muttered a yes and he told her he was coming to join her. He told her not to move from where she was and not to say anything to anyone until he got there. The police were taping off sections of the street. A crowd of by-standards started gathering. Several of them started asking Jolee what she saw. She looked across from where she was standing. Ryan was pacing back and forth. The police officer was trying to take his statement and all Ryan could say was that he saw it and if his alarm went off on time, he would have missed it. He knew he couldn’t un-see it. Jolee started crying. Ryan’s reaction confirmed her suspicions. She hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on around her as the others on the street had been. She was trapped in a web of emails and deadlines. Her ex Vic knew she would not be a reliable witness to what happened and he rushed to join her. 6:03 AM Devin was returning home from a long night of drinking. He lived further south and west of Jolee and east of Ryan. He thought he was carrying a bottle of vodka in a paper bag. He lived closest of the three to the bus stop that Jolee and Ryan were heading to. He often saw both of them pass by in a dash to catch the bus. Today, however, was different. There were more people out in the street. They were asking one another when the police would be there and wondered if there was any hope for the boy lying on the street. Devin looked down at the paper bag he was carrying. There was a hole in the side of it and gun powder residue on the bag as well as his left hand. It wasn’t a bottle of vodka that he was carrying in the bag. It was a gun that he had been tossing about carelessly. He stopped and leaned against a tree. He wasn’t certain he was responsible for what happened. He wasn’t near the boy and didn’t remember seeing the car. The car was stopped in the street. The boy was quietly lying on the street. The driver of the car had his hand on his heart where he had been shot. Then Devin made eye contact with Jolee. She covered her mouth with her hand. He was trying to tell her he was sorry. He was trying to tell her he didn’t see the car, the boy or even the gun in the paper bag. Jolee just kept shaking her head as tears flooded her face and fingers. She was trembling and blamed herself for not paying attention. She wasn’t running late. She had time. She could have gotten Devin from the pub the night before. She could have been kinder through his last failed relationship, and at least pretended that she cared for her older brother. Like Ryan, she saw everything. The only difference being she saw it from the west and Ryan from the east. Devin pulled the trigger, tossed the bag in the air, and the gun went off. The gun shot a man driving a car that hit the boy. When the ambulance came, the medics were able to stabilize the driver while he was in the car. The boy was not moving. The emergency specialists said they could still feel a pulse and put the boy on a Gurnee and took him to the hospital. Ryan was pacing when Vic came up behind him. Ryan told him he hadn’t gone anywhere near Jolee as he had promised. Vic asked him what he saw. Ryan told him he saw the boy first and then saw the driver get shot and then the car hit the driver from Ryan’s left side. Vic knew that Jolee would have seen it happen from her right side. Because it was Devin that shot the driver, he knew she would not be a reliable witness. Out of her guilt and anger, she would do anything for him including lie for him. Devin would have seen the driver first and would have missed seeing the boy. Vic ran across the street to where Jolee was standing. He wanted to protect her from what she had seen. He wanted to fix this for her. He did what he thought best. He very slowly took her hand and guided her away from the street. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone. Jolee leaned her head against his right arm and walked her home. She told him she did as he suggested and didn’t talk to the police or anyone about what she saw. In the following days, Devin and Ryan were arrested. Ryan couldn’t handle his guilt. He had the gun sitting next to him at the pub the night before. He accidentally grabbed Devin’s bottle of vodka instead of the unregistered gun he had just bought from the bartender. Ryan had been stalking Jolee for months. He wasn’t certain if he was going to hurt her or himself with the gun. He just wanted the pain to stop. She was somehow encroached in every waking minute. If he heard a song, he asked himself what she thought of it. He knew Jolee well enough from the bus rides every morning what she ate for lunch, what she planned for dinner and what she and Vic planned to do over the weekend until six weeks ago when Vic asked her for space. This was not Devin’s first brush with the law. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to place blame on anyone else. He was going to have to do time. He could only plea to a lesser charge. Fortunately, the boy and the man lived to tell their stories.