I was awoken at two am by a car alarm. It seemed to be in my bedroom, but as I came out of sleep and began to focus, it sounded like it was right in front of my house.
I decided to run and look out the window, because our cars get tampered with about every two or three weeks, usually in the small hours of the morning, and I thought perhaps an alarm had caught somebody. Opening the window I saw a light on the wet pavement. Looked light somebody had dropped a flashlight.
I grabbed slippers, glasses, my own flashlight, no jacket, and ran out the front door. As I opened my front door and stepped out I saw my son (who lives very near) was on his front porch. It was the alarm in the car he was borrowing from a friend that had gone off. He had the key fob in his hand and he silenced the alarm. The night grew silent in a second. I heard what sounded like a cell phone with a loud vibrator going off - it was a very still night with just a slight drizzle. Drops were falling from the trees and houses all around. Bzz. Bzz. Bzzz.
I went out towards the street to see if there was anything that could clue us to what had happened, and that's when I saw her.
A small, pale face looked out from under the hood of a sweatshirt. A thin, very white face, not looking at all alive, eyes closed as if in peaceful repose, faced almost to the pavement, and bounced the light of my flashlight back at me like a finely polished statue. I wasn't sure she was even still with us. She was on her side, still astride a shiny blue bicycle. No blood, the bike looked intact. The light was coming from a headlight on the handlebars.
As I turned to Stephen we both said, "There's somebody there!" with that adrenaline-induced urgency that hits so suddenly when something like this sinks in to your brain. Stephen stepped back and asked my daughter in law to make the call, and it was so still I could hear her end of the conversation.
I moved in slowly. Keep in mind that I was still of a mind that we may be looking at somebody who had been trying to break into our cars. Funny how that thought took so long to go away. I heard moaning, and compassion took over in my head. She was coming around. The first understandable word out of her mouth was, "what happened?"
"You took a fall. The pavement is wet and slippery and you fell."
"Am I ok?"
"You bumped your head pretty good, I think," I said, as my flashlight lit up a growing bump on the right side of her forehead. It was growing fast, very fast. She tried to open her eyes and I moved the flashlight away.
"Jesus," she announced in a very shaky, soft voice, and I at once thought that I should have been praying for her instead of looking for clues of a break-in.
I have heard many people use the name of Jesus in ways that don't glorify Him, but she seemed to be sincerely calling out to Him, so I assured here that Jesus would help her, that He may have, in fact, already protected her. I instinctively reached out my hand and held hers. She gripped it tight. I said the name of Jesus a few times as I soothed her, and told her help was on the way.
The bump on her head had a tiny cut on it, not really bleeding, which showed no sign of road rash. Our street has a very long hill to it which tends to get bike riders and skaters up to amazing speeds. If she had come down on the pavement face first at speed, she would have laid open a good bit of skin deeply. Her hood may have protected her, or perhaps she ran into the back of the car, nobody will likely know, as we began to realize: she asked what happened again.
And again.
And again.
No memory of the incident. Her name was Leslie ___________, and she lived 'downtown,' and she wanted to know where her purse was. She began to talk a little more, in a soft voice. She added her other hand to mine, and as I asked her if she knew what had happened, she began to give me facts, as if she was trying to grapple with a foggy situation. She volunteered that she was thirty eight, and she wanted to know (again) what had happened.
Short-term memory loss. It was becoming obvious.
My answers got shorter - finally reduced to, "you fell and bumped your head." That would satisfy for only a moment before she would try to move, I would comfort her and tell her she should lay still, and she would ask again.
The police showed up first. They asked her a question or two, I pointed out the now-huge bump on her head and they seemed to understand in an instant that she was not going to be a good source of information. My son began to talk in detail to one of the officers from the second car which drove up right behind the first, and Leslie asked about her purse, tried to look around, and seemed to relax as I told her help was here.
The paramedics arrived and just a second later the ambulance. I told Leslie I was going to let go now, and she said, "don't leave." I told her I was going to be nearby, but the EMT wanted to look her over. I pointed out her purse to them, and they stepped in and took over. She had memory of some events leading up to her being out on her bicycle at two-am, but no memory of what happened.
We walked into the house as the police cars pulled away, one of them with Leslie's blue Schwinn in the trunk, then the big fire truck started up it's diesel engine and rattled away up the street. The ambulance left just a few minutes later, and we stood on the porch looking out at the empty street.
In seconds, something had happened which brought a young women into contact with us. Was she trying to take from us? Nothing pointed to that in any way. More likely, she just got going down our street and the slippery pavement took it's toll. No damage was visible in the beams of our flashlights as we went over the car. What happened?
We may never know.
But the name of Jesus proved it's worth one more time.
