The Tedious Nature of Man: The Insanity of Man
"Call it! Twenty she kicks him to the curb!" My supervisor yelled to me.
"Hmm, No, she likes him. Twenty she doesn't."
Watching CCTV was boring for the most part, but the moments of sheer terror made it worthwhile. The problem was, they were usually fleeting and quite far apart.
I won the twenty and was getting ready to sign off when one of those moments happened.
"Car in the middle of the intersection at the square! Dispatch teams!" My boss yelled to the police line. "No! The car isn't moving. It is stopped and I can't see inside. Switching to alternate cameras. Nothing. We need eyes on the street."
He manually changed close to forty cameras to focus on the square. There was a woman at the wheel, blood on her face and a man next to her, wide eyed and panic stricken. He was waving a gun.
Twenty cameras went back to work as usual, but twenty remained focused on every angle of the scene. a piece of white paper floated to the ground near the Bank of America corner. Luckily it was face up, for a camera focused on it: 'An armored car filled with five million dollars in small bills will pick me up at four PM. It will drive me to the airport where I need a fully fueled jet. The bitch may die sooner than I thought, so hurry up!'
They focused a camera on the woman and she was quite pale and they could see multiple stab wounds. She was dying right now. Footage of the note was shifted to the police mobile command.
They couldn't lock face recognition on the perp, but they found out the woman was an ER nurse at CMC. She was thirty two and probably knew she was dying. She seemed to know what camera to look into and it was heartbreaking. You could see the will drain out of her with her blood.
I picked up the Mic. "She's almost gone guys... "
He saw her making motions with her left hand out the window where it hung. It was sign language. She was spelling words. "G U N E M P T Y"
"She is signing that the gun is empty! Go!"
SWAT hit as the woman's face hit the steering wheel and the horn blared. The perp jerked and then slouched from the head shot. SWAT cleared the scene and Paramedics raced to the woman.
CPR was being performed as fluids were manually squeezed in through the IV bag. She was almost completely red with blood. The CPR was paused and they nodded with smiles. She was back. They rushed her to a waiting helicopter to take her to her own Trauma Unit.
My boss switched to the aerial view and I raced to pull up cameras at CMC ER and one outside the Trauma Unit. We watched step by step as they resuscitated her. Her evaluation was hard to listen to. She had been stabbed, shallowly, close to one hundred times; enough to bleed to death, cause pain and be debilitating, but not enough to hit internal organs.
They lost her again, but blood transfusions brought her back. Four teams were stemming the flow of blood from the wounds and suturing them. She couldn't be seen anymore, just he flow of bloody liquid on the floor. It was almost clear.
Her name was Marcy, said a reporter, and they showed her pretty smiling face pre-attack. She would never look like that again. They had heard that a plastic surgeon was evaluating her face and would do the best he could, so it was a waiting game to see if she lived and what life would be after reconstruction.
She was holding her own and we watched from camera to camera as she was transferred to ICU. She wasn't visible under the bandages, but my focus was on her left hand. She was signing again.
'T H X'
We all assumed it meant 'thanks' and smiled.
***
She made it and was back working in the ER after six weeks. She didn't look so bad, but all we could see was her face. The plastic surgeon had done a great job, but her nursing scrubs were different than others; they went to her neck, down to her wrists and no V neck. She was hiding many scars.
***
I still watch her, but just to keep her safe. I can see as far as her apartment door, to make sure she gets home, but I can't see inside. If only I could make sure that she's safe inside as well.
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