Lei

Angels

My dinner is cold. The sauce has turned to a gel and I need to nuke it in the microwave.

A half an hour ago...

*knock knock knock*

*knock knock*

It's 11:09pm on a sunday night. I bet it's the tenants next door wanting something. The knock sounded kind of heavy like that of a man. When I finally made my way from my desk to the front door, the knocking had stopped. Through the peep hole I could see no one so I opened the door still expecting one of them to be standing off to the side or something. Instead, there was no one. I stepped out, looked around and saw a young woman climbing in the half snow covered bushes. They acted as a barrier between the neighborhood street and the train tracks.
I called out "Hello... Hello?"
The young woman turned around and came back.
"Please help me. Please help me." *sob sob*
"Whats the matter? What's going on?" I asked her. "Where did you come from?"
"You have to help me! My friend is back there on the train tracks. This guy named David cut her throat. He tried to get us to take cocaine but I didn't want to. Kim just told me to run so I ran." She stumbled forward putting both hands on my shoulders almost collapsing. Her hands were wet. My white t-shirt was now all damp and stained from her. She was completely soaked from head to toe. Who knows how long she had been messing around outside in the cold wet rain and snow.
I put my winter jacket on and started collecting some items, my cell phone, gloves, my work shoes.
"Come on. Let's go out and try to find your friend." The girl was sobbing pretty much the whole time and was drunk. They had been drinking and now she stumbled around just inside the front doors of the house. I didn't fully realize how drunk she was until she went to stand by the end of the staircase and dropped down on the pile of items which my mother had left on the floor. I pulled her up and sat her down on the stairs before leaving her to collect my keys in a room nearby.
"Hey you. Please don't leave me. Come back." I returned having almost everything that I needed.
"It's ok. I'm not going to leave you. Everythings going to be alright." The flashlight was in my truck so I quickly went out to get it. Through the open front door she cried out for me again.
"Please help me. Don't leave me here. He's out there and he might hurt you!" I didn't really care if the guy was out there or not. I just felt that I had to do something. I came back in and sat beside her on the bottom of the stairs. She continued to cry and started telling me about her mother and everything that happened.
"Do you have any kids?" she asked.
"No. I have no children."
"Do you have a wife?"
"No. I'm single right now."
"My mother and I argue alot and she kicked me out of the house."
"Where do you live?" I asked her.
"I live in Washington, Saltan."
I was shocked. How did she get up here then and where is she supposed to be staying at? I dialled 911.
"Emergency, how can I help you?" said the voice on the phone.
"Hello, a young girl came to my house in a very distraught state. She's" I got cut off.
"Who do you need? The police or an ambulance?"
"I need the police."
"Thank you." I was put on hold. A few moments go by before I hear a voice again.
"Hello. New Westminster Detachment."
"Hi. I have a girl here in an extremely distraught state. She says that her friends throat has just been slashed."
"What is your location?"
"#####... Surrey"
"Hold on a minute sir." The line paused again but longer than before. Now I'm thinking, great, nice response for an emergency service. A girl could very well be bleeding to death and I'm on hold and being transferred for the second time.
"Hello. Surrey Police. What is the nature of your call?"
Once again. "I have a young girl here who came to my house. She claims that her friend had her throat cut open and is lying on the train tracks nearby."
"Is she still there with you now?"
"Yes. She is."
"What is her name?"
"Would you like to talk to her officer?" I gave the phone to the girl. As she talked to the officer, I found out her name was Jade. Born in 1990, she was only fifteen years old. Her long and wavy dark brown hair was damp and she was a bit thin. The light rain and snow had gotten her eye makeup wet making her eyes look sunken in against her white skin. She had an Avril Lavigne look. After answering multiple questions on the phone with the officer, she handed the phone back to me at their request.
"Sir, we are on our way there. Can you keep her there until we arrive?"
"Yes I can."
"Please stay with her." So there we sat. Occasionally she would lose her balance and fall over sideways all the while continuing to cry and talk about her situation.
"I'm so sorry. I never want to be drunk again. Is Kim alright?"
"Is that your friends name? Kim? The one who you said was cut on the throat by the guy?"
"Yes"
"How many of you were there?"
"Just my friend Kim and I and the black guy called David. I hate him. My friends said that they had a bad feeling about us going with David."
"Sometimes you have to go with your gut feelings or intuition Jade. Learn to trust it."
"I never want to get drunk again." Jade continues to sob away, huddled in my arms. I remember when my brother told me about his male psychiatric nursing school. About how they were trained to talk to patients who were very agitated, sometimes angry or even a bit out of control. I needed to keep her talking to try to calm her down.
"How long have you been in Canada?"
"My mother and I argued alot so she kicked me out."
"Where's your father?"
"I've only known my father in the last two years..." She mumbled a bunch of other stuff which I couldn't understand.
"Where do you live now? Did you and your friend just hitch hike up here today from washington?"
"I live in a foster home in White Rock. My mother doesn't want me. Oh I hope my friend Kim is alright. She's on the train tracks dying probably. I wish I was dead." Jade started to bang her head on the handrails.
"My purse is out there still! I lost my purse."
"Can you show me where your friend was on the railway?"
"No. I don't know where it is."
"How about the purse? Do you know where that is?"
"No. I don't know where anything is."
"What were you doing here in this part of the neighborhood?"
"This black guy named David picked us up at Surrey Central. We had all been drinking and he asked us to go with him."
"How old is he?"
"He's fifteen."
"Where does your friend Kim live?"
"She lives in the foster home with me."
"How old is she?"
"She's a couple years older than me."
"So what were you two doing in Surrey?"
"We came down to party with some friends. We thought it would be fun. This David guy tried to make us take cocaine but I didn't want to. I was already more drunk than Kim. David was drunk too and now look how everything turned out. Oh I hope I die!"

I held her head against my shoulders and one of her hands in mine.
"Don't worry. You're safe here now." Just then my phone started ringing.
"Hello sir. Is this Mr. Lei?"
"Yes."
"We want to inform you that a young woman was just picked up at a Shell gas station near you. She has a cut on her head. We believe this girl is the other member of this party but want to make sure. Do you know where it is?"
"Yes I do. Thats just a couple of blocks away from my house."
"It sounds like she's the one."
"Thats great. So she's fine then? She's not seriously injured or anything life threatening?"
"No. Please continue to keep the other girl there at your house until we arrive."
"Thank you. Will do."
I closed my cellular phone and immediately told the good news to Jade.
"Jade. The police have just found your friend at the Shell gas station nearby. She's ok."
"Is she going to survive?"
"She made it there on her own two feet and only has a cut on her head. She's going to be fine."
The crying didn't stop but she was happier now.
"Oh thank you. You saved me! You saved me! Thank you. You saved me!"
"It's alright Jade. All I did was make a phone call. Everything is going to be fine now. Your friend is safe and so are you."
In her half drunken state, this conversation repeated itself more than once. She kept falling back into the thought that her friend was dead and that her mother didn't want her anymore. And all I could do was hold her and tell her that everything was going to be fine over and over again.

The sound of a car pulled into the driveway. It was my mother. She opened the door and saw the two of us sitting together at the bottom of the stairs.
"Who's this?" my mother asked.
"She came to our house asking for help. Her friend was attacked on the train tracks by someone."
"Jade, this is my mother." I asked my mother to get a large towel and come back to watch Jade. I still wanted to go out to the railway.
A few minutes later two police cruisers showed up. As I saw this through the distorted glass on the front door, I thought it was weird that it should be happening at all. When I had come home earlier in the evening, there were two police cruisers in front of the house already. I did not know why they were there the first time and my first thought was that maybe there was a disturbance from the house which I have rented out to an addiction rehabilitation sosciety. I opened the door and two officers were there.
"Hi. Are you Mr. Lei?"
"Yes. The girl is right here." I pulled up Jade to get her on her own two feet and brought her to the door.
"She can't walk very well. She's a bit intoxicated."
The tall thin officer looked at her. "Oh she can walk just fine." I sensed that the officer may not have had much sympathy for the girl.

I watched the cruisers sit outside for a while before finally leaving. I wondered if they would look for the girls purse and my gut feeling was that they wouldn't. I got my flashlight out and put on my jacket.
"Are you going out?" my mother asked hearing the noise I was making at the door.
"Yes."
"Where are you going?"
"I'm just going out to have a look."

Outside, I found the footsteps from her small sneakers in the snow. They lead from the doorway across the lawn and onward to the other side of the street where I first saw her. There they ended in the bushes. Twenty feet to the left is a dirt path which leads to the railway. It was only partially covered in snow. I walked on the short trail and soon found the familiar footprints coming down from the train tracks and into a small clearing in the bushes. There they ended and seemed to go nowhere. Back up on the railway, I found the foot steps and two others which seemed to follow hers. But these were also mixed up with some other older looking footprints. Her's and two others looked the freshest of the bunch.

They all seemed to go southward along the railway for about four hundred metres meeting up with 96th avenue. From there her friend Kim needed only to walk up a small hill one block and she'd be at the Shell gas station. And that is what she did.

I walked back northward along the railway seeing nothing on the sides resembling a purse. Maybe the David guy had picked up the purse as Jade fled and tossed it far away after going through it? Maybe her friend Kim had it with her? The two other trails run off the railway and towards a couple of nearby cul-de-sac's. I followed along these side trails but found no footprints resembling Jades. Where could she have gone? Going back to the small circular dead end clearing in the bushes where the two sets of footprints were, I pointed my flash light down and looked more closely this time. There in the center was a purse. I knew it was hers. It had a 'XOXO' branding like the Louis Vuitton bags. Inside was the usual, makeup, a package of cigarettes, a lighter, and more make up. Typical female accessories.

In a small zipped up compartment was a piece of paper and a key chain with two dices. I opened the piece of paper and found four names and phone numbers on it. The area codes were all from other locals. Jade was telling the truth about her mother moving to Washington. There she married an american and ditched her daughter. Father meanwhile was nowhere to be found.

Posted by LeanPorkLei at December 5, 2005 04:05 AM | TrackBack