/dev/zero

Coming home from work the other night, as I turned into my neighborhood I encountered a bit of police and fire activity. No lights and sirens and fire was leaving the scene, so I didn’t think much of it. Probably someone called 911 for a medical emergency and it was all over. There was one police car still in the neighborhood and he drove off when he realized he was blocking me from turning onto my street.

Kestrel said there were two police cars out front when she got ome and the officers were talking to Jeff, our neighbor across the street. I know Jeff has a past, so I was a little worried, but she said they seemed to be laughing and joking. I stopped worrying figured I’d just ask him what happened the next day.

I came home from work yesterday, saw that Jeff was home so headed over to ask what all the excitement was the day before. Jeff and Jonnetta, his wife, were sitting at their kitchen table with Chris, the neighbor that shares the other half of their duplex. I’d never met Chris before, though I had spoken with her boyfriend and roommate, Mark. I’d seen her coming home from work so I recognized her and Jeff introduced us.
Monday afternoon, Mark died, apparently of heart failure.

He’d been ill for several months, first pneumonia, then a couple of bouts of bronchitis. He was fighting off another round of bronchitis when his doctors told him if he didn’t quit smoking, it was just going to keep coming back and his lungs would never heal, so he quit. 8 days later he was dead.

Chris said she called around 3:45 to get a phone number. He said it would take him a minute to get to it, as he was rather weak and was moving slowly. When he didn’t come right back, she figured he got distracted by a book or something, as he was in the habit of doing. (I saw him many times, at all hours of the day and night, stepping out to his porch to have a cigarette, always reading a book. He made his living buying and selling books online. Their house is so packed with books they can barely move.) Later she got an uneasy feeling and came home early, to find him collapsed on the floor, unresponsive. She called 911 and they had to take him out through the bedroom window. He was probably already dead before she got home, but they transported him to the hospital, attempting to revive him.

After getting back from the hospital, she had to deal with calling his parents to let them know their son had died. While still on the phone the police showed up and made her get off the phone RIGHT NOW, so they could remove her from the house and seal it off. They wouldn’t even let her re-enter the house to feed the dog. It wasn’t until midnight that they had their search warrant, completed their search and let her back in, satisfied that there was no appearance of a crime.

Chris and Mark had just gotten engaged and were supposed planning to sign the papers on a house they are buying this Friday. Instead she’s traveling to Oklahoma City bury him.