Scary

It was 12:40 am, Sunday morning.  I fell asleep watching the Olympics and had just been woken by my husband’s voice saying, “Amy, it’s time for bed.”  He was closing windows and locking doors as I headed up the stairs to do my nighttime ritual.  I saw that the lights were all turned off in the kids rooms and knew that Rob had just checked in on them.  They like to fall asleep reading books, so the dim lights stay on in their rooms until we turn them off and head to bed ourselves. I decided to take a little peek in on them anyway.  First I poked my head in the door of the girls room and could hear them breathing quietly, then a took a step into Hunter’s room and saw him comfortably snuggled up as well.  Just then, I heard a Boom, Boom, Boom, BOOM, ring, ring and a man shouting. It took me a second to register that the noise was coming from my front door.  My heart seemed to slow down rather than speed up as I would have expected it to.  I started walking deliberately down the hall towards our room calling out in a worried, almost questioning voice, “Rob?….Someone’s knocking on our door…?”  Before I finish the sentence I heard Rob heading toward me.

We look at each other, bewildered, as I freeze at the top of the stairs and Rob bellows out, “Who is it? What do you need?”  I hear the man outside call back “It’s an emergency, I’m hurt.” Rob calls up to me, “get my baseball bat.” and turns on the porch light.  I head into the bedroom and grab the baseball bat we keep there for just-in-case-middle-of-the-night-crazies-come moments like this. The blinds are closed turning upwards on the long skinny windows by the front door, so I can see the guy pretty well from the stairs.  He looks to be somewhere between 17 and 20 with dark blonde hair that is matted against his head with sweat. He has on a white t-shirt and shorts and is saying things like, “please, help me” as he turns in circles and sounds like he’s in pain and scared.  My instinct is to open the door and see what’s wrong with him, but Rob’s instincts prevail.  He says he will not open the door, and we both stand behind our closed front door as Rob calls out questions to the guy.

“How are you hurt?”

“My arm! I think it’s broken.” He walks a few steps away from the door and heaves. “I was fighting with some guys in a car.  I punched through the window and they started chasing me with beer bottles.  Please help me.”

“Stay there. I’ll call someone for you.” Rob walks to get the phone and dials 911.

The guy on the porch yells out, “No don’t call the police.  It can’t be the police. Please, I’ll sit down.  My hands are up.”

I watch through the blinds as he sits with his back to the door and sways from front to back and side to side.  He makes more heaving sounds and I say to Rob, “He’s puking!” I look to see if his arm looks bloody, but it doesn’t. His skin is pink all over from running, but there doesn’t seem to be any sign of broken glass or cuts on his arm.

Rob explains the situation to the dispatcher on the phone and asks more questions, “Where did this happen?”

“On the street.”

“Where are you hurt?”

“My arm.” He lifts his right arm and looks at the back of his forearm. We could both see him clearly, and there was still no sign of blood or injury.

“What’s your name?”

“Max”

“Matt or Max?”

“Max”

Rob is telling the dispatcher our address and tells her he doesn’t want to open the door because he’s got a wife and four kids in the house.

“I’m leaving, I’m walking.” The guy calls out.

I don’t want him to leave, not knowing what may be waiting for him back on the street, and I don’t want to open our family up to possible danger, but I also can’t bear to see and hear the guy in pain. There’s no way I will open the door though, especially because his story doesn’t make much sense. If he punched through a window shouldn’t he be complaining more about his hand? and wouldn’t his hand or arm look cut, bloody, or at the very least bright red? …And a guy who just got his car window punched in gets out of the car and chases him with a beer bottle? Why not use the car he’s sitting in?… And why does the guy come to our house? We’re towards the end of a cul-de-sac and our house was totally dark. I never heard a car or anything else outside…

“Don’t go.  An ambulance is coming, not the police.” Rob calls out.

The guy still has his back to the door and is walking around our small porch all jumpy as if deciding what to do.

“I’m walking.” The guy says in agitation and he starts walking away.

“No, wait there!”

But the guy heads down the sidewalk and from our front window we watch him walk quickly down the middle of the road toward our main cross street.

Rob tells the dispatcher “He’s leaving,” and the direction the guy is heading. The dispatcher says an officer will come by and check with us.  We wait in the dark by the front window and watch for the officer.  It seems like it’s taking forever for the officer to appear. Rob stands by the window and I sit in a chair, still holding the baseball bat I had grabbed earlier by my fingertips and bouncing it on the floor. Maybe they were checking the streets first to see if they could spot the guy.  We waited to hear sirens, but then thought maybe they didn’t want to scare the guy off. Finally, we saw a police car pull up quietly in front of our house.

We meet him at the front door.  He greets us with a smile, and says, “Some excitement for you tonight?”  He looked at me standing in the doorway, took a step back and said, “Don’t answer the door with a baseball bat!” I think he was trying to ease the tension. I laugh and set the bat down on the floor. We then retell what happened, and look around for the places the guy had vomited.  To our surprise, there was nothing.  He had either been dry heaving or making some pretty convincing sound effects. There were other police officers out looking for him, but no sign of him by the time we had finished our conversation. So we said good-bye and the officer made a joke again about the baseball bat not being necessary since he had his awesome Batman belt.

We closed the door and went upstairs to lay in bed for awhile waiting for our adrenaline to work itself back down again.  After reviewing it all together we decide that the guy may have been pulling a scam but more likely was drunk or high and hallucinating. Either way, I’m glad we didn’t open the door.

Now, here’s my question to you… I have family coming to visit this week and my kids are planning to sleep in a tent in the backyard.  What should I do about that?