Twenty minutes

Are twenty minutes enough time to see your whole life? I doubt it, but they say before dying you see your whole existence in front of you. Who knows how true that is, but Mr. Ramirez was about to find out that morning.

But I’m not related to Mr. Ramirez, I’m not his neighbor nor his relative, nothing of the sort. I’m just a passerby in this story.

That Sunday I was outside a chapel selling donuts as part of my community service. If you ask me, the donuts’ price was too expensive, but that doesn’t matter in this story. This chapel had a mass every hour, when each of them finished, our job was to approach the people coming out and offer them a dozen donuts. Not many were buying.

When the midday mass finished the routine started again: approach a family with your biggest smile, give the little speech of “please help a good cause” and, with some luck, sell three boxes. My partners and I were used to rejections and even to being ignored, it was tedious but tolerable.

The crowd was finally dispersing and all of us were returning to our stations to rest when we heard some screams for help coming from the stairs. My station was far, so it took me some time to get to the commotion. From a high place outside the chapel, I could see how a circle of people was being formed around a man lying on the floor.

Despite my desire to come closer and ask what had happened, a voice inside advised me to stay there and not get in the way. Then I heard that phrase no one wants to hear, a phrase that freezes your blood and puts a countdown on anyone’s life: “Call an ambulance.”

Time was running out and every witness entered a worried frenzy. Quickly, they asked if anyone knew first aid, but it was hard to help the man, he was bleeding from the nape.

At this point, anyone can connect the dots about what had happened: the man slipped and hit his head.

How much blood was he losing each minute? How do we stop the hemorrhage? No one was prepared for this. To make matters worse, the old man lost consciousness when his head hit the floor.

In the end, we were left as simple spectators, praying for the ambulance which, apparently, would take twenty minutes to arrive. Inside everyone’s mind the same thought popped, will it arrive on time?

Meanwhile, the victim found himself inside lucid minutes in which he relived his life. He dreamt about his childhood and his teen years. About his first love, his graduation. About his childhood friends and the ones from adulthood. He dreamt about his children, his wife, and his parents. About his first job and his first house. All of that and more he dreamt about. He relived his story from birth to his possible end outside God’s house.

Who am I kidding? There’s no way to know if that’s what was going on in his mind while he was on the verge of death. It’s just a lie I told to myself to calm me down, to not think about the suffering he surely was feeling, and above all, so the twenty minutes of waiting felt shorter.

It’s funny how an eternity can last less than half an hour, time gets heavy when you witness a tragedy, unable to do something about it. From above the stairs I saw the futile attempts to prolongate the life span of the victim. Inside my role of a witness I thought about death and how a person I don’t even know was causing me so much sadness.

Looking back, I can't believe it didn't occur to me to say a prayer for the man, being that I was outside the house of god and all that. I guess I was too shocked, or maybe it had something to do with the fact that I'm agnostic. Maybe I didn't want to think that a whole person, a whole life, was disappearing before my eyes into nothingness. Maybe for a brief moment I wanted to believe in heaven.

Maybe if I named the man I could feel better, he wouldn’t be a stranger anymore. So, without even seeing his face, I decided to name him Mr. Ramirez. To me, every old man has the face of a Mr. Ramirez.

This little therapy of naming a stranger amidst a tragedy helped to pass the time; without realizing it, the ambulance had arrived and they were putting Ramirez inside. Within seconds the vehicle was on its way to the hospital, the story was approaching an inconclusive end because I would never know if he had survived or if he had died.

Just two minutes later the crowd was gone completely and the only memory of what had happened was a dried blood pool on the pavement. The mood was heavy between every student doing community service. Claudia, the one in charge of the community service, was undoubtedly the most disturbed. She was the first one to really aid Mr. Ramirez.

We had about thirty minutes before the next mass, we had to calm down in order to keep selling. Honestly, half an hour wasn’t enough time to get over a death. Acting as if nothing had happened made me mad, but I had no other option.

Smile, say your speech, sell two or three boxes, rest, repeat.

My day of selling finally came to an end. I said goodbye to my partners and walked towards my car to drive back home. I was going down the same stairs where the accident had happened and realized the pool of blood wasn’t there anymore.

Anyone who would go to mass the next day wouldn’t have any idea of what happened. That thought enraged me. How easily can you be forgotten? Time goes on and it doesn’t care about how you feel. Or at least that’s what Mr. Ramirez made me think.