Hazard

I flipped through the notebook and found half-finished poems, some drawings, and something that shouldn’t exist. There was a torn photograph taped to the page. One arm held the camera in place, framing my blank face in the center in front of a run-down apartment building. I traced the edge of the film with my index finger. I was certain I had never seen it before and wracked my brain for any fleeting memory of having taken it. I came up empty.

“Hannah, any feedback from you?” a man’s voice called out.

Shoot. Spaced out again. These zoning meetings were almost painful to sit through. “Uh, I think the team already covered everything, thanks.”

That seemed to be a sufficient answer, because he continued droning on. I dropped my eyes back to my lap and picked up the photo, noticing the rusted metal plate next to the door: “114 Levitt Street.”

Levitt Street… that sounded familiar. I turned the photo over and recognized my handwriting on the back. It was a warning: “Don’t go inside again.”

My stomach twisted. I remembered where I was, at city hall surrounded by a dozen of the most boring people I had ever met and tried not to make a face.

I didn’t remember taking that photo. I didn’t remember writing that note. But there was my face, my handwriting. I tapped the phone screen in my lap. Five minutes until five. I would have to bring my work laptop home with me to dig into whatever was going on.

–––––

I walked through my apartment door and kicked my flats off as I made my way to the couch. The bad TV marathon would have to wait.

I opened the city database with great anticipation for the first and last time in my life and typed “114 Levitt Street” into the search bar. A brick building with boards over a few windows appeared. I wondered if anyone I knew had inspected it. I clicked on the picture.

It said it was inspected two months ago. Perfect. By… that can’t be right. By Hannah Rowe. All I could do was stare at the screen, as if part of me expected the pixels to rearrange themselves if I focused hard enough. Was this some weird glitch? Or had one of the other inspectors messed up their paperwork? It had to be. I was never sent out to this property.

I scrolled down to see if there were any other notes. Nothing from me. Not a word, not a sketch. That’s not like me. I would never leave them blank. Everyone at city hall jokes that I could write a fifty-page report about my lunch break. I noticed the report was marked incomplete with a note from my supervisor: “Inspector injured before assessment could be completed. Structure deemed stable.”

I scrolled back up to the photo of the building. My heart thumped in my ears, taking me back to a moment long forgotten. I inhaled the smell of damp wood all around me, heard something creak and snap all around. And then something hit me hard.

A car horn outside brought me back to my living room, where another migraine was coming on. I had been getting them since the accident. Two months ago, I woke up in a hospital with bandages all over me. The nurse said a neighbor brought me in after I fell down some stairs, but they left before giving a name. I must have hit my head hard, because I couldn’t remember a thing about that day.

I wanted to dig deeper, but there was only so much I could do from my couch. I knew I had to drive out there tomorrow and check out the place myself.

I lay in bed for a long while staring at the ceiling and turning the puzzle over in my head, but I was missing too many pieces. At some point I must have drifted off, because I was woken up by a scream. It wasn’t until my eyes sprang open that I realized it was my own. I tried to remember what I had been dreaming about, but the images slipped out of my mind as I gained consciousness. All I was left with was this feeling of guilt—and panic.

It reminded me of being eight years old, blowing on my freshly painted fingernails as I watched cartoons. My parents had gone out to dinner, so I was grateful for the secret TV time. My aunt made me promise I’d stay put on the couch with my hands fanned out so I didn’t get nail polish anywhere.

At one point, she said she needed to go to the bathroom and reminded me to stay on my spot on the couch. But five minutes feels like five hours when you’re an impatient kid. I stood up as carefully as possible and tiptoed over to the bathroom door. The light was off.

I panicked. I ran into the kitchen and saw it was dark and empty. I still remember how my palms sweat as they struggled to grip the stair railing on my way to the top floor. I crept toward the light spilling from my parents’ bedroom and peeked inside.

My aunt was clutching one of my mom’s purses and searching for something inside it. After a few seconds, she pulled out a twenty dollar bill and stuffed it in her pocket. I just bolted down the hall and down the stairs. The whole way, I thought about how if I told my mom about it, then my aunt would get in trouble and it would be all my fault. And then I would get punished in the end.

I sat down, gasping, on the exact same spot on the couch that my aunt had left me at. I fanned out my hands and kept my eyes focused on the TV screen. My aunt came down a couple minutes later. She yawned and asked if I was ready for bed.

I wanted her to look at me and know I’d seen. To say something that made it right. But she didn’t. She never did. That was the first time I understood that sometimes adults break the rules and leave you to make sense of it.

But I was the adult. I was the one who’s supposed to make things right.

–––––

I opened my eyes three minutes before my alarm was set to go off. I usually took full advantage of the snooze button, but that morning, I was on a mission.

I thought I was lost driving around that neighborhood, but that crumbling brick had already burned itself into my mind. Though I couldn’t say for sure how far back my memories of that place really went.

“You’re back again? After what happened last time?” The voice came from the corner store next door. There was an old man sitting on a lawn chair in front of the store.

I hesitated. “What do you mean?”

The man took a swig from his beer can. “You came back a few nights after that accident. Said you had to see somethin’ yourself. Cops showed up next morning, carried a body out. Whole street lit up like Christmas.”

I could feel my heart pounding in my throat. I didn’t answer him. I just turned back to the building. The morning light hit the cracked windows, making the building look alive for a moment. I didn’t go inside. I couldn’t. By the time I got back to my car, my hands were shaking too much to start the engine. The minute stretched forever.

When I walked in the office, the clerk took one look at me and frowned. “You look awful. If you’re sick, you should go home.”

“Uh, thanks, but I’m fine. I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

“Whatever you say.” She was already back to tapping on her phone.

It was a slow day, thankfully. I wasn’t quite in the right frame of mind to do any actual work. I wondered if there was anything in my email that might give me some answers. When I sat down at my desk and powered on my computer, I typed “Levitt” into the search bar. There was an email stuck in the outbox that had never been sent to the City Safety Office.

“Subject: URGENT – Levitt Collapse

I strongly recommend immediate closure of the apartment building at 114 Levitt Street. One fatality was confirmed due to a structural collapse. I urge you to investigate possible negligence in prior assessments. Please find attached a photo I took earlier today.”

It was the same photo that was in my notebook. And it said the email delivery failed two weeks ago. So I had gone back to the building weeks after my accident, and then tried to warn the city—and myself.

I tried resending the email. An error message flashed on the screen informing me that I didn’t have the necessary permissions to email this recipient. It vanished, leaving the same email stuck in digital limbo.

The office was starting to fill in around me. The familiar soundtrack of mindless chatter and clacking keyboards filled the air.

“Morning.” I would recognize my supervisor’s shrill voice anywhere. He had a remarkable ability to materialize when I most wanted him to disappear. “I’m just checking in for our friends at Legal. They need you to verify your original report for Levitt. Just a formality.”

I slowly spun my chair around. “Uh, what exactly am I verifying?”

“Just need you to confirm that limited access was deemed safe at the time so we don’t disrupt business.”

That wasn’t what I had written. Still, something told me not to question it. I decided the safe move was to play it dumb. “Business? Oh, I’m sorry, I must have submitted something incorrectly. I thought this was an apartment building,” I asked.

He pressed his lips into a thin smile. “Yes, it’s residential. But it’s entirely owned by a private equity firm.”

That helped things make a little more sense. If the building got condemned, then the firm would lose their magic rent machine. Someone there had to have paid off someone at the city to let 114 Levitt Street skirt regulations.

“Hey, by the way, did we get a new email firewall?” I asked.

My boss’ smile didn’t waver. “No, why do you ask?”

“Well, I tried sending out an email about this property but it said I had lost a permission or something.”

“That’s… very interesting. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.” He leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “You know, I consider you to be a rising star here. I would hate for you to create liability for the department. We all want what’s best for the city—and for your career, of course.”

He paused to let his words hang in the air between us. “Anyway, Legal just needs an electronic signature.”

“I’ll take a look,” I said, eager for him to leave. He stood there for a moment, seemingly inspecting my face. I tried not to give him a reaction he could pick apart. Finally, he nodded and marched off to go ruin someone else’s day.

The rest of the day crawled by. I pushed papers around until it was finally time to leave. It was a nice break from playing detective. After talking to my boss earlier, I almost felt like I was being… watched. If the city wasn’t tracking my work computer before, they sure were then. I didn’t want to raise any more alarm bells.

By the time I got home, I had almost forgotten about the Levitt place. My mind was focused on doing as little as possible for the next twelve hours. I got sweatpants on, made a cup of tea, and brought it over to the couch. I set the cup down next to my journal on the coffee table.

Calling it a journal might be giving it too much credit. It’s more of a… collection. A disorganized assortment of random thoughts, sketches, and the occasional grocery list. I picked it up hoping I would find a wave of inspiration to ride. Maybe I’d knock out some terrible poem.

I opened it and a photograph slipped through the pages and onto my lap. It was a photo of an open door, the door belonging to the building I had spent so much of the past twenty four hours thinking about: 114 Levitt Street. There were deep cracks in the walls through the open door and rubble covering the floor. No, not just rubble. One of those dusty piles had long, brown hair spilling out from beneath a slab of concrete. And then I remembered.

The smell of pulverized drywall and old bricks. The dust floating on the air, in my hair, my eyes, my nose. The screams. How they pierced my ears and then stopped so suddenly, leaving the place nauseatingly silent.

I had touched death in the Levitt place, heard someone’s dying screams and witnessed them leave this Earth. And my boss wanted me to keep this place operational. I couldn’t stop the first death, but I could help prevent a second.

They had me caged in at work, but they couldn’t control my phone. But who would I contact? I couldn’t trust anyone at city hall. And if I couldn’t trust the city, how could I be sure the state wasn’t involved? No. I needed to go to the news. They would’ve wanted to get this information in front of as many eyes as possible.

I typed out the email and reread it at least five times before I was satisfied. I wrote out everything I had gathered and attached the photos. All I could do was hope that the news team would decide this story would bring them enough views and clicks this week to investigate and publish.

I have to admit I hesitated to click the “send” button. I’m just a building inspector. I’m not trying to get wrapped up in some media frenzy. I just want to do what little I can to make things right. But in the end, I hit send.

The air kicked on, rustling the pages of the journal and sending a shiver through me. Outside, I heard a car pull up and shut off the engine. My phone buzzed on the other end of the couch. I picked it up and read the message on the screen from an unknown number:

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

My pulse climbed. I dropped the phone and backed away. A knock echoed through the apartment, three hard hits. Too late to take it back.