Night Owl

Erin Driscoll was always the one to call 9-1-1 about gunshots late at night. She knew there was probably some meme about her in the emergency bunker handling calls, “Erin-Karen calling again, always hearing gunshots but never knows where they’re coming from.” Likely with an AI photo of an overweight, gray-haired lady with cats crawling all over her, dusting her fleece sweatshirt with wispy strands of fur that vibrated like living things when she breathed on them.

And maybe there was some truth to it, she conceded to herself, but it wasn’t the whole truth. No meme ever is. How could the jaded emergency operators know that once, long ago, in a scene straight out of someone else’s life, the gunshots had been so close that, when they’d stopped and she’d heard a car squealing away, she had run out to find a dying teenager in her garden, just a kid, his blood spackling her dahlias as they waved in the midnight breeze like a silent protest. She’d leaned over the boy, her heart nearly bucking through her chest cavity, watched his pleading eyes fade, said, “You are loved,” because she didn’t know what else to say as she waited for the sound of sirens that came far too late.

Ever since then, Erin had called 9-1-1 every time she heard gunshots. She was always asked the same questions, always “which direction?” But living in a densely-populated urban neighborhood, sound bounced around and she always ended up saying, “I think to the east, and to the north,” but she never really knew. She often felt silly, calling with no actual information to offer up, but then imagined not calling, and some boy dying alone in the dark, with cold asphalt the last thing he knew. So she kept calling.

A bookworm, she’d always been a night-owl, and for years had worked from home as a content writer. She did her best work late at night, when the rest of the world was hushed and blanketed in a stillness that held time like a malleable thing. The stillness was only occasionally shattered by gunfire, and that’s when Erin sprang into motion, checking the time and dialing 9-1-1.

Her siblings couldn’t understand it, thought it was a character defect that she typically slept until nearly noon. They imagined some debauched scene, Erin curled up in a rumpled bed, bright sunlight shining unnoticed through sheer curtains, a half-empty liquor bottle on the side table, maybe some man sprawled out, casting a shadow on their sister.

“I work eight hours a day like you,” she’d say, her voice rising and defensive. “I sleep eight hours a day, like you wish you could. I cook and clean and pay bills and do all the things you do, I just do them on a different schedule. Did you know, the latest sleep research shows that it’s genetic.”

They nodded, lips pursed. Once, in a fit of pique, she sent them all an article about evolution and chronotypes, how hunter-gatherers have varying sleep schedules so there’s always someone awake and watching for danger. The article said that typically, there are only eighteen minutes per day when everyone in a hunter-gatherer group is sleeping at the same time. Her siblings were unmoved. “You’re not a hunter-gatherer, Erin,” pointed out Lou, her accountant brother.

Erin was tired of defending her circadian rhythm, tired of arguing that it was a quirk of genetics, not a moral failing. She’d been the kid who stayed up all night reading, hiding risque books under the covers when her mom poked her head in the bedroom door, saying, “Put the book away now, you have to get some sleep,” and turning out the light. Her teachers tolerated her occasional dozing at her desk, knowing her sleep deprivation was due to an addiction to books, not a lack of interest.

Society hates nothing more than accommodating non-conformers, Erin thought. She heaved a mighty sigh, stroked the cat napping on her lap, and went back to work.

Midway through writing an article about the role of handbags in professional attire, Erin heard a faint but alarming crackling sound. She glanced at the clock on her laptop. It was 2:28 am. Her body immediately went on alert, every nerve ending standing up, quivering and ready to receive input. Her head swiveled, she lifted her nose and sniffed, and yes, she could smell it, the faintest whiff of smoke. Jumping up from her desk, sending the cat flying from her lap, she opened the window and heard the crackling grow louder, take up more audio space in the air, and the smell was more acrid and insistent.

Grabbing her phone, Erin started dialing 9-1-1 as she tore down the stairs. She flung open her front door, skin alive and tingling, heart racing as she saw that the house next door was on fire. There were no lights on in the houses on the street, just an eerie obliviousness. It felt like a movie about alien abductions, and she was the last person left. Along with the 9-1-1 operator, who was repeating, “Hello? What’s your emergency?”

“Fire!” Erin yelled. And this time she knew exactly where the emergency was happening, said, breathless, “4187 SE Elm St., family of five, two dogs and a cat, I think they’re all sleeping.”

Erin wasn’t a brave woman, but she’d taken care of the Ellisons’ house and pets on occasion, and she wasn’t going to stand there gaping and waiting for help to arrive. Shoving the phone in her pocket, she ran to the side of their house where the garden hose rested in a big planter, turned the water on full force, and started waving the hose wildly as she ran to the porch and rang the doorbell like a crazy stalker. She banged on the door, screamed “Fire! Get out of the house!” over and over as she trained the hose on the fire. It wasn’t nearly enough water, but she saw lights flip on inside the burning house, heard shouting and footsteps, and then, sirens, blessed sirens.

Just then, Meg Ellison came flying out of the front door, her fat-cheeked baby in her arms. Erin glanced at them, reassured that they were okay before turning back to her futile effort with the sputtering garden hose.

She didn’t even notice the flashing lights of the fire trucks until a figure in yellow took her shoulders, said, “We’ve got this, ma’am,” and moved her out of the way. Dazed, she dropped the garden hose and stepped off the porch. Only then did she see lamps blink on in nearby houses, the disorienting flashing of the fire truck lights blinding and chaotic. The whole scene felt surreal. She saw firemen in action, methodically unrolling water hoses up to the task, saw them run into the house and usher out the rest of the family, saw them carry out the two dogs in strong arms. Later, she even saw a fireman giving the family cat oxygen in the front yard. The Ellisons’ oldest daughter, Sarah, was frozen in shock, but she burst into tears when the cat started squirming and opened its eyes.

Erin blinked, shook a sense of reality into herself, and went to the ambulance where paramedics were assessing the Ellisons. Meg and the baby were off to the side; having gotten out first, they were physically unharmed. “Meg,” Erin said, reaching out to touch her neighbor’s arm, “come to my house, you can all stay there tonight, I’ll make you some chamomile tea and I’ve got home-made bread and soup.”

Meg nodded, dazed.

Erin went back to her house and turned on the tea kettle, poured the soup into a large pot, turned on the oven to warm up the bread, and looked out the window. She saw a family of five, alive, their two dogs and one cat, their home no longer on fire, but belching black smoke and noxious fumes.

As she went outside to start leading them to the safety of her home, she realized that she was a sentinel. She had been born for the job, her quirky genetics keeping her up late at night when, sometimes, people needed help the most. She hadn’t been able to save the boy in her garden all those years ago, but as one of the firemen later told her, whoever called 9-1-1 at 2:28 am had likely saved five people’s lives, and their dogs and their cat.

“Get up at 6 am and beat that, Lou,” she said to herself with just a hint of a smirk, as she went to work gathering blankets and pillows to make her neighbors comfortable in her home.