When God Was a Rabbit

. . . to a passer-by he might have looked like a man sitting on a bench overlooking Lower Manhattan, enjoying a quiet moment of aloneness away from the wife, from the kids maybe, from the pressures of work. He might have looked like an insomniac, just like the joggers who ran the promenade in those early hours. He might have looked like either of those things, because he was shaded by the trees and nobody would have been close enough to see that his eyes were shut; not close enough to see the trickle of blood from his ear or the dark wet patch that matted his curls on his swollen head; because they weren’t close enough to see, he could have been a drunk, sitting on a bench in the early hours of the morning. And nobody was interested in a drunk.

He was found unconscious at three o’clock in the morning on 11 September 2001, on a stretch of the promenade at Brooklyn Heights, a place he always went to, to think about life.

It was quite a walk from his house, Jenny, but he did it at night, often instead of a run. He loved the bridge, loved to walk the bridge and never felt afraid of the city’s vacant aggression that hugged darkness, because it thrilled him and emboldened him. Could quite simply arouse him. And he was found by a young man who approached him for a light, a man who saw up close the bruising around his mouth, the swollen features of a bursting head. This young man phoned the police and saved his life.

They found nothing on him. No wallet, no phone, no keys, no money, no watch. Nothing to say who he was or where he was from. He wore only a faded red T-shirt and old chinos and brown Havaianas on his feet. He never felt the cold. Not like me. Remember how I’d shiver.

They rushed him to the ER, where they drained the fluid and worked on his head until the swelling retreated. They took him up to the ICU where they put him with four other patients and there he stayed, waiting for his mind to return to gently inform the rest of his body to awaken and live. And there he stayed, quite peaceful, apparently, and immune, until the morning he awoke and tried to pull the tube from his mouth. He didn’t know his name or where he lived or what had happened. Or what would happen next. He still doesn’t.

All this is fact. What we’ve just learnt. Will let you know more, Jenny, as it comes.

Ell xx