Missing Pieces

I was looking at myself in the mirror and assessing the damage when the doorbell rang. Startled, I dropped the bloody towel I’d been holding to my lip into the sink and stood for a moment frozen and unsure what to do. Picking up the towel, I started for the front door when I heard a steady and persistent knocking. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and my neighborhood wasn’t the I-was-in-the-area-so-I-thought-I’d-stop-by type. Part of me grew tense while the rest of me badgered that part for being paranoid.

As I rounded the hallway and entered the foyer, I could see the outline of a large figure through the frosted glass of my front door. There was something unsettlingly familiar about the silhouette’s stance, and the paranoid side of me registered a victory as I stopped in my tracks.

The sound of radio chatter and the visitor’s voice hit me in unison, and I fought the urge to run out my backdoor and into the woods that were only a few hundred yards away.

“Sheriff’s department.”

You live in the middle of nowhere. It can’t be anyone who knows you. My mind struggled to accept this and regain control over my body.

“Look, I can see you standing there, please open up.”

Well, that sounded polite enough. It’s not as if guns are being drawn, and he is alone.

Convinced that I had no rational alternative, I stepped forward and opened the door. Standing on my front porch was a tall, solidly-built deputy sheriff who looked barely old enough to drive let alone carry a gun. With his thumbs tucked into the front of his gun belt and his flat-footed stance, he seemed more a danger to himself than a threat to me, so I began to relax.

“Ma’am?”

“Deputy?”

“Are you alright?”

As he spoke, the deputy took a defensive stance and moved his right hand from its tucked-into-his-gun-belt position to hovering just above his holster, and my desire to flee reintroduced itself with an even greater degree of urgency.

As my panic mounted, I realized that the deputy’s gaze wasn’t trained on me but darting around over my shoulder at the interior of my house. It came to rest on the bloody towel that was in my hand, and once again, I relaxed.

A nervous laugh escaped me as I answered him. “I’m fine. This is nothing” I said, as I held the towel up and used it to point to my swollen lip.

The deputy relaxed a bit, but I could see he wasn’t convinced.

“I fell, but really, I’m okay.”

“Would you mind if I came in and checked the house?”

“I don’t mind if you come in, but I can assure you there’s no one else here.”

The deputy stepped around me and entered the house. I watched him perform a visual check of the areas he could see from the cover of the foyer.

“I was running on my treadmill, and the power cut out on me. I took a pretty good dive.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I knew from experience that his answer translated to look lady, I don’t much care what happened because right now I have to make sure that there ain’t a guy somewhere in here who was beating the crap out of you before I knocked on your door, and if that guy is here, then I’m gonna to have to worry about whether or not you’ll fight me when I arrest his sorry ass.