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Instead, under a flickering streetlamp, I saw an elderly woman barefoot in a thin cotton nightgown. She was shivering so hard her knees were nearly buckling.
When my cruiser lights washed over her, she flinched like I’d struck her. She stared straight through me and whispered, “Please don’t take me. I didn’t mean to.”
I shut off the strobes, stepped away from the car, and sat down on the curb so I wouldn’t loom over her. I wrapped my jacket around her shoulders. Her hands were ice cold, gripping my sleeve like it was the only thing anchoring her to the world.
“I can’t find my home,” she cried. “It was right here. They took it.”
Time was scrambled in her head, but the emotion wasn’t. She talked about a house that might have existed fifty years ago. A husband working late. A baby she couldn’t keep safe. The pain was sharp, untouched by time.
She kept repeating one name, over and over. “Cal… I’m sorry, Cal…”
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My name isn’t Cal.
Paramedics were already on the way, so I called the number engraved on her medical bracelet. Her daughter arrived minutes later—exhausted, frantic, holding herself together on pure adrenaline.
“I lost Cal again,” the old woman whispered when she saw her.
Her daughter knelt beside her, murmuring reassurance, then looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “I thought she was gone.”
“Don’t leave him,” she said. “Not again.”
My shift ended at eight. I went home and sat on my couch fully dressed, unable to shake the feeling that something had brushed past me in the dark.
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