“Sir! Wake up, sir!”
Jude slowly opened his eyes and saw two paramedics standing over him. One had a sharp-scented paper stick in front of his nose, and the other was checking for injuries.
“Sir, what’s your name?”
“Jude,” he gasped out. His throat was very dry. “Thirsty…”
The woman pulled a water bottle from her jacket and pressed it against Jude’s lips.
“Here. Drink.” He did, and once he was done, she continued, “Do you know where you are, sir? What day is it?”
“Christmas, but… The woman! Is she OK?”
“You were the only person here when we found you.”
“What?! But… all that blood…”
Jude tried to stand up, and his head throbbed. The sharp pain made him see white, and noticing him wincing, the paramedic pushed him back down.
“Don’t rush it. We don’t know if you have a concussion yet, or why you’re on the ground for that matter.”
“There was a woman… She was bleeding, and I called you guys. I don’t… understand. I passed out at some point.”
“Like I said, sir, you were the only one here when we found you. The snow is undisturbed, aside from your body, and there’s no blood anywhere. Did you take something tonight?”
“Take something? I had some whiskey… That’s it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Completely.”
“OK, well, it looks like you might have hallucinated and passed out. When we got here, you weren’t seizing, but we can’t discount that possibility. To be completely honest, we should really take you with us.”
“No… I can’t. I don’t have a job yet. No insurance. I just moved here.”
“Do you have anyone that can look after you? If you have a concussion, you can’t sleep.”
“No. I… I don’t believe I hit my head. I was sitting down next to the woman when the pain started.”
“Sir, there was no woman.”
“Right… Still, I’ll be OK.”
“You understand that you are within your right to waive medical treatment, but that you are doing so against our recommendation.”
“Yes, I understand.”
The woman looked at the man who had been checking Jude for injuries, but the man shook his head. He hadn’t found anything, and Jude wasn’t showing signs of a concussion. Like she had said, there was no blood anywhere on the ground.
She sighed, and just as she was about to say something, a voice came from the direction of the ambulance at the entrance of the alley, “Is everything OK?”
It was Mr. Lee. He had rushed over once all of his customers had left. He had heard the sirens of the ambulance when it had stopped by his convenience store and seen the flashing red lights from the window.
“Everything is OK, sir. You don’t have to worry,” the male paramedic said.
Mr. Lee walked closer all the same while saying, “This is my store right here. I just want to make sure nothing bad happened on my watch…” When he finished that sentence, he was close enough to see a young man still on the ground, but sitting up now and holding his head. “Jude?!”
“Hey, Mr. Lee.”
“What happened?!”
“I…” Jude thought for a second and decided he really wasn’t sure of anything at that point. “I don’t really know.”
The female paramedic turned to the older Asian man and asked, “Do you know this man, sir?”
“Yes, well. We met just today. He bought some items from my store earlier today.”
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“To be honest, sir, we don’t think he should be alone. He is still confused, and we can’t rule out a concussion. Is it at all possible for you to watch him for an hour or two? Just to be safe.”
At that moment, Jude raised his hand and said, “I’m fine. Don’t worry, Mr. Lee.”
The old man turned to the female paramedic, and she silently shook her head no, indicating that Jude wasn’t fine at all.
Mr. Lee turned to Jude again and said, “I’ll watch over him. I’m keeping the store open for another hour, so he can stay with me until I close. No objections, Jude!”
The paramedics thanked Mr. Lee and walked Jude inside the store.
After checking on Jude one more time, the paramedics left. Mr. Lee put Jude in the back room, where Mr. Lee would do the accounting for the day when he wasn’t working the counter. He did have employees, but he had not called for them that night because of the storm.
With Jude settled down on a cot, Mr. Lee asked, “So, do you want to tell me what happened?”
“I don’t think you’ll believe me. The paramedics didn’t. They said I hallucinated.”
“Let me be the judge of that. Besides, I was a doctor, remember? They said they were scared of a concussion, but that there were no signs of one. So, maybe it’s something else. Tell me what happened.”
“OK…”
And so, Jude recounted everything from the time he had wished Mr. Lee Merry Christmas not even an hour earlier.
Mr. Lee waited for Jude to finish before saying, “I… It is a weird story. Do you feel anything on your body? You said something got passed to you.”
“I don’t feel anything different. And I haven’t heard the voice again either. The headache is mostly gone now too. If only I had gotten that woman’s name…”
“There are millions of people in this city. It’s unlikely you’d get anything even with a name.”
“That’s… true.”
“I’m gonna leave you here now while I close up shop. My daughter gets home today, around noon, and I want to be there when she does. Do not sleep! And if you feel any pain or discomfort at any point, shout for me. I’ll be just outside of the door. You’ll have about an hour to rest.”
“Thanks, Mr. Lee. And I’m sorry for giving you so much trouble.”
“Young man, it’s no trouble at all.”
After Mr. Lee closed the door, Jude pulled out his phone. It was about 2 a.m. now. In an hour, he had a party to go to, but right now, he didn’t feel like he would be able to make it. Still, he wanted to go. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have anything at all to do on Christmas. So with that in mind, he turned on a music app, pulled up a LoFi station and pressed play.
Jude knew Mr. Lee had told him not to sleep, but his body ached. With the music playing in the background, Jude closed his eyes. The goal hadn’t been to sleep, but just to rest. Yet, his energy simply left him, and he was lulled into slumber.
The city was empty, but there was no snow. Jude recognized that kind of emptiness from a documentary he had seen about a city that had suffered a nuclear disaster. A power plant had gone critical. Many people died, and many more lived with sequelae from exposure to radiation, things that would affect even those born of the survivors many years later. The city felt like that. Empty and dead. But, it had to be recent. The buildings weren’t dilapidated. There was nothing broken on the streets, and lamp posts still had power. The city was just empty.
As Jude looked around, he saw something rising from the ground, in the direction of Time Square, to above the skyline of the city. It looked like a giant spiral tower that glowed red every few seconds.
Once he saw the tower, Jude was compelled to walk toward it, and so he did. He felt like he walked for hours before he got near it and he saw nobody the entire way there. The city was entirely empty.
When he got to the tower, he saw that it rose way above the fog atop the city. He could see no end to it. He was going to keep getting closer, enough to touch it, but he stepped on something that almost made him slip. Looking down, he saw a newspaper. The date was January 5th, 2024, and the headline was “Giant Tower Rises from the Ground! Tens of Thousands Missing! Presumed Dead!”
The article recounted how on January 1st, 2024, the spiraling tower had risen from the ground, splitting the earth as it did so. At the same time, 100,000 residents of the city had suddenly disappeared. The government had deemed the area hazardous, unable to tell whether it had been the work of a terrorist attack or something else, and quarantined the city. The evacuation of the millions of residents had been nearly complete at the time the article had been written, meaning that Jude had no clue about what the date actually was.
After reading the article, he looked up at the tower again, and again, he felt a pull. It was beckoning him. The glowing red of the tower felt enticing somehow. He needed to get closer…
“Hey! Wake up! What did I say about sleeping?!”
“What?! Oh! Umm… don’t?”
“Exactly! So why were you? It doesn’t matter… How are you? Any dizziness? Blurred vision or headache?”
“No, I feel fine. I had a dream. It was so… weird.”
“Well, dreaming doesn’t really indicate anything, but I think we can rule out a concussion. Still, you should try to stay awake tonight, at least for a while.”
“Sure. I actually have somewhere to go at 3 a.m. What time is it?”
“It’s ten minutes past three. I just finished everything, so I’m about to close up. If you have people with whom you can stay, that’s good. Don’t! Drink!”
“I won’t, sir. I know better.”
“You shouldn’t have slept either, but you did that. Just be careful.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lee.”
After that conversation, Jude got up and headed out. After waking up, Jude felt better, so he decided that it would be OK for him to go to the party. The place wasn’t far from there, and like Mr. Lee had said, it would be better for him not to be alone that night.
With his decision made, Jude headed off to meet Nathan.