If I Lose Her

by Greg Joseph Daily

  I sat in front of the glass door to my small balcony for a while looking out at nothing in particular then I turned and watched Jo. The sight of her under my sheets comforted me more than the milk, so I swallowed the last swallow and climbed back into bed next to her. As I wrapped my arm around her I could feel that her thin cotton shirt was wet. She had sweat right through it. I gently touched her face. It was hot and wet.

  I wasn’t sure what to do; I didn’t want to wake her. She looked like she was sleeping so peacefully, so I got up and opened a window and cracked the glass door. Then I pulled back the top blanket and climbed back into bed. I’ll just let her sleep and make sure she’s alright in the morning.

  The next morning I woke before my alarm went off with the cottony-smell of Jo still in the bed next to me. She was already off to her first class of the day. The warm smell of her presence always lingered in the apartment long after she had left.

  I jumped in the shower and tabulated a mental checklist of everything I needed to take with me this morning. My first morning as a real photojournalist.

  I popped the lid off of my shaving cream can, squirted a small pile of clear-blue gel into my palm and rubbed it in my hands until it frothed and foamed.

  Comfortable shoes. Clean Jeans. The blue polo shirt Jo gave me for Christmas.

  I rubbed the lather across my face and drew the razor. Pull by pull I erased the short stiff whiskers on my cheeks, chin and neck.

  Driver’s license. Social Security card. Transcripts. Credentials.

  I washed my face clean with water as hot as I could take it and squeezed a dollop of gel into my palm. With a rub of my hands I ran the gel through my wavy brown hair and looked at myself in the mirror.

  Is this the face of a decent journalist?

  I found my clean clothes, put them on and poured myself a bowl of frosted flakes.

  There was a note on the kitchen counter.

  Alex,

  I wish I could just curl up with you all day. Your soft skin. Your warm breath. I watched you sleep for a while before I left. You’re so beautiful.

  I hope you have a wonderful first day at the paper. You should call me this afternoon. I love you,

  -Jo

  I smiled as I read it, then I finished my cereal and left the note on the counter while I finished getting ready.

  The drive to Boulder was beautiful. All along the east side of I-36 lay golden-prairie grass with patches of suburbs. In the distance was Denver. Along the West were the saw-tooth peaks of the Flatiron Mountains. As I drove I remembered the time both lanes of traffic stopped to let an elk cross the street that was taller than my car with a rack of antlers that was just stunning. It wasn’t often that I could drive through the area without at least seeing some deer.

  I got to the newsroom and found Dan sitting at his desk.

  “Mornin’.”

  “Morning Dan.”

  “Did you bring the paperwork I asked for?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got it right here,” I said reaching into my bag and handing it to him.

  “Good. We just got a call that they found a suspicious package at the Boulder County Hospital. It’s probably nothing, but I’m sending you out to see what you can see,” he said walking over to a large map pinned to one side of a cubicle wall. “When you get there make sure you talk to the PIO, and make sure your credentials are showing. What you’re looking for are any emotions you can get. Faces. Action. That kind of thing. What’s the longest lens you’ve got?”

  “A 70-200.”

  “What gear do you shoot with?”

  “Canon.”

  “Shit. Okay.”

  He walked over to a metal cabinet and unlocked the door.

  “Take this and this,” he said handing me a Nikon body and a 300-millimeter lens.

  “Have you ever shot with a Nikon?”

  “Yeah for my school.”

  “Good. And, you need to make sure you get names. We need the name of anyone in your shots that can be recognized. Have you ever written up a photo caption?”

  “No.”

  He walked back to his desk and handed me a notepad and a pen.

  “Two or three sentences for each shot we use in the paper. But don’t worry too much about that out there. Just keep mental notes of what is going on. Oh, and one more thing.”

  “Okay.”

  “Make damn sure you double check the spelling of each person’s name EVERY SINGLE TIME. We get no END of shit if someone’s name is spelled wrong. Got it?”

  Captions. Show credentials. Take mental notes of what’s happening. Spell people’s names right. PIO?

  “One question. What’s a PIO?”

  “Public Information Officer. They’re the police officer assigned to babysit the media. Her name is Sarah Clark. Find her and talk to her, but don’t let her corral you. Anything else?”

  “No I don’t think so.”

  “Call my cell if you need anything.”

  I took the directions he gave me and drove out to the hospital.

  So much for getting eased into this.

  I found the hospital and parked behind a long line of cars on a side street. I turned both cameras on and confirmed that they had plenty of battery life and memory. Then I put the long lens on the Nikon, slung it over one shoulder and slung my camera bag over my other shoulder. Then I walked to the end of the street and immediately met three police officers and a line of yellow tape. One officer held out his hand to stop my approach.

  Remember to show your credentials.

  I pulled out my credentials, shiny and new and held the card up to the officer.

  “I’m with the Daily Camera. I’m looking for Sarah Clark.”

  He glanced at my card then pointed me to a field across the street from the hospital where I could see a short woman with blonde hair talking to a group of people. Three of the people in the group were recording her on large video cameras marked with the channels of the local television news stations.

  I walked up just as she finished answering one of the reporter’s questions.

  “Hi. I’m Alex Douglas with the Daily Camera. Are you Sarah Clark?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I ask what the situation is?”

  “I don’t have a lot of information to give at the moment. We have found a package in one of the doctor’s offices that we are taking a close look at, and we are asking that all media remain here where I can offer updates as I receive them.”

  Don’t let her corral you.

  “What side of the building is the doctor’s office on?”

  “We’re not prepared to share that information at this time, but if you remain here, I will probably have more information in about fifteen minutes.”

  “No problem. Thank you,” I said with the biggest fake smile I could muster. Then she walked away.

  I looked around. I couldn’t see much except for the police blocking off each road leading up to the hospital. There were also several police cars, both marked and unmarked, on the grass between the parking lot and the street.

  I walked down the park to see what was on the opposite side of the hospital from where I came. Forest. I looked through my lens. It wasn’t much help. I walked back toward the street near where I had parked and thought about the two-story houses overlooking the hospital. I had an idea.

  I walked up the driveway of the first house and knocked on the front door. No answer. Nothing from the second or third either. No surprise. It was the middle of a weekday; most people were probably at work.

  The fourth house sat directly across from the emergency room. Today’s copy of the Daily Camera, in its green-plastic bag, poked out of the front bush. I took it out of the bush and knocked on the front door. A tiny woman looking very much like my grandmother opened the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Hello ma’am. My name is Alex Douglas. I work for the Daily Camera, and I happened to notice your newspaper was stuck in your bush. I thought you might like to have it.”<
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  “Oh my goodness. Thank you. I was looking for that all morning. The boy who delivers it keeps throwing it on my roof, and I have to come out in my slippers and knock it down with my broom. I’ve tried to call the news people about it but I can never get through.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that ma’am. If you like, when I get back to my office I can have someone look into it.”

  “Would you? That would mean so much to me. Some mornings I can’t get it down, and I have to go all day without my stories.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Margery Jenkins.”

  I took out my pad, asked her to spell that for me and wrote it down.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know what is going on across the street would you?”

  “Oh, I was watching something about it on the television. They said something about a box in the doctor’s office. I hope everything is alright. I was just over there yesterday.”

  “Really? Did everything look alright yesterday?”

  She thought for a moment. “Yes, I think so.”

  “I don’t mean to impose, but I was wondering if you would mind terribly if I went up on your balcony to see if I can take a photograph–for the newspaper.”

  “Oh, that would be fine.” Then she opened the door and I went in.

  Margery’s house was clean and well kept with photos of family lining the walls. On the television in the living room the network news gave an update. I followed Margery up to the balcony.

  From where I now stood I could see over the parking lot and into the windows in the hospital. A square metal truck slowly drove up with a man hanging from hooks on the back.

  I lifted my camera and started shooting.

  If I didn’t know that this was an explosives technician, I could easily think this guy was going to the moon rather than anywhere here on planet earth. He wore green, heavy armor with a high collar that nearly hid his black helmet.

  He pushed a button on the side of the truck door and the hooks lowered him to the pavement. Then with slow, labored steps he walked into the building. The truck pulled around the parking lot and backed up to the emergency room doors where he went in.

  “Can I get you a cup of tea?” Margery asked.

  I looked at her. “No ma’am. Thank you. Is it okay if I stay here for a little bit, just to get a few more pictures?”

  “Stay as long as you like.”

  I looked at the back of my camera and scrolled through a few of the shots I had captured so far.

  He looks interesting, but there’s no action, no emotion. Dan wanted me to watch for action and emotion.

  My phone rang.

  “This is Alex.”

  “Alex, this is Dan. How’s it going?”

  “I met the PIO, and you were right. She tried to get me to stay out in some field so she could feed me information.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “There are homes across the street from the hospital, and I met a lady who let me watch what is happening from her balcony.”

  “No shit?”

  “It looks like the bomb squad just sent someone inside, but the truck is partially blocking my view.”

  “Well, stay there. I don’t give a shit what happens, don’t leave that balcony. I’m on my way over, and I’ll cover the ground game. You just stay where you are.”

  “Oh, Dan I gotta go, something’s happening.” Then I looked through my lens and watched a small robot roll its way off the back of the truck, and the truck pulled away. The man in the suit was standing outside now, controlling the robot, as it rolled into the hospital. Then he followed it inside. For a long while nothing happened. I set my bag down on the fake-grass carpeting next to me and leaned against the wall. I could hear the news from downstairs talk about how they had been able to confirm that a disgruntled employee of the hospital had left a box in the doctor’s office overnight. There was no word yet who the employee was or what steps the bomb disposal unit was taking to deal with the package.

  As I heard the reporter say this from the television downstairs, I watched the armored man walk backwards through the emergency room doors, which were propped open. He backed out into the parking lot as the robot emerged from the building. From my distance I was able to get a shot with both the robot and the bomb expert in the frame. I also zoomed in close on the robot and the package. It was a red, metal toolbox.

  I guess the expert had to see where the robot was going, because as soon as the robot was outside, he turned and started walking toward the bomb truck. I might have been the only one to see it because my lens was trained right on the robot, but just then the package fell out of the robotic arm. Nothing happened.

  Hmm. That’s anticlimactic.

  I zoomed out to frame the robot and the package together when the toolbox exploded, launching the robot through the emergency room doors and shattering nearly every car window and pane of glass on the front of the hospital. Several car alarms began to screech.

  It took a couple of minutes, but fire trucks pulled into the parking lot and fire men set to quickly put out a small fire just inside the front doors. I just kept shooting.

  When I thought it was calm I scrolled through the shots and sure enough, it was like looking at a slow-motion movie of the explosion. In one frame the toolbox is lying on the ground in front of the robot with the emergency room sign above them both. The next frame is of a small ball of fire pushing the robot off of its wheels, and the glass on the emergency room doors is shattering. In the third frame there is no sign of the box or the robot, just a black spot on the ground in front of broken windows.

  About twenty minutes later, after the fire truck pulled away, I got on my cell and called Dan.

  “Hey Alex. Did you get a shot?”

  “Yeah, I got pretty lucky. I saw the robot drop the toolbox and took a couple of shots just when the thing exploded.”

  “Wait. What did you say?”

  “I said I got a shot of the bomb actually exploding!”

  “That’s great, but before that.”

  “What? That I saw the robot drop the toolbox?”

  “Don’t tell anyone else that until you get back to the office, and I want you to head back right now. Don’t talk to anyone. Just wait for me.”

  I hung up the phone and did what I was told.

  Back at the office I dropped my photos into the folder Dan allotted to me on the newspapers servers while he explained that the PIO wasn’t disclosing the bit about the robot dropping the box, and that he thought that that was an important bit of information that the other news agencies didn’t have.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon editing through my shoot and writing up captions. Then I went home. On the way, I called Jo and told her about my day.

  “Am I going to see you later?”

  “I’m going to probably stay home tonight. I skipped Calc and English Lit to see the doctor this afternoon.”

  “You were sweating pretty bad last night. Is everything alright?”

  “I’m sure it’s fine. I’m just not feeling too hot.”

  “Can I bring you something?”

  “Probably not tonight if that’s okay. I’m just going straight to bed.”

  Then we said our good-byes and I hung up the phone.

  The next morning, when I walked into the newsroom, I saw the day’s newspaper.

  The photo I took of the exploding toolbox was on the front cover in what the news biz calls the A-1 spot.

  Let me tell you: there is NOTHING like seeing your work in print.

  Twenty-Seven

  It was Friday night. I was arriving late from Boulder, because I was covering some protest on CU Boulder campus. I still had the taste of chocolate cupcake on my lips because someone who I had never met before was having a birthday in the office and brought in two boxes of the icing covered delights.

  I had never been to the Denver Art Museum even though I had driven by it countless times. The museum had just months earlier fin
ished their new building designed by the very same Daniel Libeskind who was working on the design for the new world trade center building in New York City. The old building looked like a slender castle keep plated with porcelain plates and set slightly askew. The new building was the paragon of modernity with angles that mirrored the jutting peaks of the Rocky Mountains that filled the landscape behind it.

  I had brought my camera with me to capture Jo’s big night, and the uniqueness of the location and the lights of the city gave me an endless supply of things to photograph.

  I snapped a few photos of some interesting statues in front of the building. One was of a bronze bull, many times larger than life size, which sat on its rear forever watching oncoming traffic. Another was of a two-story, red and blue hand broom sweeping up giant-sized bits of trash into a giant pan. The colors were fun, and the motion of the bristles made me feel, while I stood next to it, like I was a Lilliputian about to be swept up by some giant, unseen maid. Jo had given me one of the passes the museum had supplied her with for the evening, so I popped a mint in my mouth, showed my pass to the doorman and went inside.

  Green and purple lights painted the walls of the hall where people, dressed in black, mingled and drank Champagne. I grabbed a flute from a passing waiter and followed the signs to the ‘New Artists to Watch’ exhibit.

  As I climbed a set of steep stairs I saw Jo laugh and finish the last swallow of her Champagne. It reminded me of the night I saw her through the window of the little gallery on Sante Fe Blvd. She had grown up since then, no longer nervously trying to belong. She was wearing a strapless, black evening dress and a gorgeous pair of high-heel shoes that had a little strap that wrapped around her ankles.

  “Hey you,” she said reaching out to take my hand. Then she kissed my cheek. “I want to introduce you to Marta Stephens who made all of this possible.”

  “Hello.”

  The older woman with auburn hair smiled with feigned modesty. “Oh Jo, stop it. You are here because you deserve it. This is beautiful work.”