And the phone rang, and it rang, and the woman screamed once more, and I connected to another number, and told her the ambulance service would answer as soon as they could, and it rang twelve times while she screamed and the siren blared above the windows while the rush-hour crowds streamed through Hyde Park.
Inside these sounds, she’d said, people’s lives either became richer than what they usually were, like fruits ripened by good weather, or fell flat, like dry leaves.
I spent every night lying on the lower bunk of our bunk bed, looking up at the yellowed bottom of my brother’s mattress, crafting a future self in his shadow.