If a man drops dead in a rose garden, and nobody notices, does he make a sound?
There is a wooden pavilion in a rose garden I cross through regularly on my way to the walking trail. Yesterday morning, as I hurried through the garden, I noticed a big, burly man supine on the bench in the rose pavilion, one foot still on the ground, the other on the bench, one arm across his forehead, the other on his chest. About forty. Wearing an immaculate white t-shirt, blue running shorts and new running shoes. Catching his breath, I guessed, after pushing himself too hard, out of shape and overweight as he clearly was. He seemed actually to have fallen asleep, not just resting.
An hour and a half later, having completed my walk and looped back to my starting point at the park, I saw the flashing lights of an ambulance. Still, I didn’t make a connection with the man until, striding through the rose garden, I saw him lying on the bench in the exact same position, but now three police officers surrounded him, and a fourth spotted me and shouted: “Ma’am! Get back!” As I turned and scrambled away, I heard another policeman say, “We have a heart attack victim here.” Others were blocking off the path with the yellow “Do Not Cross” tape. Then it was that I realized the man was dead.
They had just discovered him. He hadn’t moved a hair since I’d seen him an hour and a half earlier, so he must have lain there immobile for at least that long, in a public park with people passing constantly and children playing on the swings nearby, and no one had noticed or bothered to call for help until a few minutes ago. I hadn’t . What does that say about our society, even here, in a small, safe, southern college town? What does it say about me?
If he had looked like a person in distress, if he had been old or frail or a woman, would I have approached him and asked: “Are you alright?” I believe I would have. But I should have known he was in trouble nevertheless. Only homeless people sleep on a park bench in the middle of the day, and he was clearly not that.
This man looked like a family man, he had that look about him. He also looked like he’d once been athletic but had put on about fifty pounds over the years. Maybe his wife and kids finally talked him into taking care of his health and he decided to take up running, and pushed himself too hard. And now he would never come home.
One question torments me. Was he still alive when I first saw him? If I had called 911, would there still have been time to save him? I don’t know. I’ll never know. And not knowing will haunt me.
