A Shot in the Dark

January of 2004 I had a minor surgery during my winter break from school.  Shortly after the surgery both my parents had to go out of town for a week for a sales meeting.  Since I hadn’t fully recovered, I asked my good friend Patrice to come stay with me just in case anything happened.

Unfortunately for Patrice, I was still pretty useless during her watch.  Still heavily medicated, I really didn’t do much other than nap and watch TV; which only last for about two hours before I’d nap again.  We attempted a trip to the mall once, but after only fifteen minutes in the first store I had to leave because I was too exhausted.

One night (when I finally made it past 8:00pm) we decided to watch Bad Boys II.  About halfway through the movie we heard a gunshot outside.  (If you recall from earlier posts, my parent’s house is surrounded by acres and acres of woods; which are often times full of hunters).  The sound of a gunshot is pretty unmistakable, and not usually a good sign. 

“What was that?” Patrice asked.
“I’m sure it was just a hunter.  We get a lot of those around here,” I calmly answered as if the hunters had ever been close enough to the house for us to hear their shots.  We both seemed content with my answer and went back to watching the movie.

(what I assume the hunters in our yard look like)

About thirty seconds later there was a second shot.  By this time logic had set in.

“Wait a second.  It’s nine o’clock at night.  It’s been dark for hours.  That CAN’T be a hunter!” I exclaimed.  Clearly the next logical explanation was a crazy serial killer (are there any that aren’t crazy?) 

There are all sorts of windows in my parents living room, one of them being about the size of the wall.  I kept getting flashes in my head of stray bullets from the serial killer’s gun flying through and shattering the massive window, landing somewhere in me or Patrice…or worse yet…Pippen.  We had to act fast!

(Large window, vulnerable to stray bullets)

I grabbed Pippen while shouting, “We have to get to an inner wall where the bullets can’t reach us!  I’ll grab the dog, you grab the phone!  The safest place for us is the hallway, out of sightline from the windows!”

Instead of calling 9-1-1, I first called my mom (if I had known Darren at the time, I probably would’ve called him too).  She said I needed to first calm down, if there was no imminent danger then we should call the non-emergency police number.  I didn’t know that number by heart.  We needed a phone book.  Patrice bravely volunteered to risk her life by walking in front of multiple windows to get the phone book out of the office.

I can’t recall why, but we decided Patrice would make the call.  Probably because she wasn’t the one crouched down in the inner hallway clutching the dog screaming about a serial killer outside.  She told the woman on the phone our location and that we heard gun shots and think there may be a situation. 

It turned out a car had hit a deer right in front of our house.  The deer was pretty badly injured so when the cops arrived they shot it to put it out of its misery.  (Apparently the cop wasn’t that great of a shot though if it took two bullets to kill the already hanging by a thread Bambi!)

We requested that if this happen again they call and at least let us know the reasoning behind the shots.  The lady on the phone apologized, saying she didn’t realize it would alarm any residents.  How foolish of us to react to the sound of a deadly weapon!

Between all the giggling that proceeded and the excitement of ‘cheating death’, I was too tired to watch the rest of the movie and went to bed.  I’m sure Patrice stayed up contemplating why it was she agreed to spend a whole week with me!