It had been a precise fall, quick and sharp, as a nail slipped into wood, and the someone who had fallen had stood back up, awkward and disoriented in such a situation, and then, just as quickly, had fallen back down, the forehead first, onto an oak tree next to the sidewalk where the someone had been walking.

For a moment it had sounded like carpentry outside.

Some of the someones who lived in a house close to where the someone had fallen had seen the someone fall and were thinking about taking action.

“Someone has fallen,” someone said, looking out the blinds of a window, “someone has fallen and they are not standing back up.” Some-other-ones shrugged as the someone at the blinds turned towards them. The someone at the blinds stood still then walked into the kitchen to make a sandwich.

Someone with a bedroom facing the space where the someone who had fallen had fallen looked down from the bedroom window and started counting the time it took for some-other-one to help the someone who had fallen. Nothing for twenty-five minutes. Then forty-five. The someone with the bedroom put on some music and lay down for a little while.

A few some-other-ones walked over the someone who had fallen, grazing the someone who had fallen’s pant leg as they looked at a text message on a cell phone screen.

“Someone else is so fucked,” one of them said, pointing at the screen and snickering.

Eventually, the someone with the bedroom facing the oak tree forgot about the someone who had fallen and about the possibility of some-other-one helping the someone who had fallen and about the day’s events, about the color of things, about the casual retreats from meaning that stung, however dully, at one and would not fade, and closed their eyes in an attempt to sleep.

As the someone with the bedroom attempted sleep, the someone’s thoughts ran through images from the day, like a slideshow, a recap of another game that had been played and finished.

One of the last images was of the someone who had fallen’s body, which looked like it had tried hugging the oak tree and had failed or missed and now lay at the oak tree’s base sprawled out, as some skin that had been shed, some container tossed down like litter.

After a short while of being asleep, the someone with the bedroom was awoken by the wave of a siren and a flood of light coming in through the blinds of the bedroom window.

The someone with the bedroom stood up and looked through the blinds of the window at the street below. There was the ambulance now, blinking against the house that the someone with the bedroom lived in, the colors of emergency, red and yellow-white, panting against everything within close enough distance. The someone with the bedroom stood up and put on a coat.

The someone with the bedroom walked outside and stood close to the edge of the front porch, left hand clutching the black barrier of it, squinting towards the road, which now seemed an incalculable distance away.

Turning from the road, the someone with the bedroom studied a brick that made the house that the someone with the bedroom and some-other-ones lived in able to stand, suddenly interested in how the three-story house just stood there like it did.

How easy it was to forget simple things, structural information, like this.

The someone with the bedroom turned again towards the ambulance, trying to locate the someone who had fallen through the beating of light.

A some-other-one, who had come in the ambulance, helped the someone who had fallen up off of the ground and then looked at the someone with the bedroom while pointing at the someone who had fallen’s head.

The some-other-one who had come with the ambulance turned the someone who had fallen’s body toward the someone with the bedroom and the someone with the bedroom shrugged towards it. The someone who had fallen’s head seemed like it had been dented. A stretcher was produced and the someone who had fallen was strapped into it and hurried into the back of the ambulance. The doors closed and the exhaust let out a sigh.

The ambulance drove off, a police car magnetized close behind. The someone with the bedroom stood there for a moment staring at the space where the someone who had fallen had just been. It seemed odd that the someone who had fallen was gone now.

The wind blew. There was blood and what seemed like skin on the oak tree and part of the sidewalk.

Later, when telling the story of the someone who had fallen to a friend or neighbor or a passerby who, perhaps, wanted to know if anything exciting had happened recently, or remembered hearing an ambulance the other night, or noticed the blood on the oak tree, the someone with the bedroom would start by saying Someone fell.

Sometimes, depending on who the someone with the bedroom was telling the story to, the someone with the bedroom would elaborate and describe the experience with more adjectives and nouns, but most of the time the someone listening was someone who the someone with the bedroom did not wish to talk with for more than a short moment in time, and the someone with the bedroom would just leave it there like that: Someone fell. -Richard Wehrenberg Jr