It's a moment to realize that indeed there's something wrong with a place... the way a door might be ajar, the standing silence in a room... it's there right under your nose, and in most cases, remains unnoticed until that one slow pause of realization strikes your awareness.
The signs are there, but it's up to the person to see them.
It's up to the person, truly concerned and curious as to the reasons for the door, the unnatural quiet, to go into that room and investigate.
And it's up to that one person in the end, to react accordingly.
For that is all we can really do with what we are given.
"Marie? Oh my God – Marie are you all right? Marie? MARIE?"
She sank to her knees, touching the cold skin of the older woman's neck – sobbing at there was nothing under her fingertips, no promising twitch of life under the puffy wrinkled flesh. Her other hand moved of its own accord past the slacken jaw, to the wide glassy eyes that stared up beyond the ceiling, touching the lids enough to bring them back down over the dull brown iris. It was a face she couldn't bare to see, she opted to staring at the hands still clenching claw like to the telephone – the hands that were once warm, soft, a gentle scent of peach rising as they would pat your shoulder. Telling you not to work so hard lest you were liable to out run the sun. Trying to identify the small voice coming up from that object, trying to understand what had occurred, what to do.
She took the phone from those fingers, choking on that familiar scent of the hand lotion, raising it to her ear as she heard the operator pick up the noises on the other side. Asking if everything was all right, if there was something needed.... was there an emergency...
What did she need? She needed Marie to be all right. She needed this to be nothing more than a nightmare and for her to wake up sweating and shaking in bed right about now. What did she need? She looked up and stared out at the city from the moving curtains, the open window, past the fire escape to the graying brick buildings skirting the summer skies – she stared out and finally spoke in a tiny voice.
"I need an ambulance."