I stood still for a moment, not quite believing what I was seeing. Then I grabbed one of the boxes and tried to shift it. The thing was heavier than it looked. I needed help.
I looked around for the office phone but couldn't see it anywhere. I started for the door when I remembered I still had my cell phone in my jacket pocket.
“Police, fire or ambulance?” the 911 dispatcher asked.
“I need an ambulance,” I told her. “There's been an accident.”
I gave the address, then ran down the hall to pound on the door I thought was Gwen's. “The office,” I gasped when she answered the door, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “I need help.”
“Rebecca, what on earth . . . ?” But I was already running back down the hallway. Gwen followed. She still had the dishtowel in her hand when she got to the office, but she dropped it when she saw the legs under the pile of boxes.
“Oh, no, I think that's Les.”
We were able to shift the heavy boxes together, lifting them off quickly and piling them to the side. But when we pulled the last box off him we could see that he wasn't moving and that blood was pooling around his head.
“Do you think someone broke in?” she asked. “There's stuff all over the place, but there usually is. All these boxes.”
“Maybe he was trying to get something in one of the boxes, and they fell over,” I said.
"I knew this office wasn't safe. I should have done something. But every time I brought up how cluttered the office was, Les would just say he was going to get to it soon. He had a million excuses. He was going to sort through the stuff and get rid of it; he just needed to get the storage room painted. Now look!”
“I called the ambulance, but we should probably do something.”
Les was lying face down and I could see a huge wound on the back of his head. Blood stained the fringe of dark hair that circled his bald spot and trickled to the floor. I know head wounds could bleed heavily, even if they weren't serious. But this looked like a lot of blood. I picked up the dishtowel Gwen had dropped and pressed it against Les's head.
She shuddered. “All that blood.”
I could hear Les taking raspy breaths. Then they were drowned out by the sound of an approaching ambulance, and I sighed with relief.
Gwen looked a bit greenish. “I'll go let them in.”
I was relieved when the paramedics took charge, loading Les onto a stretcher and wheeling him out. They moved quickly, and I worried about the serious looks on their faces.
The elderly woman I'd seen at the meeting peeked out from the door of one of the ground floor units. She was wrapped in a bathrobe, and wisps of her hair stood up like she'd just woken up. She had a scared look on her face.
“We've had an accident, but everything's been taken care of,” Gwen assured her. “You can go back to sleep.”
Gwen still looked too pale.
“Do you want to go back to your place and sit down? You look a little shaky.”
She shook her head.
"I guess we need to notify his family. They'll want to be with him.”
“Does he have a wife and kids?”
“You know, I have no idea. Les has worked here for longer than I've lived here, but he never really talked about himself. We must have some contact information in the files,” she said. “Can you help me look?”
The filing cabinets were unlocked. Gwen frowned at that. “These are supposed to be kept locked. Ruth usually handles the filing, but Les might have been looking for something,” she said. “We just need to find the staff records.”
We each took one of the file cabinets. I found a file marked PERSONNEL. I handed it to Gwen, and she started to leaf through the sheets of paper.
“Oh, here it is,” she said with relief. “And he does have an emergency contact listed. Oh, that's odd.” She looked up. “He's listed an emergency contact, but the person he's listed is Ruthie.”
“He's related to Ruth?” I asked.
“Well, not that I knew, and that wouldn't really be appropriate. He supervises her work. But she was hired before I got on the Board, so I don't know. Maybe he just listed her because he doesn't have family nearby.
“Anyway, I guess I need to call her and let her know.” She looked around the room. “It probably would be a good idea to clean up this mess, but I just can't handle it right now. I'll just lock up and we can deal with it tomorrow.”
She was just locking the office door when I saw Mariana coming down the hallway.
“Did something happen?” she asked. “I heard a siren.” Then she gasped. “Oh, my goodness, Rebecca, are you all right?” She hurried toward me.
I looked down to see what she was looking at. My pants and T-shirt were streaked with blood, and the palms of my hands were covered with it.