Lockdown

Posted on ‍‍February 11, 2013 - 1 Adar 5773 by Lillian Cohen-Moore

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I have a story I tell people, from when I was a news intern. I generally leave out much of the following details when I do so.

I always tell it like it’s a funny story. I laugh and grin over dinner with friends, or drinks in the bar, as I tell and retell it. It’s worn smooth on the edges. Just a silly anecdote, even if I take the time to give the slice-of-life setup. The funny, awkward days that preceded the event.

I do not ever let that smile drop, and tell them how convinced I was that I was going to die that day. That when the blue light came on, a good six feet if not more over my desk, that the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Never once had the light been explained to me, and I had never been brave enough to ask.

But it was on now. My boss saw me staring out of the conference room window at it; I was as transfixed as I was terrified. He looked out, and saw the flashing light. He didn’t look terrified. He didn’t look strained or frightened. I found my voice and said something I didn’t want the answer to.

“What’s that?”

My co-workers glanced out the conference room window. We could hear running upstairs. Muffled shouting. The sounds of struggle.

“We’re in a lockdown.”

“Shouldn’t we leave or something?”

There was the pause in the air, that everyone was listening to whatever came next. Listening to us, listening to the ceiling, listening and waiting for screams, or shots. Waiting for confirmation.

“Either they’ll have everything taken care of, or we’re all dead in ten minutes.”

He turned back to everyone else, to the meeting, and kept talking. No one looked worse than a little anxious. I couldn’t figure out how they could be so calm. I didn’t know why, wouldn’t know, till much later.

I swallowed, while everyone kept talking, as they pushed the meeting forward.

My throat clicked. My face was flushed pink and my arms felt like they were freezing. I went to sneak my phone out of my pocket, and found only bus fare. My phone was on my desk out in the newsroom. My purse was under it. My headphones and the everyday ephemera of my work life scattered across the boring, light coloured desk top. I had a pen and a notepad in my lap. I had a button-down shirt, slacks and sneakers on. My mogen david was around my neck. It was just like any other day, except the light was still flashing.

My thoughts raced, one after another, feeling like they lasted forever and only took seconds. Trying to calculate risk, wondering if everything was going to be okay, trying to remember the exits, trying to remember things from when I’d taught in a religious school, trying to remember when they’d taught us how to run, trying not to remember the day the news had come on and trying—trying

trying to breathe. I needed to focus. Take notes. Listen. My phone was in the newsroom, and if someo—

—if the disturbance came downstairs, we were stuck in a conference room with a huge window into the newsroom, and shitty exits. If something happened too quickly I knew I could not call my parents, my friends, or tweet a last goodbye. If something happened too quickly, I would die in that room with my co-workers, die during a normal afternoon where I was a news intern and we were all in a routine meeting

and I wouldn’t get to say goodbye, or blog, or tell anyone what I was thinking or what the light had done to my adrenaline when it came on and how I’d known, just known it wasn’t a fire alarm because fire alarms make a sound

—and I gripped my pen. I kept writing notes. Later, after work, I laughed it off. A little shook up, everything’s okay. Everything’s fine.

I tell it like a funny story. Years later, I laugh and grin as other people shiver.

I sobbed in the shower that night. Because it’s not really all that funny when you think about how that little blue light might not turn on in time and how sometimes there isn’t a blue light

and then

there isn’t anything all.

I never go anywhere without my phone in my pocket anymore.

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