“Maura, did you hear a scream?”

 Our Neighbor Ann

by Wil Bosbyshell

Charlotte has absolutely perfect weather. I have lived in places with horrific weather, like Lawton, Oklahoma and Fairbanks, Alaska. In Charlotte you can open your windows open six months a year in the spring and the fall.

To take advantage of the wonderful weather in Charlotte we had screens on all our windows and doors. One evening in the spring my wife, Maura, and I were sitting in our living room reading and listening to music on the radio, windows wide open.

It was dark outside; the tree frogs and cicadas were staging their own ‘battle of the bands’ to compete with the radio. Through the music on the radio, the reptiles and insects outside mating outside, I thought that I heard something.

My ears picked up a scream, I thought. “Maura, did you hear a scream?” “What, no,” she said. I got up and went to our front door I walked outside onto our porch. I looked up and down the street. Nothing. A normal, boring week night evening in Charlotte.

I looked at my left a little longer. We had new neighbors who had just moved in. A young married couple. The woman, Ann, was pregnant with their first child. We were excited to have a couple as neighbors. Our previous neighbors had been two single men we knew from being in the Young Affiliates of the Mint Museum. We liked them and the wild parties they threw, but the house and the yard was not the most visually pleasing, if you know what I mean. Both men have since gotten married, moved away, and reduced the wildness of their parties.

Anyway, nothing going on in either direction on our quiet Charlotte street. I walked inside, “Maura, I swear I heard an exceedingly long scream. It was very faint, but distinct.” We went back to reading. I must be hearing things echoing at a great distance from the major highway in the distance.

Moments later all hell broke loose.

A ladder engine roared up, full siren! Followed by an ambulance and the Fire Chief car, all on full sirens. They all rushed into our new neighbor’s home with lots of first aid boxes.

We ran outside. The entire neighborhood ran outside.

The paramedics emerged from the house with Ann on a stretcher and strapped to a backboard. Oh no. They were in a hurry. The sirens blazed as the ambulance raced away with Ann and her husband.

“What do you think happened?” Maura asked. “I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good,” I said.

We got the full story from her then husband: our pregnant neighbor was moving things around her new attic over her new garage. She had two cats and one ran into the attic with her. Curiosity killed the cat, I heard said once. In this case, the curious cat almost killed the owner. The cat ran onto the rafters, bad cat. Ann went to retrieve the cat and stepped off the attic plywood flooring onto the garage drywall ceiling.

As she said later, she felt like Wile E. Coyote because she stood on the unsupported drywall garage ceiling for a second, then fell straight through. She hit the track of the garage door and bounced off stacked bicycles screaming on her way down to the hard cement garage floor. In a calm voice she asked her husband, who was looking down at her through the hole in the garage ceiling saying to, “call 911, dear.”

Ann was fine; her unborn child, Grace, was fine; the cat was fine. Bad kitty, very bad kitty.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

As I write this now, Grace is 17 years old and a very healthy and smart senior in high school. Ann is in the ICU at Duke Medical Center recovering from open heart surgery. The surgery was not caused by the fall, no, just genetics.

Her husband Greg is keeping us updated and I am worried for Anne. She has been and is a wonderful neighbor and friend. We love her so much. We prayed and she survived falling through her attic to crash on the garage floor when she was eight months pregnant. I'm counting on her surviving open-heart surgery. If you can bounce off a cement slab when you're 8 months pregnant you're pretty tough.

I'm betting on you, Ann.