It was last Wednesday night. It was raining. The boys were in bed. I stayed up later than usual and got a late night shower. Josh stayed up watching TV, and Kate and I went to sleep in her room around 11:30pm. Ah, to go to bed clean feels so good. Especially when you're in freshly cleaned sheets. I drifted off to sleep listening to the rain coming down. I love that sound.
At 1:05am, I am awakened by our door bell ringing. Frantically. "Ding, dong. Ding, dong. Ding dong ding dong ding dong ding don ding do ding do ding d ding d..." Over and over and over. I sit up in bed and grab my phone. I call Josh, who I know is still downstairs. He answers, and I say, "What is that?!?" He says, suspiciously, "I don't know.... I'm in the bathroom." I think there may have been a pause between us, both of us not knowing what to make of what we just heard. Then, as he starts uttering the words, I hear it. Josh says, "Marcie, someone is banging on the side porch door." And I can hear it from Kate's room. Boom, boom, boom boom boom boom boom. My mind is absolutely racing at this point. Who in the world is doing this, and what do they want? Is someone hurt? Are they being chased? Do they want to hurt
us?
Still on the phone with Josh, and by now he's made his way out of the bathroom and into the kitchen to try to figure out what was going on. The next thing he says, in a voice that is full of fear (I can't even describe how he sounded, and later he told me that he was barely able to get the words out), he says, "Oh my God, Marcie. Call 911." He didn't shout it; he didn't say it quickly... it was rather slow and calm, but it sounded like he barely had the breath to speak. Also, we are not ones to say, "Oh my God." We are "Oh my gosh" people, you know?
Anyway, I jump out of bed so fast, hang up with him and call 911. I remember standing next to Kate's crib before opening the door to leave her room, dialing 911 and thinking, 'What do I do? Do I go downstairs? Do I get the kids up and take them somewhere?' But this is all happening in a split second, and before I even have time to process it, I'm headed down the stairs. The dispatcher answers and asks what my emergency is. I said, "I don't know, but I need someone at [our address]." She said, "What is going on?" I said, "I don't know yet, my husband just told me to call 911. There's someone at our house. I'm headed downstairs to find out what's going on." As I get downstairs, I hear Josh talking to someone. He's on the phone with 911 too. The dispatcher asks me if it is regarding a female. I said, "I don't know." I hear Josh describing a someone with long dreads to the other dispatcher. I tell her, "Yeah, it sounds like he's describing someone with long hair..." She said, "Yeah, it's going to be regarding a female. We've already gotten several calls about her tonight. There's an officer in your area." I tell her "Thank you" and hang up. Josh is still on the phone, and my heart is starting to slow down. Just a little, though. I find myself peeking around the corner at the side porch door, even though I know they're gone.
He finally gets off the phone, and we see the patrol car pass by our house shining a spotlight on our house as he passes. Josh tells me that when he walked into the den, he saw this woman at our side porch door, banging, screaming, begging for help. She was black, skinny, had long dreads, and was drenched. There's no porch light out there, and the lights in the den were off except for the TV and a lamp, so that was the only light illuminating her figure. It was apparently fairly frightening. It was when he saw her that he barely uttered those words to me, and he said he then slowly backed up into the kitchen and called 911 himself.
They wound up finding her in the street (it was still pouring down rain) in front of our neighbor's house. There were two patrol cars there, and we stood on the front porch and watched them put her in one. One of the officers came up to us and explained that she is a mental patient from a group home across the tracks. He said, "She does this, and for some reason it's always when it rains. She's not gonna harm anybody." He apologized for the disturbance and was on his way.
A heck of a disturbance it was. Wow.
Our doorbell has been rung a couple of times since then and it makes my heart skip a beat every time. And every time Josh or I have re-told that story, we've gotten chills. Visible goosebumps. The first couple of nights after that, as I closed my eyes to go to sleep in Kate's room I could hear that doorbell ringing and the side porch door being banged on. Josh has had similar issues. He woke up to the sound of our doorbell ringing the other night and finally convinced himself that it was a dream. A very mild case of PTSD, I suppose. I feel so silly that we were so affected by this, since it was just a crazy lady and nothing came of it, but in the moment we had no idea that everything would be okay, you know?
Thankfully all the kids slept through the whole ordeal. That's the last thing we would have wanted - them having nightmares and problems going to sleep after that.
I feel kind of bad that we turned our backs on her, with her begging for help like she was. If you've ever watched the show "I Survived," you've probably heard some of the victims talk about running up to a house, banging on the door, begging for someone to help, and the people won't let them in. Well, we just did that very thing! But we did immediately call 911. What if she
was being chased? Would we have invited that danger into our home with our three young children? I don't think so.
Anyway, just thought I'd share our little fiasco with you.
