There was no denying it was a gunshot.

Not like on those summer nights with the window open and you lying awake at night listening to the pop-pop! And you say, “maybe a car backfired. Maybe someone’s lighting off fireworks.” You just try to ignore the sirens that follow because, anyway, sirens are like background noise in the Mission District—like songbirds in the suburbs maybe.

This time I couldn’t pretend, the sound was unmistakable.  Just one loud bang!  And any doubt about it was hard to reconcile with the way that black car pealed away and sped off down the side street.

Should we go check it out? It wasn’t really a question.  We were already crossing the street to the other side of 22^nd and Valencia, walking in that direction.  Andrej said, It smells like gunpowder, and I guess he was right, I mean he would know I think, having lived through the Balkan wars and all. We were still on the opposite side of the street when a drunken bum teetered towards us. “Hey!  Kid’s down. The kid’s been shot.” Not hysterical or anything. Not at all actually. In a quiet tone, very matter of fact. We couldn’t feign shock either, we knew what we would find if we crossed that street. As we walked closer I was trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness. Was this the only block without streetlights? Had a kid been shot, really? I was scanning the sidewalk, as if it would be easy to miss…

When I was a little girl I remember walking out to the end of the pier one summer day with my family, to where the men lean over the edge and dangle their fishing lines into the water. Around their boots, piles of dead fish glimmering silver in the sunlight. There was a commotion at the very end. Everyone was egging him on as he reeled in something heavy, thrashing at the end of the line. Someone called it a guitar fish I think, but it looked more like a small shark to me. The fisherman slapped the convulsing hulk of cartilage down on the pier’s wooden planks. I watched the creature gasp and twist and choke. The terrible wheezing sounds coming from its little round mouth had the effect of making it seem more like a human child than a fish. Didn’t anyone else hear this? Wasn’t anyone listening? I wanted to throw the thing back into the sea, but it was out of the question. What right had I, an eight-year-old girl, to interfere with the fisherman’s prized catch? I wanted to hold the poor fish, calm his sobs, say “it’s okay, it’s okay.” But it seemed the only thing I could do was bear witness to its suffering. I watched until its round eyes clouded over like the sky. Until its fish-body quieted down, and no more sound escaped its little mouth. My father said it was time to go. I didn’t say a word.

He looked like a fish lying there on the concrete.

Is it wrong to say that? Except he wasn’t moving; he wasn’t making a sound. Is he alive? Is he breathing? I walked closer to see his tongue thrusting in his mouth a little, as he tried to take in air. The rest, motionless, and his eyes, though open, were already clouding over. The man from the apartment above leaned through the window with his phone to his ear. Someone yelled, “He’s been shot! Call an ambulance!” It must have been Andrej because I couldn’t say a thing. I just stood there watching him trying to breath. How many more did he have? Breaths, I mean.  He wasn’t a “kid,” but he was probably under thirty. He didn’t seem to be in terrible pain, but he didn’t look peaceful either. I couldn’t tell where he’d been shot, and to be honest I didn’t kneel down to check. Should we find his wound? Should we put pressure on it? And CPR? What about CPR? I was trying to remember what they did in the movies. It didn’t matter, he was dying. There was no question about that. The bum called him “amigo,” spoke to him in Spanish. Could he hear us? What was his name? Should I check his wallet so that I could call him by it? Would that constitute tampering with a crime scene? Fuck, listen to me! Why was I even thinking about that? Did he speak English? I forced out a couple of weak, “You’re going to be okay”s, but it seemed like a ridiculous, insincere thing to say.

What do you want to hear when you’re bleeding to death on the cold pavement, strangers huddling above you in a cacophony of, “he’s been shot!”s?  Maybe I should have said, “You’re dying, but I am here with you.” I thought about kneeling down and holding his hand. I don’t know what stopped me. I even thought about singing to him, something soft and comforting. I knew my mother would have said a prayer. Was he religious? Did he believe in God? What kind of secular humanist last rites could I offer? What was appropriate? Was he still breathing? I felt like I was looking at a ghost already, like his spirit was at the surface, moments away from stepping out of his body. There wasn’t much time, these were his last minutes. I wanted so much to just be there with him. Maybe it was selfish. I wanted to watch him pass on to the other side, as if in doing so I would catch a glimmer of eternity. Mostly I wanted him to not be alone, I wanted to give him strength, make him not afraid somehow. I wanted to say just the right thing. What was the right thing?

I did nothing. I just stood over him with my hand over my mouth, watching his tongue move, watching his eyes cloud. Where had my humanity gone? Why was I so cold and silent, like the fucking concrete?

I wanted to throw him back into the sea.

Then all was sirens and red flashing lights. The medics pulled off his sweatshirt. He’d been shot in the chest, in the heart. Close-range. His T-shirt was blood-soaked. They were giving him CPR and as they pounded his chest, still more red blossomed from the wound. He was dead before they got there. I could have told them that. But they didn’t miss a beat. Everything was wrapped in yellow “Do Not Cross” tape. A crowd was gathering and I wished I was on the other side with them. The medics wrapped him in white plastic, like that made it better somehow. Like it wasn’t perfectly obvious what the bag contained. The police questioned us on the corner for what seemed like forever. They tried to convince me I could ID the car. I insisted that I’d been too far away, which was true. And anyway, don’t they get it? Here I am talking to a cop on the street, a few feet away from a dead body, moments after a gang-related homicide. This neighborhood is a war zone and I still have to live here. Just down the street. You don’t talk to cops. You don’t get involved.  Next time, will I just walk the other way? I pulled my jacket collar up and kept my head down as we ducked under the tape. The crowd parted a little to let us by.

Andrej walked me home. He didn’t seem too shaken. It wasn’t the first time he’d watched someone die. He’d seen this all before. Maybe many times. I didn’t want to ask.

“I wish I could have done something,” I said.

“There was nothing you could have done. He was shot through the chest. There was no way he was going to live.”

But that’s not what I meant. I meant I wish I could have helped him die. That sounds terrible. I didn’t know how else to say it. I didn’t say it.

“I was just so paralyzed,” I said.

“It’s normal to be afraid of death, Marla.”

But that wasn’t it either. I wasn’t death that I was afraid of. I was afraid of not measuring up maybe. Not measuring up to the gravity of the moment. Here, in this stranger’s final breaths, at the end (or beginning?) of life’s extraordinary journey. I don’t believe in an afterlife necessarily, but there’s no denying the incredible transformative nature of dying. I wish I could have made his passage a little easier somehow.  I regret not finding the right words. And I regret that I still can’t find them.