Fall

He returned from his break and retrieved his drawer of money from the lock box it had been stored in. He waited for the supervisor to tell him which register to go to, and who to send on break next. The supervisor seemed nervous, and did not respond very promptly.

He received his destination and walked around the desk towards the registers. As he came to the first one he saw that no one was standing in it and then noticed what was below. A woman lay on the ground, her eyes closed and unmoving, looking as though she lay where she fell. He recognized her. She worked with him, but had started only recently, and was engaging to speak with. She looked dead.

Then he noticed that another cashier was sitting calmly with the girl, holding her head off the floor. "She must be alive," he thought. "You don't hold someone who has just died like that. Not that calmly." Perhaps she fainted.

A short while later, the lights of an ambulance shone flashing through the store's front window. He turned around from his work momentarily to see that she was sitting up with the medics, her eyes open, a confused and withdrawn expression held to her face with thick air.

They took her away.