The routine of a Tuesday commute had started the morning. Unaware that a nightmare was about to cross my life’s path, I was walking down the sidewalk with my head down, practicing a presentation for work. Suddenly, a piercing, crystalline explosion from above broke the metropolitan symphony of faraway jackhammers and blaring horns. A window on the fifth level of an apartment building broke into a thousand shimmering pieces as I gazed up.
I mistakenly believed it to be detritus for a heartbeat. Then I noticed the movement—a toddler’s tiny, thrashing limbs falling through the empty space. No deliberate decision-making process, risk assessment, or heroic ambitions were present. Instinct and physics took control. I threw down my briefcase and ran in the direction of the anticipated collision. The blur of the red brick wall, the cries of onlookers, and the terrifyingly quick descent of a child seconds from a fatal collision with the asphalt were among the ragged frames that halted the world.
With my muscles screaming from the unexpected strain, I reached out and prepared for an impact that I wasn’t sure I could withstand. My arms were struck like a falling anchor by the infant. We were both thrown into the harsh earth by the velocity. My head bounced off the pavement and my back wrenched against the curb, causing a white-hot flash of pain. The borders of my vision were besieged by darkness, a thick, oppressive curtain of fog brought on by a concussion. A piercing, lung-filled cry, however, was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard through the ringing in my ears. He was still alive.
The world turned into a kaleidoscope of faces in the frantic minutes that followed. People were kneeling next to me, supporting my shoulders with their hands and chanting a mantra that I was unable to fully comprehend: “You’re a hero.” He was saved by you. Simply continue breathing. We were eventually taken away by an ambulance, and as I lay on the gurney and gazed at the clean ceiling of the car, I experienced a deep, peaceful calm. I had exchanged a human life for a few bruises and a concussion. I thought that was the best deal I had ever found.
The “hero” story, however, turned out to be brittle. A week later, a knock on my door occurred while I was still dealing with a persistent headache and a back that felt like it was composed of broken glass. It wasn’t a bunch of flowers or a thank-you note. I was given a court summons by a process server.
The parents of the child were suing me.
The concussion was less crippling than the shock. According to the lawsuit, the youngster suffered needless anguish and physical harm as a result of my “reckless rescue.” Ignoring the fact that a professional was five minutes away and the child was half a second from death, they said my intervention was awkward and risky and that maybe the child would have fared better if a “professional” had stepped in.
I tried to contact the family in the hopes that this was a bureaucratic miscommunication or a result of their own shock, but all I got was a wall of hate. The father stood in their home’s doorway, his face twisted with a terrible, litigious rage rather than thanks. His voice reverberated in the hallway as he yelled, “You hurt our boy!” and then slammed the door with such force that it made my teeth jangle.
The courtroom was a ridiculous theater. A man who specialized in turning the miraculous into the criminal served as their attorney. He talked about the child’s tiny bruises, which were caused by being caught at terminal velocity, as though I had caused them in a dark alley and showed high-resolution pictures of them. As they sat at the plaintiff’s table, wiping their eyes, the parents depicted a calm afternoon that had been destroyed by my “interference,” not by their own carelessness.
They even called “witnesses”—people I didn’t know from that morning—who said I had stumbled, appeared preoccupied, and had treated the youngster with “unnecessary roughness.” During a recess, my own attorney drew me aside after noticing the shift in the court’s opinion of my defense. “The visuals are awful,” he said. They are manipulating the jury’s emotions. Perhaps settling would be preferable. Let this go, sign the non-disclosure, and pay the damages.
I gave him a chilly, clear stare. I said, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” “I refuse to pay for the honor of saving a life.”
The mood was oppressive on the last day of the trial. I felt the oppressive weight of a system that appeared to be intended to penalize the Good Samaritan as I sat in the defendant’s chair. The judge’s tone indicated that he was inclined to render a verdict of carelessness when he started his closing remarks. I was filled with utter, hollow misery. If the world was truly a place where you should just put your head down and let the catastrophe happen, I questioned whether I had been mistaken.
The enormous oak doors at the rear of the courtroom then opened.
Breathless, a woman approached the bench while holding a smartphone. Neither side called her as a witness. When the window broke, she was a tourist who had been in the city that day and had been documenting the street’s architecture. She discovered she had the sole unbiased account of the incident after learning about the trial.
Despite the prosecution’s attempts to object, the judge permitted the video to be shown, possibly sensing a change in the mood of the room. There was such a profound hush in the courtroom that it seemed as if the air had been drawn out. The truth was depicted on the screen in minute, indisputable detail.
The video clearly shows the fifth-floor window in addition to me catching the child. While the toddler crawled onto the sill, the mother was seen leaning out, apparently yelling at someone within. Before he slipped, it demonstrated her hand truly pushing against the youngster in a furious, rash motion. It first showed me, and then it showed the horrible, silent descent.
My moves weren’t “clumsy” or “reckless” in the video. They were exact and desperate. It depicted me running across two lanes of traffic, diving into the falling body’s path, and using my own body to absorb the full force. It depicted me around the infant to shield his head from the sidewalk.
The lawyer for the parents became a sickly pale gray. The mother’s tears quickly dried up and were replaced by a mask of pure terror.
The judge’s expression changed from one of skepticism to one of furious, smoldering rage. In addition to dismissing the complaint, he ordered the parents’ immediate arrest on charges of perjury and endangering the safety of their children. Social services were called into the courtroom at that same hour since the video’s evidence was so devastating. At the end of the day, the child—the young boy whose life I had in my hands—was placed in a secure setting, and the parents’ rights had been taken away.
With my back still hurting but the weight in my chest now gone, I left the courthouse and stepped out into the bright afternoon sun. I was stopped on the stairs by a reporter who shoved a microphone in my face. “Would you do it again after all of this—the injury, the lawsuit, the betrayal?”
I didn’t have to consider it. “Yes,” I replied, looking directly into the camera. Each and every time.
Since I came to understand that the truly “reckless” deed isn’t assisting someone in need but rather existing in a society where people are too terrified of the repercussions to be human. The reality of that video and the parents’ own avarice punished them, but I took away something far more significant than a court triumph. I left with the knowledge that, for a single, horrifying instant, I was right where I should be.