Chapter 3: Help Came

An accident at work results in help coming in more ways than one.

The whistle blew. David’s punch press operator simply collected his lunch and began to walk away as David put his last handful of tubes in the box. He hated the work he was doing of course. It was insulting to think that was all he could do for a living and it crossed his mind that was his most obvious problem. If he could even do that much then he could change the rest of his world by one simple act, which was not suicide but by getting a new job.

Just then he heard the two thousand pound bundles of tubes stacked on either side of his machine come crashing to the floor with one of the loudest noises he had ever heard even at work. It caused him to jump back since it was just barely on the other side of his machine right where the punch press operator had been. When he did he tripped over his own feet and fell flat on the dirty factory floor on his face, sitting up just in time to see everyone in the place stop what they were doing and look his way.

Immediately they all began to run in his direction from every corner of the building. Even the overhead crane operators above him and those in both bathrooms ran toward him. Everyone assumed he was in dire straits physically simply because he was no longer on his feet.

David’s machine operator reached him first and screamed, “God! What happened,” when he saw David was okay.

“He saved me!” David yelled, “And not only that, He showed me I am not alone. There is help! Even for me, there is help,” David was yelling as he got to his feet and began jumping up and down, and shaking the hands of everyone who came to help him.

“What the f**k is wrong with you?” the foreman yelled. “What the hell happened?”

David looked at the man realizing it was the last time he might ever see him. Then watching him like he was some sort of threat, David waltzed around him, through the crowd and left without even clocking out. But also as he left he turned and flipped the man at the gate off.

He was free. He never had to put another damn tube in any damned old box again. It was over. He was being spared disaster after disaster, because he needed to know that suicide was an end. Conjuring up some form of delusion in order to go insane was an end not a beginning too. But staying at this factory until he died was also an end.

He was only twenty. He was not old. He needed to be looking for beginnings not endings.

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