The Magic of Stories | ONC 2024 shortlist

19 - The accident

My gaze found Paco's as I slammed the cup down onto the reception desk. I knew this voice, and I had never heard it in as much distress. The coffee sloshed over the polished hardwood, but I ignored it and sprinted towards the back of the library. Paco's heavier steps followed on my heels.

"Conny, is everything alright?" My heart drummed in a staccato rhythm against my breastbone and made me disregard the rule of no shouting in the library. When I didn't get an immediate answer, I feared the worst. "Conny?"

The first two aisles to the left and right were empty and in the third I saw only a senior customer with a hearing aid who didn't even turn his head to look at me. But in the last aisle, a figure lay motionless on the floor amidst a heap of scattered books and several metal shelves. I slowed down, taking in the destruction, petrified.

"Conny." Paco overtook me and slithered to the floor on his knees beside her prone form, reaching for a pale wrist and placing his fingertips on the vein to check for her pulse.

At the gentle touch, my colleague's eyes fluttered open, but she didn't move. A thin thread of blood ran down her temple where a book or a shelf must have hit her. With a groan, she reached with her free hand for the nasty bruise.

"Ouch, that hurts."

At her words, relief turned my legs into jelly, and Paco's deep sigh told me he felt the same.

"I'm sure it does—I fear you might have a concussion. Please look at me, Conny." He moved his digit left and right in front of her face. As far as I could tell, her eyes followed the movement without a problem and her pupils were wide but the same size.

Paco came to a similar conclusion. "I believe you were lucky. How did this happen?"

"I don't know." She flinched when she touched the injury again. "I wanted to place a book on the top shelf and of a sudden, everything came tumbling down."

I glanced at the light above us—realising only now we were in the classics section—but it didn't waver. Still, I had my suspicions. No use mentioning ghosts, though, not while my colleague was hurt for real. "Conny, do we have a first aid box somewhere?"

"Yes, it's in my office drawer." She groaned and tried to sit up. "Let me get it."

"No, Lynn can go for it. You must take it easy. Let me help you." Paco stabilised her arm and helped her move away from the destruction to lean her back against an undamaged shelf to the right.

Impressed by his calm demeanour and competence, I shook out of my current state of shock and turned on my heel to fetch the first aid kit. In my rush to the office, I passed three women chatting in the sitting area, oblivious to the accident. How they could have missed the ruckus was beyond me.

Of course, Conny's office desk had six drawers, and I had to open them all until I found the white box adorned with a bright red cross in the last one, hidden beneath a neat stack of papers. I dropped them onto the desk with shaking hands and tucked the box under my arm to hurry back, picking up Paco's abandoned coffee on the way. Perhaps this was more needed than the first aid kit.

In the meantime, Paco had assisted Conny to stand up and was about to lead her towards the sofa with small and prudent steps, an arm around her back. "Careful, don't move too fast. You need to rest."

"Don't fuss so much, I'm fine." Her pale complexion told another story, and she leaned on Paco's supportive arm.

The ladies gasped at the sight of the blood and made room for her. "Oh dear, what happened?"

I recognised the speaker, a dark-haired woman in her fifties, as one of the library regulars and offered her a small smile. "A shelf toppled over. Please don't go to the last aisle. It might still be dangerous."