The Blue Jacket

Blue flashes woke her up.

And the annoying scream of an ambulance. She really hated that noise!

She opened her eyes. It was harder than usual. Her eyelashes stuck together.

She wanted to rub her eyes. Her hands did not answer to the simple command.

Finally her eyelids gave in and let the light flood her retina.

Strangers were standing over her, wrapped in a pink fog.

'This is curious - she thought - I must be still dreaming'.

Someone started to speak to her. She did understand the words, but could not make sense of them.

She raised her head and glimpsed her reflection on the windshield of a car.

A viscous liquid was dropping to the motor hood. Same color as the car's. Red.

It's time to go home now.

Her legs thought otherwise. She could not move. Suddenly she did not want to.

"Madame! Madame! Vous m'entendez?"

She saw fear in the man's eyes.

It slowly started to become clear.

That fear. It was for her.

That fear, it was now hers too.

But the fear of what? What happens now?

She just wanted to buy a baguette in the bakery at the corner of the little street she lives in, on Montmartre.

She put on her blue jacket and glimpsed on her phone. It was 7 a.m. in the morning. The start of an exceptionally cold day in Paris.

She crossed the street, shivering.

She was thinking about him. Again. As almost every other morning. She wondered, she asked herself the same boring questions. Does he even remember? Did she ever really mattered to him? Is he happy? She knew no answer will ever come.

She knew that it doesn't matter anymore.

She glimpsed a little white dog in a parked car and stopped on the road before stepping on the sidewalk on the other side. Cute little thing.

She took a deep breath of the chilly air and smiled.

She finished thinking about him. At least for today.

Her iPod showed 7.10 a.m.

The happy rhythms of her favorite song kept beating in her ears.

And the world seemed peaceful for a minute...

---

This morning was a really hard one. Traffic jams drove people crazy, horns broke the white silence everywhere.

Paris snow is really unusual. It technically stops the life in this capital.

The driver of the mini-van stopped in the corner.

The Place St-Pierre was filled with tourist, kids building snowmen and sliding down the light slopes of the street.

Today he had a lot of goods to deliver.

It was only 7 a.m. and he was already one hour late.

He pulled the hand-brake and got out from the car in a rush.

He closed the door at the driver's side and he walked to the trunk to unload.

He grabbed the first box.

It was so cold that he felt his fingers burning, even under his gloves.

The carton was heavy and a sharp flash of pain ran down his lower back.

He is not young anymore, maybe it's time to retire. 60 years of honest work, he gave enough.

With his bonus he could even buy a weekend house in Normandy.

He turned around to bring the first box into the store.

As he stepped on the sidewalk he slipped on a patch of ice.

He felt his right leg loosing the ground. He fell on the van with his back, his head hitting the back door with a numb noise. In a blink of an eye he was on the ground. He felt the cold all over his body so he sit up and reached for the van to use it as support to stand up.

It was not there anymore...

He was supposed to fix the hand brake last week, it sometimes gave in. But had no time take care of it. He usually left the car in 1st anyway.

Not this time.

He saw a red car parked in front of the bakery.

Suddenly a woman in a blue jacket stopped for a second next to it, still on the road.

He screamed, but his voice lost in the noise of Place St Pierre.

He saw the van crashing into the red car.

Where did the woman in blue jacket go?

He couldn't move. He didn't want to anymore.

His watch broke in the fall. It showed 7.10 a.m.

It stopped ticking.

And the world stopped spinning.

---

The habitants of the little German village were standing on the platform, their expressions froze to their faces. Nobody moved, nobody spoke.

Little white clouds surrounded the frozen figures. Minus 6 centigrade.

The station's clock showed 7.00 in the morning.

He hated this commute. Not because of the wait. Or the cold. He feared it because he was left alone with his thoughts for 20 pathetic minutes.

In mornings like this, he thought about HER sometimes.

He didn't even understand why. It was a long time ago, a lot of things happened since.

Is she still in Paris? Is she happy? Does she ever think about him?

He felt like a fool for even wondering about this. He moved on. Did he really?

The train arrived and the little white clouds slowly disappeared in the train.

He can still see her in that blue jacket. Blue like her eyes.

He remembered the moment when they first saw the Sacré Coeur together. Hand in hand. Like those who never want to let the other go.

She told him that one day she would live there and she pointed to a little street.

He smiled. The smell of the fresh baguette and innocent love was was in the air. She smiled.

The train's doors closed.

The station started to move. The images melted into colors, the colors into lines.

Will he ever see her again?

He took out his cell phone from his back pocket and searched for a number. One that he hadn't used for a long time.

He found a french number and started to write a message. After a minute he stopped typing, his fingers hesitating.

Not today. Maybe another day.

He looked at the time and locked the phone screen.

It was 7.10 a.m.

He is on time...

And the train kept running through the wintery landscape.