Interview 2 – Andrea Harmon
A few days passed between my first and second interview. By then, I’d practiced what I was going to say. I wanted to come off as confident and professional, but as soon as I saw the woman in front of me, I found myself faltering. Andrea Harmon was a very attractive lady. The kind of woman that’d stop any man dead in their tracks. She’d suffered a stroke a few years prior while at the gym, but you wouldn’t know it looking at her.
I swallowed hard and adjusted my suffocating tight collar, “Uh…um…” I babbled hesitantly, “C-can you…d-descri…describe what happened to you the day of, …um t-the stroke?” I stuttered.
She seemed strangely calm for someone who had suffered through a traumatic event. Then again, it had happened a while ago, so it wasn’t as though the pain was still raw in her mind.
“I’d just started going back to my normal routine at the gym. You know, trying to get rid of my belly fat. I had to be put on bed rest for the last two months of my pregnancy, so I was really looking forward to moving around and getting in shape again,” she explained.
She certainly didn’t look like she had any belly fat on her.
“So you were working out when it happened?” I questioned, regaining my composure.
She nodded, “Yes. I remember everything clearly, up until the stroke. Then, things get a little fuzzy,” she told me.
“Just tell me what you remember,” I replied, as I tried my best to avoid looking down her blouse.
She drummed her fingertips along her desk absent-mindedly, her eyes wandering towards the corner of her office, “I was well into my workout. I picked elliptical 6, because that’s my favorite number. So, I was doing good, really good. I kept telling myself ‘That’s it, Andrea. Keep going. Get rid of that baby bump!’ to stay motivated. Then, something caught my attention. The heart rate monitor on the screen turned on.”
She paused, turning to me to see my reaction. Confused, I raised an eyebrow. The grave look in her eyes suggested I should have noticed something unusual with her statement.
“What’s so odd about that?” I asked.
“I wasn’t holding the sensors,” she said sharply while making grabbing motions with her hands, “I had one of those fancy watches with an integrated heart rate monitor. My husband had gotten it for me when I told him I wanted to get back in shape. He was always there for me like that,” explained Andrea, “So the monitor starts flashing numbers. 90, 100, 145. But I swear, I wasn’t holding the bars. My own monitor was showing a stable 125-130 BPM the whole time. Looking back, I guess that was the first sign of the stroke … I guess I was imagining it? But it got worse than that. As the heart rate on the monitor continued to increase, I started to feel like something was pushing against me. Like there was someone on the elliptical behind me,” she said, her face contorting in disgust.
“That must have been pretty scary,” I commented.
“It was! I turned around a few times, but no one was there. Gave me goose bumps, man. Again, I realize it was probably a side effect of the stroke,” she paused and frowned, “It wasn’t long before I saw my face in the mirror. The right half was drooping. I knew something was up right away, and I tried to call for help. I tried to speak, but my tongue felt swollen and I just couldn’t get the words out. It was terrifying. I was trapped in my own body…and it felt like someone was touching me. I could feel arms wrapping around my torso and squeezing the air out of my lungs. I could feel hands on my face stretching my skin down.”
“Did anyone notice what was happening at that point?”
“No one! Not even the guy on the elliptical to my right. I was embarrassed to go to the gym during peak hours, so I picked a time where it was empty. But of course, this socially-inept jerk decided it was fine to take the machine next to mine, when all the other ones were free! Can you imagine? I kept catching him staring at me in the mirror during my workout, but he didn’t react at all when I started having the stroke,” she said, sounding appalled.
“Wait, there was someone next to you and he didn’t do anything?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah. A guy in a garnet sweatshirt. Way too hot to wear for a workout, but who am I to judge? He was going real slowly on his elliptical, too…like he was playing out a scene in slow-motion. I tried to wave to get his attention, but my arms wouldn’t move. That’s as much as I remember. Apparently, I fell face-first, and then someone finally called the ambulance,” she informed me.
“Did anyone speak to the man in red?” I asked.
She shook her head, “I only filled out the accident report weeks later, when I got out of the hospital. By then, they said it was impossible to track him down, and he didn’t come forward on his own. There were a couple of witnesses who did come forth, though, so I figured one less didn’t matter.”
I pretended to write something on the chart, then smiled and pulled away, “All right. Thank you very much for your help. I think that’s about all I needed to know,” I told her.
Something about what she said stuck with me. I went to the gym a couple times a week. The ellipticals were placed sequentially from left to right. 1 to 6. She’d been on elliptical 6 when it happened, which meant it was the last on the row. How was it, then, that she’d seen the man in red to her right?
