The Wrong Key

Life turns upside down on the smallest of things.

"Hey!  Hey, man are you okay?"

I shuddered awake, my body wracked by furious shivering.  There is blinding light and the face of a white man with a reddish blonde beard hovers over me. He's wearing a blue knit hat and a puffy black coat.

"Are you okay?" he asks again, concern in his hazy blue eyes.

"Huh?" I ask.

"What are you doing out here?"

"Went for a run," I mumble, disoriented, shuddering, colder than I've ever been in my life. "Wrong key" and I hold up for proof the offending key still gripped tightly as if frozen in my numb hand.

"I'm gonna call 911 okay."

"No, no. She'll be here soon," I vaguely protests between paroxysms of violent shivering.  He disregards me and is on his cell phone.

"Yeah, I found my neighbor outside his apartment asleep. . . yes, I woke him up  and he's conscious.  He's shivering really bad. I can't tell for sure but I think he got locked out of his apartment.  He's got a key in his hand, but he said it was the wrong key."

I look down at my hand, and it's still there.  The wrong key.

"Okay, I'll bring him up to my apartment.  Yes, same street. Stone Valley.  I'm in 7340.  Ok. . .yes, I'll  definitely do that."  He hung up the phone.  "The paramedics are on their way," he said to me.  "Can you walk?"

I didn't know and I myself couldn't tell whether I shook or nodded my head, I was shivering so bad.

"Here let me help you," he said and bent to help me struggle to my feet. My muscles were stiff, and cramped and I felt I'd collapse if he hadn't been supporting me.  Together we hobbled up to his third floor apartment and I soon found myself sitting in a leather armchair wrapped in a heavy comforter that smelled of clean laundry. The neighbor place a mug of hot herbal tea on a coaster on one of his end tables for me to drink when my hands could hold the cup.

As warmth began to return to my body, the memory of what had led to this moment began to return as well.  I went out for an afternoon run.  Barbara and the kids were leaving for Dayton. I had a school event in the morning and would be driving down tomorrow night to join them.  I was looking forward to the solitude and the freedom to do as I pleased for a few hours.  Since they were about to head out the door, I took my key with me, knowing that by the time I returned they'd be gone.  It was cold that day--19 degrees and dropping, but I was bundled in multiple layers and even with temperatures below freezing I worked up quite a sweat.

When I returned to the apartment, Babs and the kids were gone as I'd expected.  I inserted the key in the lock and it wouldn't budge.  I tried it several times--our house key sticks sometimes--but to no avail. I began to wonder if I'd brought the right key.  I remembered feeling a sense of disquiet as I'd left the apartment--a vague sense that something wasn't quite right, that I was forgetting something.  I ignored the feeling.  A few minutes later when I was out on my run, Barbara called me on my phone to say that I'd left my keys.  I told her no, I"d taken the house key off the ring. Again I ignored that discomfiting twinge. 

And now, now I knew what I'd been trying to tell myself.  I had taken the wrong key.  A key to some obscure closet in my  school building looks just like our house key. More than once I'd tried to open our front door with that key and had been momentarily annoyed as it refused to open the door.  Momentary annoyance was all that extra key ever cost me--until today.  I'd called Babs who was already half an hour on the road and she agreed to turn around, and come back to let me in.  And so, I'd sat down by the door to wait for her.  At first, I was fine, since I'd bundled up for the run.  But slowly the chill been to creep in through my sweat soaked running clothes underneath my outer layers.  At the same time, the exhaustion from staying up half the night began to overtake me.  And so I'd fallen asleep, the wrong key still in hand, only to be awakened some time later by the neighbor gently shaking my shoulder and the far more violent shivering that marked the onset of hypothermia.

In short order, the paramedics arrived and as they checked me out, my thoughts became clearer.  With perfect clarity I realized that it was time to get rid of the extra keys in my life--keys that opened doors I no longer passed through. To hold on to them could cost me more than I cared to pay.