The 2am Man

Pretty much everywhere I’ve lived has been a thin line between “ghetto” and “acceptably safe and comfortable.” Sometimes I’m dealing with persistent cockroaches, and sometimes I’m dealing with random cars blowing up in the parking lot. But wherever I live, I go to sleep knowing that

Unless God watches over the apartment, 

The locks are locked in vain. 

Unless God builds my protection,

The walls are there for nothing.

Psalm 127:1 (my translation)

That sentiment has kept me through many questionable events and strange occurrences, which I hold onto as proof that God is good. He protects me when no one else is around and gives me opportunities to be a beacon of his love when no one else will.

Back in college, I worked restaurant jobs. I never kept them for very long–I bounced from one to the next out of boredom or stress or my flippant feelings of the place. One such job had me working the closing shift on Friday nights, which meant I didn’t get home until around 2am. It didn’t bother me, really. Everything was quiet and peaceful at 2am. And if it wasn’t for all the lights in my parking lot, I’d get to see the stars.

But one night, I came home to a lot more commotion than usual. Some guy was trying to get a car to stop for him as they drove through the parking lot. They stopped for a brief moment, but drove off while he tried to talk to them through the window.

I watched the car leave and the man collapse on the sidewalk–most likely drunk. He happened to be sitting right in front of my building and there was no way to get to my apartment without passing him, so I made a bit of a wide circle around him as I headed for the door.

The man looked up at me and raised a hand like he was reaching for me. “Help me!” he said. “Please. Just let me use your phone. I just got jumped and I need to call my girlfriend. I just need to call her.”

I stopped in my tracks. He didn’t sound drunk. He sounded desperate. The man tried to get up to walk toward me, but I could tell the effort was painful and he ended up crawling more than walking.

I couldn’t just leave him there. But I recognized that I was alone in the parking lot at 2am with a strange man. So instead of showing him immediate pity, I decided to be “smart” about the situation and get another set of eyes on me. So I lied. “My phone is in my apartment,” I said. “Let me go get it.”

My plan was to get one of my roommates to watch me from the window and call the police if anything went wrong. Usually at least one of them was awake watching some late night TV. But when I opened my apartment door, there was no one and nothing but darkness.

I took a moment to think about my options and decided to call a friend of mine in the same apartment complex. He usually stayed up all night playing video games, so I was sure I could get him to help. But he didn’t pick up his phone.

Looking out my bedroom window, I could see the poor man on the sidewalk, groaning in pain and trying to crawl his way down the sidewalk until he could find someone else to help him. But there was no one else out there. No one else saw him at all. Even the men that drove off didn’t really see him.

“God,” I prayed in the darkness of my room. “You’re the only one that’s watching me now. There’s no one else. So keep me safe.”

Then I took my cell phone out of my pocket and went down to help the man. He had crawled to the other side of the parking lot by that point and was sitting by some bushes, crying. “Here,” I said, “You can use my phone.”

He called his girlfriend and asked for her to come get him, but before she would, he had to resolve a bit of a fight that they had had earlier. I felt a little bad listening in on their relationship problems, but I couldn’t just walk away while he had my phone.

After he hung up, I sat and waited with him for his girlfriend to arrive. It seemed wrong to just leave him there on his own. “What happened?” I asked.

“I got jumped,” he said. “They beat me up and took my wallet…” it sounded like there should have been more to that, but he just stopped and shook his head.

“Do you want me to call the police?”

“No! No, I just need to go home to my girlfriend and get some rest. She lives in one of these…”

Now that I was close to him, I could see the bruises all over his face, arms, and legs. Even though we sat well away from the light, his bruises were deep purple stains on his skin.

We sat in silence a while longer. I wanted to reach out and put an arm around him, but I was afraid that it’d only hurt him more. In that moment, he didn’t feel like some strange guy in the parking lot. I may not have known his name, but after sitting with him on the curb and listening to him sob, he felt more like a friend that I was trying to comfort.

…A friend that didn’t want me to call the police… as suspicious as that was, I didn’t think on it too long. Shortly after that, his girlfriend came running from the apartment building right next to mine.

“Oh, baby, what happened!?” she ran up to us in a dress that was too tight to really run in, and bent down to put her face in his. “Let’s get you home,” she said, completely ignoring my presence.

I got up and walked back to my apartment building, turning to see them hobble back to hers.

That night has taught me that fear should not stop me from doing the right thing. God watches over me, even when no one else does. He saw what happened to that man, and he put me in a position to help him–to be a friend to him in the darkness of the night.

 

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