Story code: ST-000636
Part 2: The Live Feed
The heavy iron crowbar connected with the center of the security glass with a deafening, percussive gunshot of a crack. The shockwave reverberated up the cold metal shaft, rattling the bones in Mateo’s forearms and jarring his teeth. But the window did not shatter. A dense, white spiderweb of fractures bloomed across the pane, holding stubbornly together. The reinforced glass was doing exactly what Mateo’s father had paid a small fortune for it to do twenty years ago: keep the chaos of the street outside.
Mateo let out a ragged yell, adjusted his grip, and swung again. The iron head slammed into the center of the web. The pane bowed outward, groaning under the immense force, but the thick polymer layer inside the glass held firm.
Through the milky, fractured barrier, Mateo could see Mrs. Gable’s arms stop thrashing. Her hands fell limply to her sides.
Panic clamped around Mateo’s throat. He drew the crowbar back over his shoulder, ignoring the hot, tearing sensation in his bleeding calf, and threw his entire body weight into a third, desperate strike. The heavy iron tore through the polymer film. The window finally exploded outward in a spectacular shower of jagged shards and heavy glass cubes, cascading across the pavement and ringing like thousands of dropped coins.
Mateo didn’t hesitate. He tossed the crowbar onto the linoleum and scrambled through the gaping, jagged hole in his storefront. A remaining shard of glass sliced through the thick canvas of his jacket sleeve, biting into his bicep, but the adrenaline rushing through his veins muted the sting. His work boots crunched heavily over his father’s ruined investment as he fell to his knees beside Mrs. Gable.
He hovered his hands over her chest. She was completely motionless. Her frail skin had taken on a terrifying, ashen pallor, and her lips were deeply cyanotic. Mateo pressed his two fingers against the side of her delicate, wrinkled neck. He felt nothing. No flutter. No steady thrum of life.
He immediately laced his fingers together, locked his elbows, and positioned the heel of his hand squarely in the center of her sternum. He pushed down hard. The sickening pop of cartilage giving way under his weight made him wince, but he kept his rhythm, counting furiously in his head. *One, two, three, four.* He had taken a CPR certification course years ago when he took over the bodega’s management, but the reality of a fragile human body breaking under his hands was entirely different from pushing on a plastic training dummy.
“Breathe, Mrs. G,” Mateo muttered through clenched teeth, sweat stinging his eyes. “Come on, breathe.”
He risked a glance upward. Julian was standing exactly where he had been, completely unbothered by the explosion of glass that had just missed his expensive leather shoes. The gallery owner had simply pivoted his phone, panning smoothly from Mrs. Gable’s motionless face to Mateo’s panicked, sweat-drenched expression.
“The systemic failure of our community infrastructure,” Julian narrated, his voice adopting a hushed, reverent cadence usually reserved for museum tours. “A neighborhood left to rot, forcing its residents into brutal, desperate acts just to survive.”
Mateo stared at the glowing lens of the smartphone, his mind violently rejecting what he was hearing. He pushed down on Mrs. Gable’s chest again, pumping frantically. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Mateo screamed, his voice cracking. “Call an ambulance! Put the phone down and call 911!”
Julian didn’t lower the device. He adjusted his stance, framing the shattered bodega window perfectly in the background behind Mateo’s bloody, kneeling form. “I’m documenting this,” Julian said calmly, completely unruffled by Mateo’s screaming. “This is raw. This is the real cost of gentrification. The world needs to see this struggle.”
The violent sound of the breaking window had echoed down the block, and the commotion was rapidly drawing a crowd. Pedestrians on their morning commutes slowed to a halt. A woman walking a golden retriever paused. Two young men carrying yoga mats drifted closer. Mateo felt a massive surge of relief. Finally, someone would step in.
“Hey!” Mateo shouted at the woman with the dog, his shoulders burning with lactic acid as he maintained the relentless compressions. “Call 911! She has no pulse!”
The woman took a half-step backward, her eyes darting nervously toward Julian, who looked entirely in control, calmly holding his phone like a professional news crew. She seemed to take her cue from the gallery owner’s polished facade. Instead of reaching into her purse to dial emergency services, she pulled out her own phone, held it up, and hit record.
The two men with the yoga mats did the exact same thing. Within seconds, a loose semicircle of glowing screens formed around Mateo. None of them stepped forward. None of them dropped their bags to help. They simply raised their devices, their faces entirely obscured by rectangles of glass and metal, silently capturing the spectacle of a man covered in vinegar and blood, desperately trying to keep an old woman’s heart beating on the dirty pavement.
“Did anyone call?!” Mateo roared, his chest heaving. The physical toll of the CPR was draining his energy fast. His arms felt like heavy, useless lead. “Julian, tell me you called them before you started filming!”
Julian zoomed in on Mateo’s bloodied hands. “I’ve tagged the mayor’s office and the city council on the live feed,” Julian said smoothly, his eyes fixed on his screen, watching his viewer count climb. “We’re holding the system accountable, Mateo. We’re giving her a voice.”
The sheer, absolute horror of the situation crashed over Mateo like a physical weight. No one had called. The ambulance wasn’t coming. He was keeping Mrs. Gable’s blood circulating entirely with his own two hands, but he couldn’t keep this grueling pace up forever.
His own phone was buried somewhere in the cramped, flooded aisle of the bodega, trapped beneath a collapsed mountain of heavy canned goods. To get to the landline behind the register, he would have to stop the compressions, abandon Mrs. Gable on the concrete, and climb back through the jagged glass. If he stopped pushing, her brain would instantly be deprived of oxygen. She would die in seconds.
He looked up at the wall of blank, captivated faces surrounding him. They were inching closer now, tightening the circle, shuffling forward to get a better angle of the neighborhood tragedy unfolding at their feet.
Mateo was completely trapped.