JUST THOMAS

JUST THOMAS

Thomas Mahern wasn’t a perfectionist, by any stretch of the imagination. His grades in school were always in the lower B range, any academic awards that he received could be counted on one hand, and he certainly hadn’t made the honor society. His pursuit of mediocrity continued into his professional life where, although he had pursued a medical career, he stopped way short of trying to be a doctor and instead attended school for an associate’s degree with medical technician certification. There was only one thing that drove him to pursue perfection, taking the perfect selfie on his cell phone. The trouble was, he didn’t believe he had accomplished that feat yet. No matter what the picture looked like, no matter how much his friends and family complimented him on the results, it was never good enough for him.

His quest for the perfect selfie started when he was 16 in his hometown of Tallelugh, Alabama, a small, rural community south of Montgomery. On his mother’s birthday, he had given her the requisite gift of napkins and towels for the kitchen, but that wasn’t enough. Having just gotten his first cell phone with a camera, he stood outside the house and took a picture of himself just for her. He forwarded it to the household computer and printed a copy in color, on paper just the right size for her favorite frame. After dinner that evening, after all the gifts had been exchanged, after Happy Birthday had been sung and wished a hundred times, he proudly presented the picture to her.

“Oh, no,” she said, when he told her the frame that he wanted it to be in. “That would not work. Why look, Tommy, you are not centered and the top of it is way too dark. We can’t put it in that beautiful frame.”

His heart sank, but he tried again, and again. Every time he did, she came up with a reason to not put it in the frame. It was never good enough. It was never perfect. That was the beginning of the quest which had followed him to Birmingham where he went to school, completed his medical technician training, achieved his certification, and later worked at the university hospital. It also followed him when he moved to a smaller hospital closer to where he was born, becoming head medical technician, a job he still held. He would take at least twenty-five selfies a week, sometimes just of himself, sometimes with other people or objects. He had pictures of friends and colleagues, pictures in front of statues and works of art, pictures with none of the above clogging up the storage on his phone. But, in his mind, there was always something wrong with the picture. The people weren’t centered, there was a dark shadow over someone in the photo, the background was out of focus, or he saw something else that didn’t look right. Whatever the problem, he always saw it immediately and it ruined the picture for him. No one he complained to about the pictures agreed with him, but that didn’t matter. He knew what he saw.

This time it was going to be different. This selfie wasn’t going to depend on background, have other people in the frame, nor was it going to be taken for a specific purpose. This selfie was just going to be of him, Thomas Mahern, standing all alone, in his blue medical technician uniform, on a bright sunny spring day. He would have no other people, no architecture, nothing to take away from the wonder of the picture. Just Thomas, he would name it. He could see it being printed and framed, hung on a wall right behind his desk. This picture was going to be the one he dreamed of.

He looked at his watch. Almost noon, the middle of the workday. Time to go downstairs to the hospital lobby and out to the front sidewalk. Then he would walk down the street until he found the perfect place to take the selfie and he had a couple of places in mind. He had already checked the weather, not a cloud in the sky.

He made his way through the empty elevator to the ground floor, nodded at colleagues, security, and even some patients that he had worked with before. He strolled quickly through the lobby and out the large double glass door opening onto a half empty parking lot. One good thing about a small hospital in a rural community was the lighter traffic, and limited number of emergencies. It made you feel like you were helping the people you knew and loved without the pressure of life-or-death procedures very often.

He stepped across the driveway pavement, stopping to let a car slowly pass by, then turned to the right on the sidewalk and quickly made his way to the main street in front of the hospital grounds. Once he reached the street, he turned, heading away from the hospital toward downtown. Moving past numerous stores selling toys, fruit, and cow feed, among other things, he walked quickly toward a small bench in front of a restaurant. That was his first option because it would allow him to sit down and take as many pictures as he needed to get it right. He quickly saw that the bench wouldn’t work. For one thing, being lunch time, the bench was occupied by two men in overalls and sun hats, devouring sandwiches and drinking cokes. They were obviously workers, probably on the construction project a couple of blocks away where they were building a new hotel. The second thing against it, even if it were empty, was that the shade from the red and black window awning above the restaurant totally blocked the sun, leaving the bench dark. Comfortable for eating but not conducive to good selfies.

Thomas shook his head and moved on to his second choice. This was not in front of a window, but instead on the top of the steps leading into the Piermont Bank. The building itself was at least 100 years old but the brick was brown and well preserved. There were about 10 steep, concrete steps up to the entrance causing most people to enter and exit from a lower-level door to the right side of the building. Even though this might be a busy time of day, where he was standing might be less used, allowing him the opportunity to take his selfie with the brick background making a good frame for the perfect picture.

He quickly walked up the steps, standing to the right of the door. He took out his phone, turned the camera on, and began holding it up to his face. He relaxed, thinking of what he was going to accomplish. Suddenly there was a shout, the door opened violently behind him, and he felt a blow to the top of his head. Falling down the stairs, he glimpsed the sidewalk right before his face smashed into it. Then there was nothing.

When he awoke, he recognized the hospital where he worked and Maggie, one of the nurses he often worked with.

“What happened,” he tried to ask?

Maggie turned her reddish, gray hair toward his bed, nodding and smiling at the same time.

“You’re awake,” she said, sounding relieved. “Thomas, you had us worried.”

“About what,” he asked again, his voice sounding strained and hoarse. “I was taking a picture and,” he shrugged, wincing from the pain. “I don’t remember anything after that.”

“Don’t worry, the police will tell you everything you need to know. They wanted to be informed the minute that you came to. Wanted to know if you saw anything,” she finished.

“Saw anything,” Thomas was really confused? He fell down the steps, no, wait a minute. He didn’t fall down the steps, he was pushed. But by who?

“What happened, Maggie,” he asked again, this time with as much force as he could muster?

Maggie looked toward the open door, her round, pale face with plump cheeks turned downward into a frown.  “I really shouldn’t say anything, but the bank was robbed. Evidently, you were there when it happened,” she explained.

Thomas lay back in the hospital bed. It must have been the robber who knocked him down the steps. But he could not help, he was looking the other way. He thought back to what happened. He was standing there, getting ready to take his perfect selfie and just when he was ready to click the camera, he felt something hit the back of his head and he tumbled down the stairs. Did he take the picture or not? Was the picture of him, the sky, the building, or anything at all?

“Where is my phone,” he asked, sitting up in a hurry?

Maggie looked around. “Let me see,” they gathered up anything that they could find and brought it with you to the hospital.” She picked up a white plastic bag with the hospital logo on it that was tied to one of the metal bars holding the bed in place. “Here it is,” she responded, picking up a phone, baseball cap, and watch from the bottom of the bag.

Just as she was about to give it to him, another person entered the room. “Mr. Mahern,” a voice asked, startling Maggie, causing her to pull back away suddenly.

Thomas lay back down. “Yes,” he answered, wondering who this was.

“Mr. Mahern, I am Detective Winter. First, I wanted to make sure that you were ok. I understand that you were on the steps of the bank building this afternoon,” he continued, after Thomas had assured him that he was indeed ok.

Thomas nodded, his head suddenly pounding.

“According to witnesses, the person who robbed the Piermont Bank exited the building and, in doing so, knocked you off the entrance way down to the sidewalk. You were then brought here to the hospital unconscious.”

“That is what I have been told,” Thomas replied.

“Can I ask what you were doing in front of the building entrance just then?”

Thomas thought for a moment but could think of nothing else to do but to tell the truth. So, he told the detective the whole story, his desire to take the perfect selfie, his propensity for finding fault, his continuous efforts to accomplish the feat, and the fact that he believed that today was the day.

“So, you went up to the bank entrance to take a picture,” the detective asked questioningly?

Thomas could see Maggie chuckling silently, being one of many of the people that he worked with who was aware of his peccadillos in this regard.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Ask Maggie,” he said, pointing at the nurse, “she is well versed in my attempts to accomplish this.”

“I see,” he continued as Maggie nodded in agreement. “Did you take a selfie while you were on the steps?”

“I don’t know. I was just fixing to, when the door opened, and I went flying down the stairs.”

“Did you see anything,” the detective asked, “before or after you fell?”

“No,” Thomas said, lying back down. “Do you know who robbed the bank,” he asked?”

The detective shook his head. “He was wearing a mask so the video from the bank only tells us the basics. We are still investigating. Could I see your phone, please?"

Maggie, without waiting for Thomas to say anything, handed the phone to the detective.

Turning it on, he quickly put it in my hands to type in the ID. Once I did that, he grabbed it back and I could see him moving quickly to photos. He swiped the screen a couple of times. Suddenly he stopped, his face becoming hard, almost stoic, in its expression.

“Could you confirm that you took this picture this afternoon in front of the Piermont Bank,” he asked, showing me the front of the phone?

I looked. Instead of an image of me or the bank building, or even the sky, which is what I half expected to see, I saw the upper edge of my head at the bottom lower left of the picture. Above that, on both sides were the brown bricks making up the bank building itself. But there in the middle, taking up the rest of the image, was the picture of a white male, a black mask pulled above his eyes, with a thin brown mustache, thick eyebrows, and heavy green eyes. The picture could not be more recognizable if he had posed for it.

Astounded, I said that yes, I had taken that picture this afternoon.

He nodded and paused for a second. “Well Mr. Mahern, I believe your quest is over. This may not be the perfect selfie of you, but it is the perfect selfie to solve a crime.”

With that, he put my phone into a plastic bag that he pulled from his coat pocket and walked out the door.

I lay back down, suddenly realizing that perfection could be defined in many ways and the picture that I took, met at least one of those definitions. My quest was indeed, finally over.