My doorbell rang twice that morning. I had no idea my life was about to change.

At first I ignore the ringing, assuming it was just a HelloFresh box being delivered. Two rings seemed aggressive, but they’d just leave it by the door. Rolling over in bed, I set a timer for 30 minutes. It was already getting late, and I needed to get up, but I wanted a little more sleep. 

The doorbell rang again. After quickly throwing on a pair of athletic shorts and scooping up a tank top from the floor, I open the door as I put on my glasses. Standing in front of me is my neighbour, hair wet, holding a cordless phone in one hand and looking panicked.

Six-inch-thick walls separate me from the other lives being lived in my building, but suddenly my timeline was merging with another. 

“Nathan,” my neighbor stammers. “Something’s wrong… he’s not moving.”

I rush to the apartment next door — an apartment I’d never been inside before — and see her husband in his leather chair sitting completely still. The bearded man has some slippers on his feet, pyjama pants, a grey T-shirt and a pair of black round glasses. His mouth is slightly open, which makes him look asleep. 

“We have to get him down,” she says.

Instinctively, I grab his torso while his wife momentarily puts down the phone — she’s still on the line with 911 — and grabs his legs, and together we begin to pull. His body is heavy, and his head flings back. Sliding him onto the cold, hard tile floor, I immediately start doing chest compressions to the beat of the Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive,” like I’d been told to do years ago.

I- I- I- I’m- staying alive… staying alive.

Suddenly he convulses. His wife gasps. Was it working?

A few moments later his daughter, who had been at work, rushes in. We’re both in our early 30s, and she’s an only child, just like me. Her father (I didn’t know his name at this point) was in his early 70s, just like my father.  

“Where the fuck are the paramedics? Are they lost?” she asks breathlessly. 

“They said they’re coming,” her mother replies. 

The daughter leaves the apartment to go look for them.

All I can think about is this man’s dignity and comfort. I ask for a pillow and put it under his head in case he convulses again. His mouth is still open. Is he breathing? Does he have a pulse? There is no time to check. I hear their little white dog barking in another room.

I- I- I- I’m- staying alive… staying alive.

I look over and see one of his slippers has fallen off. I want to put it back on, but don’t want to stop doing CPR. He convulses again. His arm smacks the tile. I want another pillow. I want to be gentle, hoping not to break any of his ribs. If you’re doing it right, the ribs will crack, I suddenly find myself thinking. Am I doing it right? His chest is going up and down with every press. 

Just as I am getting tired, the 911 operator asks me to allow someone else to take over.

 “No,” I reply. 

“Are you sure?” the operator asks. 

“Yes, it’s fine.” 

I’m not about to subject his family to that. 

“Have you done this before?” his wife asks me. 

I tell her I’ve never done CPR before. I wish I’d lied. I’ve never been part of anything like this. 

I flash back to when I was 16 and had the opportunity to see my great aunt die in hospice care but refused. I’m too afraid of death. It’s the boogeyman. My mom told me it would’ve been a good experience for me. Later I learned my aunt’s death had been peaceful, and that as she went, with family around her bed, her body made sounds as all the energy from a life well-lived left her body.

But what was happening in this room was not peaceful.

“You need to lift his shirt and make sure the palm of your hand is between his nipples, and lock your arms,” the 911 operator instructs. I don’t want to do it — I want to preserve what little dignity I can for this man — but when I do lift his shirt, his skin is warm. Is he still alive? After being so afraid of death my entire life, why am I so calm? 

I do compressions for what feels like 20 minutes before EMS finally arrives, and five men calmly file into the apartment. They don’t immediately take over and begin compressions, which makes me angry. When they do, they are violent, and my neighbour’s whole stomach jiggles. Oh, God, I was doing it too softly, I think.

I move over to the couch where his wife and daughter are sitting, and his daughter grabs my hand and holds it tightly.

Lieutenant So-and-So comes over with a pen and notepad. “We don’t need this,” he says and hangs up the phone.

The wife begins to tell him what happened. Her husband had just had an Ensure, and she went to take a shower. When she got out, he pointed to his stomach. She asked him a question. He shook his head and… I stop listening. 

The EMS officers take out a large device, strap it around my neighbour’s body, and velcro his arms to the sides. The centre of the contraption looks like a giant plunger, and when they press a button, the machine makes a cheerful sound as it begins forcefully doing compressions.

“I could’ve used that machine earlier,” I say with a grimace. 

The family looks at me, and instantly I feel ashamed. Was I being cavalier? Was I trying to deal with the situation by using my trademark snark? 

The team brings out an oxygen mask. They tap, tap, tap on his arm. They begin to administer medicine through an IV. They listen for a pulse.

Lieutenant So-and-So brings over a stethoscope.

“You have to use this, it’s better,” he calmly instructs as he pauses the machine.

He listens, then resumes the machine. I brace myself to hear if the man was already gone and, if so, if I am responsible.

“His convulsions are from his pacemaker,” Lieutenant So-and-So tells us. The wife mentions a prior stint in the hospital. She rattles off a list of medications and shuffles through her husband’s medical records, offering up various papers. Suddenly I remember something my mom often told me: “When you’re stressed, drink water.” My neighbours need water. 

Stepping around the commotion, I find two mugs in the kitchen. Checking to make sure there aren’t any pictures of my neighbour on them, I fill the mugs with water and hand them to the daughter and wife.

“Please drink this.”

“Thanks, Nathan,” the daughter says, smiling weakly.

She breathes hard like she’s blowing out candles. I’m worried she’s going to have a panic attack.

The mom’s knee is pulsing. “We knew he wasn’t doing well for quite some time, you know that,” she says to her daughter.

I didn’t know that. Suddenly my phone alarm goes off. Has it only been 30 minutes?

I want them to look away from the violence. I want to shield them. But am I even supposed to still be here? Do they want me to stay? I’m not family, after all, and this is so intimate. 

“We need a bed sheet,” one of the EMS officers says. 

I rush over to a closet and pull one out. I’m afraid they’re going to cover him — that this was the end. Instead, they use it to lift him onto the gurney.

“Don’t worry about the dog, I can take care of him,” I tell my neighbours. 

“OK. You can take my husband’s keys.” 

As they cart him away, all I can think is, I never got a chance to put his slipper back on.

Suddenly it’s just me and the dog. It’s quiet, except for the TV on the wall playing a reality show at low volume. I take the dog’s harness and fiddle with it. “How the hell do I put this on you?” I ask him, but he doesn’t reply. I finally get it on and attach the leash, and we walk out.

The paramedics are by the elevator. The dog steps out of the harness, and it falls off him. I can hear the music next door as the construction workers renovate an apartment nearby. Life is continuing for everyone else.

I grab the dog, head back into my neighbour’s apartment and watch a YouTube video on how to use a harness. I take one loop and the dog recognises it, gleefully pushing his fluffy face through the hole. 

As I exit the building, my door lady says, “Nathan, he didn’t seem to be doing well.” 

“No, no he’s not,” I tell her. 

The dog leads me straight to the dog park. The sun is bright. The dog is happy. The dog leads me back home.

When I get back to my neighbour’s apartment, I look around and ask myself, What seems out of place here? I scour the room for any medical waste to throw out. The EMS team seems to have placed most of it in an orange bag in the corner of the room. I grab it and fold my neighbour’s pants, which they’d removed, and put them back on his chair. I place his slippers neatly by the chair, turn off the TV and take the dog to my apartment. I don’t want it to look like something awful had just happened when the family returns home.

The dog is the only thing keeping me calm. I’m grateful to have a responsibility — a task to keep me busy. I turn on my TV and sit down, and the dog sits on my lap. I wonder if that’s routine for him — if it was what the husband used to do. The dog races around and grabs one of my socks. There’s so much to sniff. He makes me laugh, but I immediately question why am I able to laugh at this sweet ignorance after what I’ve just been through. I take a picture of the dog and post it to my Instagram stories with a caption that reads, “Emotional Support Pup.” The hearts and comments soon roll in, but they go unread.

I call my boss and tell him I need to work from home... if I am even in a state to work. Two Zoom calls later, I realise I can’t, and that none of my work seems to matter. I speak to my editor on the phone about what happened, and he tells me, “What you need is a stiff drink.” Another coworker calls and echoes his advice: “You need to get out of your apartment and go to a bar.” They mean well, but I’m newly sober, and that’s the last thing I need. Besides, dulling what I am feeling wouldn’t work because I’m not feeling anything. Why are there no tears?

A few hours later I got a text message from his wife: “He is gone.” 

That poor family — and that poor man, whom I’d seen so many times before in the elevator but had never spoken to aside from a “Have a good day.”

A part of me wishes I’d struck up a conversation with him, but we don’t do that sort of thing in New York City. Yet I had just done something his friends and family never had to do to him, and never will. 

My head begins to spin with a million thoughts. If something were to happen to my parents in Florida, would there be someone to help and treat them with respect while doing so? Could I have done more for this family? What if I’d answered the door sooner or done the compressions harder?

I want a do-over.

Later that day, the daughter comes to my apartment with some friends to pick up the dog. 

“You’re a hero,” her friend says. I don’t feel like one. 

“I wish I could’ve done more,” I tell them. 

“You’ve done more than you know — you’re family now,” someone else says. 

“Oh, I’m just the neighbour.” 

The daughter seems to be doing OK, but I am a mess. Do I have a right to feel this way? Did they know this was coming? It’s not like he was a friend or a family member. Is that why I had been so calm? Is this how medical professionals feel? Or is it because I deal with high pressure work situations and panicked producers trying to get the news on TV? What will I feel the next time I hear sirens? 

The building I live in on the Upper West Side is large and filled with many older people. Emergency vehicles arrive at the front door at least once a month, and I’ve never thought much of it before. It just seemed like a natural, though obviously sad, part of life.

Occasionally a poster noting the death of a longtime neighbour appears in our lobby. Will there be one for him? Will I soon hear construction in my neighbour’s apartment as it moves from rent-controlled to market rate with shiny new appliances and quadrupled rent? Is that how I ended up in my place? There’s so much I haven’t considered before, and suddenly all of it is rushing into my head.

I can’t stop thinking about the man I couldn’t save. The family’s apartment was covered with jazz posters — were they his? What about all of those CDs and vinyls? Is it weird to want to go to the funeral of a man I’ve never spoken to before in the hopes of learning more about him? Did he have a full life? Were there things he was looking forward to that he’ll never get to do? 

Another neighbour, a cantor, comes to my door and gives me a long hug. Pressing her palm to my chest she says, “You did good, do you hear me? You did good. You performed a sacred act that’s called a mitzvah. She came to you because she trusted you, just like I did before when I needed help.” 

The tears come. I’ve been holding it in, but thanks to my neighbour’s kind words, I am able to drop my guard.

She gives me her keys so I can pet her two kitties while she’s out at dinner. It helps. As I’m petting them, my mind continues to swirl. I hope my neighbour knew in his last moments that he was surrounded by people who cared about him. I hope he felt like he had some dignity. I wonder if he would’ve liked me. 

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now. Is this where the story with my neighbours ends, or is it just the beginning for us? Will I ever learn his name? I’m just the neighbour, I remind myself. 

The next day I wake up early. I had a hard time sleeping, and in the middle of the night, a panic attack caused me to imagine that the pillows on my floor were my neighbour. I can’t stop myself from wishing I could have done more. If my doorbell rang twice this morning, I’d already be awake. Maybe I would be quicker today. Maybe it would make a difference. I don’t know. I’ll never know.

Twenty-four hours have elapsed, but it feels like an eternity. My life hasn’t changed at all, but at the same time, I’m not the same person I was yesterday. I’m aware of how many people are waking up at this very moment in my building, in my city, in this country, and how many lives are starting and moving forward and ending around the world. I realise, more than ever before, how interconnected we are — or can be, if we choose to be or are suddenly made to be. It makes me want to pay more attention to everything and everyone around me. It makes me want to tell the people in my life that I love them. It makes me want to spend more time getting to know the people I see every day but rarely interact with. 

My phone dings and a text from my neighbour pops up:

I am so thankful. This is a forever life connection with you. Simon was a man of few words but he was the kindest, gentlest person and you would have really liked him. Please feel free to come over.

I’m just the neighbour… at least, I thought I was. But that word means something different — something more — to me now. Perhaps being a neighbour is greater than just the necessity of 8 million people squished together with just 6-inch-thick walls separating them in this city. Could it even be sacred?

I head downstairs to go to work. A neighbour stops me.

“Nathan, you shouldn’t be upset. He was very sick and had been for a long time. They shouldn’t have put that on you.”  

I’m glad they did.

Note: Some names and identifying details in this essay have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals mentioned. 

Nathan Rousseau Smith is a two-time Emmy, GLAAD, Murrow and Webby-winning producer, video editor and journalist at ABC News. The Florida-native has spent the last 10 years in New York City specializing in reporting on the most talked about cultural zeitgeist moments, minority communities, and the b-side of top headlines. In his spare time, Nathan loves traveling, studying languages and running. Before his career in media, Nathan was a high-level ballet dancer.

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