My Dad Almost Sacrificed Himself For Me

This memory of mine begins about 3 years ago when I graduated high school. I had grown up with my grandparents but decided to move to a different (and much larger) city to live with my dad for the first time in 12 years. I somewhat knew the city already because I spent my summers with him, but this would be the first time I would have the freedom of an adult. To come and go as I pleased, drive my car anywhere, smoke cigarettes whenever I wanted! I was excited (though sad to leave all my friends).

As soon as I was settled in my dad and stepmom sat me down to discuss the few rules and what I needed to know about the complex. Basic things like go wherever you want, but let us know when you leave/when you're coming back. (Even if it's 2 AM). Oh, and you'll have to park on the street because the apartment complex has limited parking.

"One more thing. There's the neighborhood creep."

This guy, George, was well known to all the women in the complex as well as the police that patrolled the area. He was tall and fairly huge, very intimidating looking. My parents were pretty certain that he would leave me alone for one reason: my dad.

Though George had a habit of stalking other women in the complex, he would stop and find a new target if they had a man make a show of being in their place. A brother, a lover, or a father. It didn't matter what he was to the woman or what he looked like. George would back off immediately. Since I lived with my dad who is also quite tall and rather big—read: intimidating—I felt also confident that I would be alright.

And I was. For a time.

It started about 6 months after I moved in. My stepmom and dad were fighting a lot more until she got up and left him. One night I was sitting on my porch having a cigarette and browsing Facebook or whatever. I wish I could say that I felt like I was being watched, but I probably just looked up because I felt a bug or something.

George was standing about 15 feet away, a little bit behind a tree, staring intently at me. I nearly dropped my cigarette. Shakily, I stubbed it out and went inside. I was home alone, so I made sure to lock all my doors and then played a video game in my room. I told myself that I was probably just paranoid.

The next morning I got up for my morning cigarette and coffee. Lo and behold, minutes after I got onto my porch, George came ambling out of his apartment to look my way. I sucked down my cigarette and went back inside.

This pattern continued for a couple weeks. It was like George stood at his sliding glass door peeking out, waiting to see when I would pop out. I told my dad about it, and he tried to sit with me whenever I went to smoke. If he came with me, George wouldn't even peep a head out of his door.

Of course, the other women in the complex have already tried to call police about George. But he lives in the complex and staring isn't a crime, so there wasn't much they could do. I didn't know how far George had taken it with other women before. With that info in my mind, I knew calling wouldn't be much use.

Things slowly escalated. Once my stepmom left, I had access to her parking spot. So I had 3 ways to get from my car to my apartment depending on how I parked. 1 of the ways went just past George's apartment, about 5 feet from his door. Since I got off work late most nights, I avoided that route as much as possible. Slowly but surely—like he memorized my schedule—he would be on one of the paths when I was coming home. Not directly on the concrete, but a few feet away on the grass. "Behind" a tree.

It was like he thought I couldn't see him? Picture a child hiding very terribly behind a tree. You can see 90% of their body and you know that they are there. That's how he would do it. I would rush past him, avoid eye contact, but prepare to scream if I heard him come after me. I started to carry my keys between my fingertips. I bought a pocket knife and I would walk from my car with it halfway open already, even though I've never been in any kind of fight in my life.

Around this time I believe my mom was trying to find me free self-defense classes, since I couldn't afford anything on my tight budget. My dad was steadily getting more and more pissed off as George edged closer and closer to escalating as the days went by. It went from November to May. If my dad wasn't home, I would lock my bedroom door and keep my knife under my pillow. I would skype all night with my boyfriend, just so someone could call 911 for me if need be. I put a bunch of flower pots in front of my bedroom window so no one could get in silently, lol. I started sitting on the floor of my porch below the wall out of sight to smoke, but angled so I could see him if he walked up to it.

Nightmares of being kidnapped or raped or murdered started to invade my sleep every night.

Then one day my neighbor, Shell, was gossiping to me. "Did you hear about George?"

"No?"

"He got arrested last night."

In the complex parking lot there's a big sort of... electrical power box? It stands about waist height, and is perhaps 2 or 3 feet wide. About 10 minutes before I was supposed to come home—and park right in front of it—some lady with her kid walking by and saw George sitting on the box masturbating.

Was he waiting there for me? Jerking off to the thought of me seeing him? Ugh, the thought makes me want to puke and scares me all at the same time.

I was relieved for a few days of my stress. But it was only a few days that he was gone. Then he was back, and he went right back to the same ol' routine.

One night he got far braver. It was maybe 7 PM when I went out for a cigarette with my dad. A neighbor walked up to chat with my dad, and George came outside and stood out in the open, staring me down.

"Dude's asking to get his fucking ass kicked," my dad said under his breath.

Then he chatted to the neighbor some more. I rolled my eyes, went inside, and played some more video games. I was healing in a World of Warcraft dungeon when I heard Shell shouting "where are you?!" But I was healing, a pretty important job, and I figured she was talking to someone else.

Until she burst into my room in a panic, her eyes huge. She hopped from foot to foot frantically like she was doing the potty dance. "HE'S BLEEDING!"

"Who?" I asked in bewilderment.

"YOUR DAD!! COME QUICK!!"

I made some teenager huffing sound and left my computer—certainly pissing off the rest of the group. I grabbed our little first aid kit filled with band aids. I thought in my mind that my dad was doing something stupid like tossing up his pocket knife and trying to catch it.

But when I stepped outside I found myself face to face with a real horror. About 6 people surrounded my dad including Shell, and my neighbor Caleb held a shirt to my dad's side. He was facing away from me, and his entire back was just covered in blood. It looked like he had been mauled by a bear. That was seriously my first thought. I didn't know we had bears in this city. Caleb's hold on the shirt slipped, and blood sprayed.

I feel queasy writing this down. I have never in my life been the person people turn to in an emergency. Blood makes me light headed and I have anxiety attacks over not being able to find a specific bookmark. But all of the adults (people around 30-40, while I was just 18) around me were panicked aside from Caleb. I needed to be the person that people turned to. I threw the first aid kit onto the porch and told Shell where we keep our towels. She rushed to go grab one.

"Has anyone called 911?" I shouted. 5 pairs of eyes turned to look at me like they'd never heard of 911 before.

"No!" My dad said. "I can't afford an ambulance!"

"Shut up." I said, "What happened?"

"That fucker STABBED ME!"

So I dialed 911, and relayed our address and reason for emergency. Operator told us to keep applying pressure to the wound on my father's lower back. My dad is a true champ. Even though the sidewalk was just one big puddle of blood—gross—he stayed on his feet until someone thought to run and get him a chair.

I ran back and forth along the walkways to get the police and show them the house that George lived in. And then I ran back and forth to get the paramedics. They were so cold and so, so agonizingly slow. They walked calmly and I wanted to scream at them to RUN!! MY DAD COULD BE BLEEDING OUT! DON'T YOU CARE! (I learned later that they don't run because if they let adrenaline kick in, mistakes can happen.)

They shoved Caleb out of the way because he refused to let go of my dad's wound and got him packed into the ambulance. I was about to jump on when police stopped me and told me that I had to stay so I could give my statement. My dad shouted at me to call his boss, and I remembered all his allergies and whatnot for the paramedics. God, 2 years later and all these details have been burned into my brain.

I gave my statement to the police. Then they made me sit outside the complex on the sidewalk for 2-3 hours. They kept me updated on my dad. Once I had called his boss, my boss, and answered my stepmom's message, that's when I allowed myself to break down. It felt like I cried for forever. One of the cops was nice enough to go into my house and grab my cigarettes and a bottle of water for me. He stayed with me the entire time to make sure I didn't run off or something, but he was very nice. He offered to let me sit in his cruiser a few times to get away from the cold.

George was waiting in his apartment when they came. When they took him out to where I was (and there were 14 cop cars! 14!) he still kept trying to stare at me. I stared right back and felt such hatred that I have never in my life felt. I wanted to go over there and murder him. My babysitting cop looked over and saw that George was staring, so he used his flashlight to keep George from being able to look at me.

Once it was all over, I was allowed to go back to my house where I waited for information about my dad.

I gathered the story from my neighbors while he was in the hospital for 9 days. He had shouted at George to "leave his daughter alone", and George had shouted back at him while I was in the house, totally unaware. George said something along the lines of "come tell me that to my face like a man". So my dad hopped over the porch and waltzed up to him.

The creep had been waiting with a 12 inch blade held to the side of his leg. He struck out with his empty hand, and then got my dad in the back with the knife. It missed his kidney very, very narrowly. Traveled up and punctured his lung and damaged his diaphragm. My dad didn't realize he had been stabbed at first. He got George into a headlock and pummeled the shit out of him, thinking the dude had just punched him in the kidney. George dropped the knife, rolled in the grass, and picked up another knife he had been hiding and stabbed my dad again, this time in the upper back. This wound was much more shallow but still required stitches later.

At this point, Shell came outside and screamed to my dad that he was bleeding. He took off his shirt, got pissed, and threw it at George. At that point, the neighborhood stalker put his hands up and went into his apartment.

The blood stayed on the pavement until about noon the next day, when my neighbors kindly washed it off for me. I still have pictures in my email of it, as well as my dad's injuries. My dad spent more time in the hospital in critical condition than George spent being held in jail. I feel like it was my fault. I've been addressing that in therapy, but I still feel awful about it all like my dad had to fight my own battle for me.

Throughout the week while I was on my porch or just outside I had so many women come up to me. They all told me to thank my dad for them. They had all been terrorized by George at some point, and now they were certain he would be away for good. Several poor women had had George stalk them up to their apartment door and pull his pants down, demanding sex. I can't believe the cops "couldn't do anything".

One of those days one of my neighbors came up to me to tell me that the police (and neighbors) had searched the complex and found that George had stashed many knives all over the place. Buried in gardens, stuck behind trees, under his doormat. I shudder to think that he might have planned to one day grab one of his targets and do something far more sinister than stare.

George was declared guilty for battery with a deadly weapon, but the attempted murder charge was dropped. He was out of prison by Christmas on good behavior or whatever, but my dad and I have a lifelong restraining order against him. He has never tried to come after me, so I can only hope that he's terrified of my dad.

I wish I could tell you guys that I took self-defense classes and learned to fight the way my dad can, but I'm still a pussy who can't even slap a spider so... there's that. My dad is doing alright now. He's just had his third surgery on Tuesday trying to repair the damage done to him internally. We're hoping that this will be his last, and his quality of life will vastly improve. I probably owe my life to my dad. If he hadn't fought George for me, maybe I would have been the first victim George stabbed.

George? Let's not meet again.