LITMIR.BIZ

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myself make some kind of strangled cry but that was all I could manage. It hurt to breathe. I choked back my rising panic as my eyes darted around the room in search of something that would work as a weapon. There was a heavy vase, a letter opener, perhaps the poker by the fireplace…

      But what good would any of those things be against a gun?

      Our best bet was a quick response from 9-1-1. Mary Ann didn’t have a landline, only a cell.

      “Dena, where’s your BlackBerry?” I forced myself to ask.

      “In…my bag.”

      “And yours?” I said, glancing at Mary Ann.

      Her eyes went over to her own purse. All of our cell phones were in our handbags and our handbags were on the chair nearest the kitchen.

      From my place on the floor I raised myself to a low crouch and went for the poker.

      “Dena, please tell me what happened!” I heard Mary Ann say.

      “Apply pressure to the wound,” I said urgently as I moved toward the kitchen. “And stay down.”

      Mary Ann asked a question…or maybe she just whimpered, I couldn’t tell. My ears were clogged with the ringing sound of my own fear.

      In one move I grabbed my handbag, threw it in Mary Ann’s direction and jumped around the corner swinging the poker wildly in hopes of knocking someone over before they had a chance to pull a trigger.

      But the room was empty. We were alone after all.

      And the shooter had gotten away.

      I turned to see Mary Ann pressing buttons on my cell. Her fair skin was even whiter than normal.

      And the circle of blood continued to grow.

      CHAPTER 2

      Too frequently grief is nothing more than a pathway to anger.

      –Fatally Yours

      Sunday, May 6th, 9:00 p.m.

      I have never hated the police as much as I did that night. Yes, there were questions to answer but they should have been asked in the ambulance. They shouldn’t have kept me away from my best friend. And Mary Ann…her screams had started less than a minute after she had gotten through to 9-1-1. And they kept coming. Mary Ann’s screams became a continuous soundtrack to the horror movie I was living in.

      But what really scared me was Dena’s silence. She had to feel pain. The blood coming from under her shoulder blade was proof of that. But after her first few panicked whispers she had become deadly quiet, only opening her mouth long enough to answer the urgent questions of the paramedics.

      And then they took her away and I was left with police questions that I had no answer to and Mary Ann’s ceaseless screams.

      I needed to get to Dena. But it was Anatoly who got to her first. When he called to smooth over our latest quarrel I told him what had happened. He wanted to come to Mary Ann’s apartment and stand by my side while I answered the impossible questions, but I didn’t let him. I told him to go to the hospital and to tell the doctors that they had to fix her.

      That they had to make her talk again.

      That they had to bring the warmth back to her legs.

      When Anatoly told me that he didn’t have any control over those things, I started screaming, too. He stopped protesting after that and went to the hospital. The next to call was Monty. I didn’t hear his part of the conversation but he somehow managed to quiet Mary Ann’s cries to gulping sobs.

      And the police kept asking questions. When exactly did we hear the pinging noise? Did we hear footsteps? Was the door locked before the intruder came in or had we forgotten to lock it? Did we know of anyone who wanted to hurt Dena or anyone else in the room? I didn’t have answers. I didn’t even really have thoughts. I just had a need to get to my friend.

      The clock told me that the police kept us for just over an hour but I was sure that God had somehow squeezed a year into that hour, and when I finally got Mary Ann into my car it was everything I could do to keep myself from running every red light as we zoomed toward USF Medical Center.

      And when we arrived everyone was there. Anatoly had called each member of my nonbiological family…Dena’s family. Her boyfriend, Jason, had just finished doing three laps in the JCC pool when he heard his phone ringing by his towel. Dena’s other boyfriend, Kim, was backpacking across Nicaragua with Amelia. They couldn’t be reached. But Marcus was easy to find. He had been on his way to Napa for a short spa getaway. He had been singing along to Madonna when Anatoly brought him into the chaos.

      No one spoke when Mary Ann and I entered that waiting room. Anatoly just looked at me and slowly pulled his hands out of the pockets of his motorcycle jacket and I fell against him. Nothing could make me feel better, but at least I knew he would hold me up.

      “She’s in surgery,” he said, his voice low, his slight Russian accent much more soothing than his words. From the corner of my eye I could see Marcus turning away. “They said the bullet hit her spinal vertebral casing, the bony spinal column, and pushed a fragment of bone into her spinal cord.”

      “What does that mean?” I asked. The fluorescent lights were too bright and bringing unwanted attention to the ugly pattern on the gray carpet and the cheaply upholstered red chairs. Mary Ann was now sitting by Monty’s side. He was just kissing her hair as she cried.

      “It means,” Anatoly explained, “that she’s going to live. They have the head of neurology working on her and we’re in one of the top hospitals in the country.”

      “So she’s going to be okay? Her legs are going to work and everything?” I asked.

      Anatoly pulled away slightly, his brown eyes held me as if trying to steady me for the impact of a shot of bitter realism. “It means,” he said slowly, “that she has the best chance possible. It means we have the right to be optimistic.”

      “But not certain,” I said angrily.

      “Sophie, there is no such thing as certainty. It’s as fictional as human perfection.”

      Marcus put a hand to his stomach and dropped his People magazine onto one of the dusty brown side tables. “I do believe I’ll be throwing up now.” And with that he quickly exited the room.

      Jason burst into laughter. It had a dark, hysterical quality to it and I saw Mary Ann instinctively pull closer to Monty.

      “All this time I thought I was jaded and fucking cynical,” he gasped. “I thought I saw through all the phony middle-class idealism. I thought I understood brutality!”

      I studied him quietly from my place in Anatoly’s arms. Jason’s jeans were torn and his T-shirt depicted a pre-World War II campy B-movie poster with the words Assassin of Youth printed in bold white letters. The slightly smaller print and pictures made it clear that the phrase was a reference to the dangers of marijuana (which Jason wore sardonically) but still the words made me cringe.

      “But now I know I was as delusional as any of the fucking suburbanites I condescend to.” He wasn’t laughing anymore. He looked frightened. Maybe even terrified. “I thought…I thought…”

      “What did you think?” Mary Ann asked, her voice hoarse.

      “I thought this couldn’t happen. I thought some things just didn’t happen. I’m not cynical at all. I’m fucking naive. Even now I can’t accept this. I don’t understand brutality at all!”

      Mary Ann pulled away from Monty and offered Jason a shaky hand. “We have to pray.”

      “I don’t believe in God,” Jason choked out.

      There was a moment of quiet as we all paused to take inventory of our own personal beliefs.

      “I believe in God,” Anatoly said slowly, “but not divine intervention. I’ve seen too

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