“10-18, all units get in the field. The FAA has reported a hijacked aircraft en route to our location. ETA fifteen minutes.”

I could feel the tension in Friendly’s voice. The man never got rattled. This was for real.

Standing outside of the security building holding the office key in my hand, my eyes went blank and I couldn’t hear anything for awhile. Somebody brushed past me and said, “Mount up or get the fuck out of here Noland!”

I clipped the office key onto the lanyard around my neck and headed to the weapons vault within the security building to drop my gear. When I got there I nearly tripped over a dozen gun belts that had been left in the floor and immediately knew what the consensus was. Right then at that moment I felt as if I had a choice. I thought for sure most of us were going to die.

The magnitude of what was occurring began to cross my mind as I dropped my stainless steel sidearm in the weapons vault and took off my load bearing and ballistic vests. The fact of the matter was that a hijacked aircraft crashing into the station was imminent. That being said, it made no difference whatsoever how fast or far I could drive. Plumes of radiation cannot be escaped. My mind was made up and I headed to the emergency response building within the facility to assume my duties as one of the stations five fire fighters for the evening.

Nervous wasn’t really the feeling and scared didn’t hold the weight either. Part of me felt fortunate that I was on the fire team that night. I hastily removed my combat boots. My feet slid into my fire galoshes and I pulled my protective pants up over my BDUs. I looked around the room for signs of trepidation as I pulled the suspender straps over my shoulders. Two operators actually showed up and I saw the despair in each of their faces.

I often wondered why the station didn’t have a legit group of fire fighters. Kind of a foolish thing to dwell on at the time but it was my way of dealing with the situation. Who the hell decided that four control room operators and a security guard were enough to handle the worst case fire scenario at a nuclear power plant? Tonight there were just three of us instead of five. The other two members of the brigade never showed.

Nuclear stations are so ridiculously procedurally driven. After 9/11 the great minds of management decided that the station needed a procedure to mitigate jet fuel fires. I guess they forgot to consider that not everyone has the stones to stand tall and face an impending inferno.

The rules of the game in a jet fuel scenario stated that in the event of an incomplete team, one “knowledgeable operator” would return to the control room and act as a liaison between operations and offsite assistance if and when they arrived. If another “knowledgeable operator” was present, they would report to the fuel building and wait to assess any breeches. Since I was security, I already knew my place and was prepared to drive the fire engine to a designated mustering point outside of the station and rendezvous with offsite assistance. Halfway out the door she grabbed my shoulder from behind. I can’t remember her name. I think it was Sarah. The social disconnect between departments made it impossible to know everyone.

“Will you go for me?” I could barely hear her screaming over the turbines being ramped down. “I’m pregnant and can’t go into the fuel building,” she said.

Lines of tears streaming down her face were being sopped up by the protective hood pulled down around her neck. Steam was everywhere from the hot water being released within the station. She must have thought I was a fool yet I felt sorry for her. I nodded my head and took the self contained breathing apparatus from her hands.

When I passed the security tactical room on my way to the fuel building, I saw that the floor was littered with safety rounds from rifles. Rifles that my friends now held in their hands. I reached down and picked one of them up as a memento to their loyalty and put it into the pocket of my fire coat. The guards on my shift were all I had in life. Right now they were scattered throughout the plant. I imagined some were where they needed to be, others were probably just hiding. I had no intentions of ever going to the fuel building; instead I went to find camaraderie.

I pushed through the door to the alleyway outside the turbine building and was greeted by the sounds of cocking rifles and quickly identified myself. Three red dots circled my chest like moths to a patio light.

“How many threats show up to the dance dressed like a fucking fire man?” I yelled from the doorway. When the safeties clicked back on I bent down to set my helmet, gloves and Sarah’s tank down on the asphalt. There was still a red moth flying around a snap on my crotch. I looked down the alleyway for the source.

I yelled, “Fuck, Reyes, cut it out.” The dangling cigarette gave him away.

He lowered his weapon and flicked a hot ash. Even from a distance I could tell he was hot boxing it like a madman.

“Wanna smoke?” He offered me the box. “I’ll pretend that you’re old enough and promise not to tell your momma.”

This was the running joke. When I took the job a few years ago I had just turned twenty one. That was the minimum age for carrying a fire arm according to the NRC.

“Those things will kill you,” I said nonchalantly.

“A fucking airplane smashing into containment will kill you. And me and everyone else around for miles and miles,” Reyes said.

“If it hits containment we get lucky,” I said. “If it hits the fuel building then our bones will glow in our graves. How much time do we have anyway?”

“Something like ten minutes. If I were you, I’d be running towards the turnstiles like all the other spineless motherfuckers around here. Last time Friendly did a radio check only nine of us answered it.”

“Nine? And three of them are down here in this worthless alleyway?” I asked.

“Hey man, I just go where the procedure tells me to go. I think Purcell is on top of the main steam building and Jimmy is under the equipment hatch. Where the fuck are you going? Shouldn’t you be unrolling water hoses or something?”

“I’m going up on the rooftops of the diesels. If I’m going to go out like this then I might as well see the fireworks,” I said.

“I’ll come with you. We Marines gotta stick close. Oorah and all that shit.”

“I’m no damn Marine, Reyes. I’m just a kid who doesn’t know any better. Besides, you just want to come with me because you can’t hack it out here in this alleyway.”

“Hey Noland, it’s whatever you say. I’ll make your ass an honorary Marine tonight. I’ll call Purcell down from his post and we’ll anoint you and all that shit.” Reyes started laughing like a lunatic.

I would never in my wildest dreams consider joining the Marine Corps. I had heard enough horror stories from these guys while chewing the fat on night shift. There has to be ulterior motives involved when busses full of men and women arrive late to Paris Island every night. All the fresh meat arrives consistently after midnight and just as soon as those idiot’s boots hit the grass they get tenderized. Drill sergeants break you down immediately and get inside your head before you can get your first nights rest. The Marine Corps was American brainwashing at its finest. But they got stones at least. You could count on them, no questions asked.

“You two jarheads gonna tap Jimmy too?” I asked just as we reached the ladder to the diesel rooftops. “He’s the one that showed up. Hell, I just came out here because I thought I could slip past with no one seeing me.”

“Shit man, Jimmy’s been on the phone since the code was called and we took up post. He’s nothing but a dumbass and a pussy anyway. As soon as we got out here Purcell took his extra magazines right from his vest. I guess he thinks he’s gonna shoot that fucking plane down.”

We both started laughing, just not at the same things. I at a Marine calling someone else a dumbass and him thinking he was some damn comedian. As I unlocked the ladder something smashed against the wall a few yards from us. It was Jimmy’s phone.

Reyes shouted, “Hey you Irish fuck we don’t need a preview of what’s about to occur here.” Turning to me he said, “Man, go chill that guy out. I’m gonna go up the way and burn another one.”

He gave me one of those hybrid handshake slaps and smiled under the lights. As I walked away I leaned down to pick up some of the pieces to Jimmy’s phone. I didn’t know him that well. He was one of those guys that grew up too slow and thought that games like Parcheesi were all you needed on a Friday night. Jimmy was a tubby fuck who was already more than half bald and was at least five years older than me.

“You know your carrier is going to be pissed when you walk in the store tomorrow and show them what you’ve done,” I said to him.

“There ain’t gonna be a tomorrow you bastard.” His words were moist from sweat or tears or both. “It looks like they would have shut off the lights out here by now.”

“That would be stupid. If they did, all these big fucking diesels behind me would cut on, bring the lights back up and we wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves think,” I said.

“How can you just stand here all smug and act like we aren’t about to be fucking vaporized?” he asked.

Jimmy’s voice withered. He wiped at his eyes quickly. Truth be told, I was just as scared as he was. Some people are hoarders. I just hoard my emotions. I would have been praying to God if I knew he had the time to listen. But for whatever reason this was how I had always dealt with negative shit. I made a mockery of it all.

Everyone in this motherfucker is ignorant as hell if they didn’t see this one coming. It had barely been two years since 9/11 and the towers couldn’t be the entire show. Why not blow up a nuclear reactor and send some radiation up Bush’s ass?

“Who did you call, Jimmy?” I wanted to ease his mind.

“My mom,” he said. His eyes never left the fence line that surrounded the station several yards in front of him. I don’t think he was even blinking.

“Why didn’t you call that little girl of yours?” I said. “The one you brought to Friendly’s house last weekend.”

“I wanted to,” he said. “But we’ve only been on a few dates and I can’t let her know how I feel this early. She’ll think I’m some kind of obsessed nut.”

“And now she’ll never know,” I said. “Remember, we’re all about to be vaporized.”

“Fuck you, you bastard!” Jimmy tossed his rifle to the ground. The rear lens of the sight nearly shattered on the dark asphalt.

He grabbed his lunchbox and walked away. After he turned the corner I heard his fear escape from his stomach in the form of vomit. I picked up his rifle and found him around the corner looking like a fat tea kettle. One of his hands was on his hip and the other was angled against a wall in the alleyway.

“Where are you going?” I asked him.

“Inside.” He spit out what fear was left in his mouth.

“Why the hell would you want to do that?” I asked. “Think about how fucked up it’s gonna get in there.”

Inside was the last place I would want to be. The turbine building was nothing but steel and concrete. You couldn’t see anything in there right now anyway. The steam from the cooling valves had managed to fill every floor of the massive turbine building. I often would climb up to its roof sometimes at the end of night shift and watch the sun rise over the lake. I’m not sure how high up it is but from that point you stand at eye level with the lightning rods attached to the domes. I’d be up there right now but I doubt Friendly would have given me the key to the turbine building roof ladder at a time like this.

“Look Jimmy, I’ll take this fucking rifle okay. But you got to come up to the diesel rooftops with me and watch the show,” I said.

He was reluctant but he picked up his lunchbox and followed me rung after rung up to the top. I sat down and slid my legs over the side. When I did some of the pea gravel rocks scattered near the edge fell and clanged loudly against Sarah’s tank I left at the bottom. Jimmy sat Indian style five feet or so behind me.

“It’s colder up here,” he said.

“It’s the middle of fucking December. And it isn’t colder, you’ve just calmed down enough to realize it,” I said. “You have any kids Jimmy?”

“Nah. You?”

“Nope. What time is it?” I asked.

“Three thirty seven.”

Jimmy reached in his lunch box, grabbed a strawberry Moon Pie and offered me one. I declined and started throwing rocks at Reyes who was still smoking in the alleyway below. In between drags he threw rocks back.

“Is your radio dead or something?” I asked. “I haven’t heard Friendly in a while.”

Jimmy tried his best to search for it on his belt. After a few seconds he said, “Shit, I turned it down while I was talking to my Mom.” He cranked up the knob.

“If I got your rifle you might as well give me your damn radio too,” I said.

He clipped it off his belt and nearly tossed it over the edge.

I held it in my hands, then keyed the mic and said, “127 to control 10-14.” This was just a standard radio check and Friendly came back with a 10-2 letting me know I was receiving clearly.

Jimmy and I sat in silence for minutes that passed slower than the opening credits of a porno film. He was working on his second strawberry Moon Pie. Where was this fucking plane? I was ready for it to hit any second and send radioactive fire and jet fuel burning through the night sky. Instead, the only spark in sight came from Reyes hot boxing again below us.

Random thoughts began to race through my mind like horses on a sped up carousel. I shook them off and tried to think of a poetic song to play inside the turntable of my head but could only come up with “Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis. Just as I reached the chorus for the second time, static came over the radio.

“All units stand down. The FAA advises that the threat has been diverted. I say again to all units, you can stand down.”

I sighed heavily, emitting a stream of white breath from my mouth. Reaching into the pocket of my fire coat I pulled out the plastic safety round I picked up in the hallway earlier. Spinning it between my fingers it somewhat resembled an orange airplane with just one wing. I locked the bolt of the rifle to the rear, inserted the plastic round inside, and slapped the chamber home. This made the weapon safe. Safe like me. Safe like everyone.

Jimmy sat motionless behind me. I laid the weapon long ways at his feet and set the radio down beside it. His mouth was half opened and had pink crumbs hanging from it and falling out of it. Some vomit was still clinging to the Velcro pocket of his tactical vest. I decided to leave him up there. Purcell had come down off his rooftop too. He and Reyes smoked together in the back of the alleyway.

I opened the door to the turbine building and headed for the emergency response building. Once I got there I could see someone outside of it yet they were barely visible through the dissipating steam. Once I reached the door I could tell it was Sarah from earlier. She was balled up against the wall but upright. Her face was hidden in her knees and I could tell she was sobbing from the way her ribs were bouncing.

I entered the small room and took my fire coat off. My shirt was soaked with sweat. I put all my gear back in the locker after I removed the change of clothes I kept in a plastic bag at the bottom. When I finished changing I realized that I still needed to turn in the key to the site vice presidents office. With it still clipped to my lanyard, I stole some operator’s jacket and hard hat from a rack by the door and left the room for the security building.

When I reached the door, I punched in the code and entered. The alarm station was a mad house. Bosses were everywhere. I caught Friendly’s eyes and held up the office key. I put it back on its hook inside the large metal box where it belonged and searched the inventory. I located the key to the turbine building rooftop ladder, plucked it from its hook and held it up for Friendly to see. He smiled and signed it out to me. I clipped it to my lanyard and got out of there undetected.

As I walked through the gravel behind the transformers on the back side of the turbine building, I couldn’t get that song out of my head. It just kept playing over and over. When it would end, my mind would pick up the needle and knock it back to the edge of the record. Finally I reached the ladder. I zipped up the coat, tightened the hard hat and began to climb. The December sun probably wouldn’t rise by the time my shift ended that morning but I would be ready for it just in case it did.

It started innocently enough, shortly after the wedding. A teasing shove here, a comment there. Light stuff, whenever my mother did anything wrong. Mike, my stepfather, was unforgiving. Since my dad had passed away from cancer when I was too young to understand, I didn’t know what having a father would be like. At the time, I dreamed it would be amazing, that the man that my mother married would want to have fun with me. I wanted him to teach me how to ride a bike and build giant forts out of sticks with me in the backyard under the shade of vibrantly green leaves. In my imagination, he was perfect.

I was only eight years old when they got married at the clubhouse of the new subdivision we were moving into from our double-wide trailer near the factory. They met at the local bar downtown, and he asked her out. He was fairly nice to look at and had a decent amount of money from his job as business manager of the local Kohl’s store, where I could now get new clothes at a discount. At least, that’s what I heard my mom’s friends from the factory say about him at their weekly cards and liquor nights.

The wedding was the most wonderful thing I’d ever been to. My mother was ethereal in her white gown, hair flowing down her back in waves. Everyone at the reception was smiling, nodding, shaking hands with the well-to-do man who had married the poor woman, murmuring encouragement to him and my mother and inviting her to the upcoming sewing circles and baking parties.

The women that spoke with her all had perfect teeth, a blinding white that confused me. Their kids ran around in their nice clothes, but I pushed them off when they tried to get me to join in. I couldn’t ruin my dress, or Mike would be angry. My mother had said so earlier that morning, after they argued quietly to the side of the back room where she was getting ready.

My mother smiled back at them with her mouth closed. Her teeth were stained with cheap coffee, and I watched her duck her head in embarrassment when she opened her mouth to speak to them.

“Of course I’ll be there,” she said. “You’re so kind to invite me. Can I bring Mary along so she can play with your kids?” They nodded in response and moved on to their respective tables to eat.

Her old friends drank and danced with my mother, while the women from our new neighborhood sat with their husbands and picked at their chicken as they looked on disapprovingly. My mother sat on the edge of the dance floor, torn between the two groups. Eventually, she got up and sat at the table with our next-door neighbor, Sue. Then Mike joined her, putting his arm around the back of her chair and reaching across her to shake hands and converse loudly with Sue’s husband, George.

I remember when Mike had handed me my flower girl dress a month before the wedding date. It was a creamy satin, with tulle under the lower half that made it poof out all around and a bow that tied in the back. My mom smiled when I came out of what was to be my new room and did a twirl in Mike’s kitchen.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, patting my head. “Elizabeth, isn’t she beautiful?”

“You look like Cinderella, honey,” she said, pulling me over to her and brushing the hair back from my face and tucking it behind my ear. I beamed and did another twirl in front of her. “Now go take it off and hang it up so you don’t get it dirty. Mike paid good money for it.” Mike nodded in agreement.

I bounced on my tiptoes back to the room and paused in front of the mirror. Despite my dark hair color, I did look like Cinderella, ready to go to the ball that I believed would change my life, just as it had for her. I grabbed my pencil and waved it in the air.

“Bippity, boppity, boo! Now, you are a princess,” I told my appearance sternly, then took it off and placed it gently in the front of my closet for the big day.

But the bruises on her arms that kept appearing were getting darker with time. It had been two years since the marriage, and my mother was running out of excuses.

“I was just trying to fix the picture in the hall,” she said one Saturday when I spotted new bruises that had blossomed on her forearm. I looked up at her, wrinkling my forehead in confusion. “It was hanging crookedly. I fell off of the stepstool and hit my arm on the top of the staircase railing.”

As she walked away, I noticed Mike’s shadow disappearing around the corner. Had he been listening?

After getting a snack and heading back upstairs later that day, I paused in the hallway, looking at the picture and the railing. Even at the age of ten, the thought crossed my mind that falling off a stepstool into the railing wouldn’t have caused such a deep bruise. A shiver I didn’t like or fully understand went down my spine, and I ran back to my room, locking the door behind me.

Three years later, my mom had to go to the emergency room. Mike was crying and calling her name as she lay in the door to their room.

“Elizabeth, wake up,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “Wake up. Can you hear me?”

He turned and saw me standing nearby.

“Mary, thank God,” he said, but the relief in his voice didn’t totally erase the wild panic in his eyes. “Call 911. Your mother fell.”

At the hospital later, the doctor looked down at my mother from beneath gray furrowed brows, the lines on his face deepening as he spoke.

“I’m not sure how a concussion of this magnitude came from hitting your head on a doorframe,” he said gently. “And the bruises on the rest of your body seem old. Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

My mom glanced over at me and grabbed my hand, squeezing it in that soft and reassuring way she had. She looked back over at the doctor and spoke with certainty in her voice.

“No, sir, I’ve told you everything,” she said. “Plus, I’m clumsy. What can I say?”

She tried her best to sound sheepish. The doctor didn’t know, though, that her left eyebrow always rose slightly whenever she told the stories of how she got her injuries. It seemed to defy anyone to tell her otherwise. The same eyebrow would raise in the summer over a burned hamburger smothered in ketchup, when Sue would ask her how clumsiness gave her such big thigh bruises while George cooked on the grill. My mother eventually stopped coming to her cookouts when the questions got too frequent. Mike said they preferred cooking on our grill in the peace of his own home.

The doctor sighed a little.

“Okay, then, we’ll sign your release forms and send you home,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, smiling broadly. It never reached her eyes. “Can you send in my husband? I’m sure he’s awfully worried.”

My stomach clenched and contracted. I turned and ran to the bathroom and sat in front of the toilet. I dry heaved, then took several deep breaths. Grabbing onto the outside of the toilet bowl, I braced my body so I could stop shaking. I had long since given up on trying to ask my own questions of my mother.

She knew I didn’t believe her. I tried hard not to show my disbelief, though. She hated that, when I asked her if her injuries were his fault. I went up to her in the kitchen one Wednesday evening when he was out playing poker with his friends from work and tapped her on the shoulder. She winced a little, then pulled a smile into her face.

“Hi, honey,” she said, putting an arm around my small shoulders. “What’s up?”

I examined her hand carefully as it rested on my shoulder.

“Mom, where did you get the bruise on your arm?”

“I told you, honey, it came when I fell off the stepstool into the chair rail.” Her eyes averted my gaze.

“Mom…” I stopped, then started again. “Mom, did Mike do this to you? You can tell me. Is it him? Is he hurting you?” Silence. My mother seemed frozen for the moment, but her eyes betrayed her thoughts as they welled slightly.

She withdrew her arm from around my shoulders, stroking my hair as her hand passed my head.

“No,” she said, her voice soft but firm as she looked down at the table where her book lay open, the pages creased from years of earmarks. “No, he didn’t hurt me. He has done nothing but provide for you and me both. Now, please go finish your homework.”

I walked slowly back to my room, sat at my desk and put my head down. My tears stained my completed homework assignments, so I began recopying them automatically. With each scratch of the pencil, the question of whether I should tell someone or not reverberated in my head and my heart.

Mike came to me later that night, after his poker game was over and my mother had given up reading in the kitchen in favor of her husband pillow in bed. From my desk chair, I saw his shadow approach my door, which was cracked open. The edges of the shadow grew more distinct as he approached the door frame. I heard a soft knock.

“May I come in?” he asked, a friendly smile positioned on his face.

“Sure,” I said flatly, trying my best to keep my emotions in check.

He stepped into my room and closed the door behind him almost all the way, leaving a sliver of light that striped my quilted bedspread.

“I heard what you asked your mother tonight,” he said quietly. “She told me just now.” Then, after a pause, “I would never hurt her. I just want you to know that.”

He patted me on the shoulder. The pressure from each touch vibrated uncomfortably through my collarbone and arm. I remained silent.

“You know, I know you’ve never had a father, but it hurts me that you can’t let me try to fill that role,” he continued. “I give you and your mother a stable life, a home, food, clothing. Haven’t I earned your respect and love?”

His hand rested on my shoulder that time, its pressure bearing down slightly on the joint.

“I don’t think you’re telling the truth,” I said under my breath.

“What?” he said, the smile disappearing off of his face. “What did you just say?”

“Nothing,” I stammered, but it was too late. His smile was gone. He gripped my shoulder and shook me slightly as he spoke.

“You’re lying right now, and people don’t like liars,” he said through his teeth in a low voice. “And if you start telling lies about me to all your friends and teachers, I’ll have to punish you. It’s my duty as your father. It’s only fair. Understand?”

I nodded. He released my shoulder and brushed the fabric back in place.

“Now, time for bed. You need some rest.”

I nodded, and he left my room, pausing before he stepped into the hallway.

“Don’t forget our discussion tonight, young lady,” he said. “Good night.”

The door closed with a soft click behind him. I sat in my chair, paralyzed, wondering why I fought back with those comments. What was wrong with me? I didn’t think I couldn’t match his strength, and I didn’t want to test that knowledge.

Briefly, my mind flashed to my teacher, the doctor we saw at the hospital, our neighbors. I was pretty sure they suspected what I was thinking, but I didn’t want to get Mike in trouble. After all, he had given me and my mother a way to have a better life. Shouldn’t that count for something?

I knew by the time I was a junior in high school that my mother would never leave him on her own. She didn’t have the strength to try, and she didn’t want to go back to her former life. She was too old to work in the factory again, and with no job, she would have no way of feeding me. Besides, she wanted me to go to college so badly. The brochures were stacking up on the kitchen counter, and I had to admit, their glossy covers promised a different life for me, one without my past serving as a constant reminder of my debt to Mike for “saving” us from poverty, as he put it.

One morning, I was running late. I knew I would miss the bus, and since Mike had refused to buy me a car (an “unnecessary expense”), I heard my mother’s whimper of fear as his voice rang through the walls of the kitchen into the formal dining room.

They thought I had left for school already, and I had left the house once. But I had returned after ten minutes at the bus stop to grab my Calculus book for my first class, hoping my mother would give me a ride to school instead.

As I walked back up to the house, something didn’t seem right. The lights weren’t on downstairs anymore, even though it was 7:15 a.m.

I crept up the porch steps and opened the front door as quietly as possible. His voice was getting louder and louder, so loud that it covered the creak that the floor made as my body shifted from floorboard to floorboard.

“You bitch!” he boomed. “I told you not to make breakfast this morning. I have a breakfast meeting at work. Look at all of our food you wasted.”

“I’m so sorry, I forgot,” she said, panic in her voice. Tears began to stream down her face. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“I do,” he said sternly. “You’re a clumsy whore that can’t even manage to keep up with housework, cooking and her husband’s schedule. Maybe I should have left you in the trailer park, where you belong.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, throwing the words at him as if to plead for her freedom. I hit the record button on my phone, and the red video light blinked in the corner. Here was my chance.

“You better be sorry,” he said. I cringed but took a step closer, then another, unable to stop myself from approaching the scene.

Two steps away from the kitchen entrance, I came into view of them. He was grabbing her hair and forcing her face towards the breakfast nook, where she had arranged everything for him to eat. Mike stepped back when he saw me and let go of my mother, who fell to the ground sobbing.

“Why are you still here?” he said slowly.

“I was running late,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see anything.”

“No, you didn’t. But I better make damn sure you never tell anyone about this.” He lunged for me, and my mother screamed as her hands reached out for me.

I followed my instincts and grabbed the closest knife—the one my mother had used earlier to slice bread for my toast. The jagged edges gleamed as he tried to grab me.

He stopped. Everything was still for a moment. I was confused. Why did he stop? Shouldn’t I have the beginnings of a huge black eye, or a broken nose right now?

Something warm dripped onto my hand. I looked down from his wide eyes.

The knife was stuck in the middle of his chest, and I was holding the handle.

I let go, and he staggered back two steps. He felt the handle, the blade. It protruded from his chest like the prongs of a coat rack. Then his knees buckled, and he fell onto them, wide-eyed in disbelief. His body slumped over to the side and fell to the ground. It readjusted as he hit the floor, and then he was on his back, immobile, his face slack and his eyes vacant. It was over.

I froze, not knowing what to do. Call the cops? But what if they don’t believe me? I couldn’t go to jail, I was so young, this is not good. I shouldn’t be punished for his mistakes. My mind wouldn’t stop.

My mom slowly picked up the phone and handed it to me.

“I can’t,” she said weakly, gesturing to the phone. “Please.”

I took the phone from her hands, but dropped it as Sue ran in suddenly. She stopped short at the scene before her, then looked at me.

“I saw the whole thing through the window,” she said, putting her hand to her chest. “You’re not to blame.” She picked the phone up from off the floor and dialed 911. “I’ll speak for you.”

I turned to my mother as Sue began to speak with the dispatcher. My mother’s face was ashen and tear-streaked, but she seemed calm.

“Mom?” I asked her quietly.

She reached out her arms, and I went over to her. We held each other, rocking back and forth, caught in the marbled emotions of anxiety and grief, and bracing for whatever lay ahead.

Strangely enough, my therapist didn’t regard this list of accomplishments with as much pride as I did. When I finished, she cocked her head like a cocker spaniel and asked, “Why do you find this self-destructive behavior so appealing, Margaret? What is it you find so compelling about risking your life, and causing your parents so much stress? Are you angry with them?”

Personally, I felt the thing stressing my mother the most was the stress of having to appear stressed all the time, and my father’s biggest worry was that their weekend visits would cut into his Saturday television marathon. I tamped down on my knee-jerk reaction to respond with “And are you angry because your parents actually named you Kitty?” and slouched back in my seat.

Kitty Monty’s office was decorated with the kind of art you would expect to find in a nursing home or in a playschool for mentally handicapped children. Puppies and babies seemed as out of place at Tidewater Psychiatric Institute as an AA meeting in a bar. It just seemed unfair to plaster the office with images of things most of the patients who sat in it would never have. I mentioned that to Dr. Monty, but I guess she didn’t find my appeal to justice all that convincing because she just tolerantly waited for me to answer the question.

I sighed. “What was the question again?”

“Why do you persist in committing these reckless and irresponsible acts?” she asked for the third time. I had heard the question the first three times, but it was one of my favorite games to play with her; in one of our biweekly one-on-one sessions, I had managed to force her to repeat the phrase “erratic behavior” no less than twelve times.

“My mother quickly became disinterested in me when she realized my feats weren’t of the variety that she could brag about at the water cooler to her lawyer friends, and my father once told me ‘You didn’t turn out like I’d hoped’. I’m not sure what he hoped for, because I didn’t think he’d had the time to worry about my future in between working eighty hour weeks and my brother’s football games. He broke my heart, but he also set me free. No matter what I did to redeem myself, I could never reverse all the times I’d let him down, so what was the point in trying?” None of this was necessarily true, but I’d heard it on a soap opera once, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t already used it in a previous session. She seemed to buy it, because she nodded sagely, adjusted her bifocals, and scribbled something in the margins of her notebook. I had the sudden urge to snatch the glasses off her nose and throw them out of the window. Instead, I sat on my hands and waited for her response.

Finally she looked up. “Well, Margaret—“

“Maggie,” I interrupted. “My parents are rich, not me.”

“Okay then, Maggie, you made some excellent progress today…I think we’ve gotten pretty close to the heart of the distressing lack of concern for your own well-being and the feelings of those who care about you. A couple more sessions like this, and we can talk about your release.” Yeah, right. I’d heard that every week for the last six, but today I was able to look her in the face and smile, knowing what I had in store for later. I had decided that I was taking a more active role in my release, which hopefully, with the aid of my old college friend Joe Miller and without any unforeseen delays, would be tonight.

Her earnest expression provoked an uncontrollable desire to snicker, and I bit my lip and looked down into my lap, shaking with suppressed laughter. Luckily, Kitty didn’t seem to notice and she stood up and held out her hand for a handshake, her typical gesture of dismissal after every session. I jumped up and slapped it in a lopsided high five, and gave her a jaunty salute.

“Later, Doc”, I said as I tried to walk out of her office as fast as I could without giving the impression of a victim bolting from a burning building, I once again encountered the sterile air of the hospital, I breathed a crisp, clean sigh of relief. And promptly lit a cigarette. I inhaled as if it were my very last breath on Earth, exhaled, and counted to six. As I murmured slowly “five…six…” I heard the familiar sound of footsteps and heavy breathing that accompanied the bulky form of Doris.

“Maggie? Maggie!” she gasped. “I’ve told you millions of times! There is no smoking in the corridor!” I smiled and took another drag before dropping the cigarette to the floor and crushing it with my foot.

Blowing the smoke into her face, I cheerily replied “My bad, Dor, forgot. Silly me.” I grinned into her twisted, fuming features and headed off down the hall.

Tidewater was a hotbed of contradictions. Half of the patients were just like me, who had what I like to term “quirks”, and the other half was completely batshit insane. I’m not referring to the kind of easily spotted insanity, given away by muttering to walls or dragging fruit around on a leash. Some of the women in my ward seemed completely normal. Until you found Rosalie hovering over your bed late at night, cradling a loaf of bread like it was an infant and hissing “Why isn’t my baby BREATHING?”, or Ellie in front of the TV, mindlessly pulling out clumps of hair without even flinching.

Tidewater was for the truly hopeless, or for those who had abandoned it so long ago they didn’t even recognize what it was anymore. I was an anomaly. I had neither resigned myself to life at Tidewater nor was I trying to pull out my own teeth with tweezers, the way CiCi did when Doris gave her Lithium instead of Depakote. I simply had a disregard for both the socially appropriate and the legally acceptable. If you asked me, I was just like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan, without the looks or money to get myself out of trouble. I relied on my ability to manipulate the truth, especially with cops. “See, Officer, how it happened was: I was out for a stroll when…” and so on and so forth. I never really knew myself how my own sentences were going to end, so if I managed to actually create a plausible explanation for whatever pointlessly reckless and illegal behavior I’d been caught in the middle of, I was just as surprised as the police officer.

After the fourth arrest, an abortion, and my unsuccessful attempt at suicide, both the legal system and my parents decided that I was too much for them to handle, and I had no money of my own to move out. A hasty search for a reputable mental hospital far enough away that my mother could tell people I was studying abroad and close enough that she and my father could visit resulted in my stay at Tidewater. My therapist threw around a lot of phrases like “borderline personality” and “bipolar” disorders, and I’d heard the words “hysterical” and “dramatic” from my parents, but if you asked me, which nobody did, I was just bored. Eternally and desperately bored.

I’ll admit that boredom landed me in trouble, but in all fairness nobody ever even thought to ask me why it was that I felt the need to steal the car sitting on the corner of 15th and K outside the strip club (it had the keys in it. Shame on you, rich folk); why I had gotten involved in so many casual relationships that resulted in my brief pregnancy (guys treat women like tools all the time. Why is it so strange that it should work both ways?) or why I had tried to kill myself (I hadn’t, but apparently muscle relaxers and vodka aren’t meant to be taken together. Lesson learned). So here I was, watching Rosalie trying to brush the teeth of her bread loaf baby, and pondering my escape. My therapists, Dr. Monty and my group leader, Lorraine, constantly referred to my impending release but neither ever actually set a date, and so I made my own. I was one of the few patients who had grounds privileges and my friend Joe was visiting me tonight and it was my intention that he wouldn’t be leaving alone.

I walked into the living area and stood behind Marilyn, my best friend at Tidewater as well as my roommate. Marilyn was a cutter, or as I liked to think of it, she had a romantic attraction to sharp objects. We had met on my first day at the Institute and had hit it off immediately when we realized that we had the same initial instinct for excessive behavior and the burning desire to remind ourselves every once in a while that we were still alive. It manifested differently; I stole cars and Marilyn used her mother’s finest silverware to cut herself under the table. Currently, she was watching Seinfeld reruns and absently spinning her hemp bracelet around her wrist. The rough canvas had rubbed her skin raw in patches that often opened up and bled, perpetually making her look as if she’d been crucified. I leaned down and whispered, “Meet me in the room. I have something for you.”

Five minutes later, she walked in while I was throwing as much as I could possibly fit into my backpack. A couple pairs of jeans, a sweatshirt and clean underwear went in with my toothbrush and a couple of my favorite books. I had told Joe to bring an empty backpack with him, and we’d switch them out in my room, because it would look odd for me to take backpack on a stroll about the grounds. Marilyn watched me for a few minutes before tentatively asking, “What are you going to do, once you’re out?” I stopped and looked at her; her eyes were welling up with tears.

“Oh Jesus Christ…when you get out, you can come visit us. Joe and I are going to go live in Arizona, He got a job on a ranch there and he says he can talk to the owner about getting me a job as a cook. This isn’t real life, honey. I can’t stay here anymore, you know that.” I looked in her eyes and silently pleaded with her to understand that I wasn’t ditching her, but I was ditching Tidewater. She nodded and wrung her hands. I reached under my mattress and pulled out the bound journal she had always coveted and put it in her hands. She looked up at me, startled, and I smiled at her. “You always wanted to read my journal, right? Well now you can, and there’s plenty of reading material there for you. You know how Doris always confiscates the food from Greta’s room? She hides it in the nurse’s station, and she eats it at night. Once I caught her sleeping and there were Milky Way wrappers everywhere!” Despite herself, Marilyn’s tear-stained face creased, and she broke into wobbly laughter. This anecdote wasn’t even remotely true, but I liked coming up with interesting stories about uninteresting people and I’d been writing them down for months. Why shouldn’t Marilyn get a kick out of them too? Poor thing was going to be bored here without me anyway. Once she started cackling, I did too, and we giggled for a good ten minutes, managing to restrain ourselves only to start laughing again.

We were interrupted by a sharp rap on the door and I threw my backpack under the bed just before Doris poked her head in. “Visitor”, she said gruffly and threw open the door to reveal Joe, looking as refreshingly and scruffily familiar as ever. I ran into his arms and Doris rolled her eyes and left.

Joe was the only souvenir of my failed attempt at community college, save for a couple English credits and a collection of drunken memories. He was also one of those rare people whose opinion I remotely respected, even if it wasn’t enough to actually affect any of my behavior. Joe could listen to my rambling thoughts on everything from love and sex to my need for adventure without pointing out the obvious flaws in my excuses and explanations, probably because he’d been in love with me from the first day I sailed into our Religion 101 class, one that I only passed because Joe wrote both our final papers. Once we were sitting in a Waffle House in the wee hours of one of the final nights of exam week, talking about how we should probably quit smoking and doing other equally unnecessarily hazardous things to our health. I looked at the blazing cigarette in my hand and shrugged. “Ah well, it’s not like I want to live too long anyway. I mean seriously, could you see me as an old and feeble woman? What the hell would I do at eighty years old?”

Joe looked at me affectionately and replied “Probably sit in your rocking chair and wonder why all the things you’ve done haven’t killed you yet.” I started to laugh, then promptly felt a pang of sheer terror. That would be my fucking luck.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t had too much opportunity to turn my life around since then, since shortly after I dropped out; I followed that up with both an arrest and a hospital visit. That was all going to change. Like a born-again Christian, or an alcoholic once the hangover’s worn off, I was viewing the world and all it had to offer with crystal clear vision. There was no way I was going to end up like Rosalie, with her yeasty infant, or Marilyn, rubbing against picture frames, hoping to break skin. I didn’t know if we were actually going to Arizona, but I didn’t care as long as it was thousands of miles away from Tidewater and its hollow, broken occupants. I kissed her on the forehead, grabbed Joe’s hand and pulled him out of the room.

“Let’s go.”

what hollow thing eats at you?

Is your mind/body meandering

nothing more than youthful gaming?

Or does death knock at your ribcage,

its filthy fingers picking at your mortar?

Stand down from these heights

before the quicksand covers you over

and I can no longer cup your fleeting pulse.

like bits of crystallized sugar

lozenges of sharp words flung

when one is young

slip down the mouth and come full rest

at perfect bulls-eyes just inside the chest

preparing a way for further knives


flipped across rooms

to exactly where the worst of wounds reside

down a toddler’s cotton-candy pink mouth

how unkind syllables do spin in early

and slash red as a sore throat

to where

even the repairing stitches must be sewn up jagged

from those harsh verbs, the pointed tips

leaving behind unmended gash lines black as railroad tracks

right across a stretch of skin

located just below the defenselessness of childhood collarbones


then—that familiar rip much like the renting of sheets

seams opening first to a drip next a puddle

which will forever gather as sticky sweet and unwelcome

as a caress of your own mother’s blood

Mixed Media on Paper 18 X 24 inches, 2007

Mixed Media on Paper 22 X 36 inches, 2007

Mixed Media on Wood 13 X 15 inches, 2007

Mixed Media on Heavy Paper Board Mounted on Wood 32 X 40 inches, 2006