Numb[l.r.h]

.1

"She's gone. She died during sugery." The doctor told Pamela's father. She was apparently too young at fifteen to be looked at in the eye when being told this kind of news.

Her father's face looked so pale in the hospital fluorescent lights. Or maybe it was because of everything they'd gone through. Pamela felt numb.

Earlier, they had all gone to see a new movie when someone pulled out a gun. It happened so fast, but the sound of the bullets are still ringing in her head.

Sirens started wailing and she saw her mom fall in the dim lighting. Pamela had crouched down to hide and to be closer to her mother. The next part was a blur; the police had some how gotten the man into handcuffs. Her mother was taken away onto a stretcher. Apparently she had been shot around the kidney, Pamela wasn't sure because no one told her what was happening.

She cried so much on the way to the hospital. The ride felt so long considering the nearest hospital was thirty minutes away. It was all so blurry considering she couldn't see past her tears. Her dad remained expressionless.

They were told that her mother would be going into surgery to see if the doctors could somehow fix the wound that was pretty much fatal.

Pamela stopped crying when she realized it wouldn't help her mother in the least.

Now, after hearing the news, she ran out of the hospital. She didn't know where to go, anywhere but in there seemed great. Every road seemed pointless because it wouldn't take her to the one person she was missing most.

No more hugs. She thought.
No more homemade dinners.
No more doing each other's hair.
No more trash tv marathons.
No more advice that was always right.
No more hand packed lunches.
No, nothing was going to be the same.

She didn't cry because it all felt too terrible to cry off. Crying wouldn't help at this point. Eventually her dad came out and got her and they went home.

The house felt so cold. Nothing was normal. Her dad turned on the tv to the news where they started talking about a shooting at a movie theater. How could people watch this? She felt so sick listening to the reporter talk about it excitedly. It was almost like a big thing for the news. They'd probably make a lot of money off of this.

Then her mother's face showed up on the screen along with four others, making everything so much worse. Pamela went into the kitchen trying hard to not scream.

The doorbell went off and her dad answered the door. Her grandparents, her mom's parents, walked in and hugged her saying things that Pamela didn't try to listen to. She did catch one thing, though.

"Why would this happen to us?"

Why did it happen to them? Of all the movie theatres they had to go to that one. Then she started getting mad.

Why were people so fucked up? Why did he want to kill people? Why did the world do this to them? Why was it her mom and not her?

They all told her to go to bed and "get some rest". So she went to her room, but she didn't sleep. How the hell would she even be able to sleep?

Pamela just lay in bed staring at the wall. She remembered her mother on the ground crying. Then she imagined the man who did this being run over by a train.

She didn't get a wink of sleep that night.

The next few weeks her dad didn't say much of anything to her. He just got drunk every night. Whether he did it to fall asleep easier or numb the pain, it was the only thing he did.

A couple months later, he started hitting Pamela. He told her it was her fault and that he wanted his wife back. Pamela didn't know what to do. He was always drunk when he did it too, so by morning he barely remembered it. But she knew that he knew what he was doing.

The pain he caused wasn't nearly as bad as the pain she was going through every night. Eventually her best friend got sick of talking about Pamela's pain.

They got a lot of reporters wanting things for the media, but Pamela turned down each one with a sickly feeling in her stomach. They made the newspaper, but it wasn't very exciting.

They went to court and got a lot of money. Her dad went back to work and she went back to school. She didn't look at anyone the same. Everyone treated her so different. She didn't cry anymore. She didn't smile anymore.

She didn't feel anything.