I awoke to the crying. Then came the retching. And I dreaded what I knew was about to come.
"Bobb" my wife yelled for me, "Bobb, call the doctor!" "Doctor" in this house might as well be code for "hospital." We knew that she was due anytime for an attack; she hadn't had one for a long time so it was inevitable. I went to call the hospital and tell them to come get her. When I finally made it to the bathroom where Mickey was puking her guts out I knew it was gonna be a long night. The longest in a while.
By the time the ambulance finally got there I was convinced she'd puked up everything in her body and would next start on the blood, which might have helped get rid of the excess blood cells, but probably not the right ones. Why is it that her body itself is bad for her? Why couldn't she just have a normal life, if she wasn't always in the hospital she'd have a normal life. Nobody could believe it when she was diagnosed at six months just days after a normal check-up, her first near death experience wasn't long after that. We hadn't known about the Leukemia, so when she finally had her first blast phase we just figured she was sick, but as soon as our family doctor looked at her she realized it was beyond her and we took her to the hospital where they diagnosed her with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. We've constantly been battling with the cancer since then, they started with Chemo, and when the disease actually responded to it we decided to continue with that until it no longer did. Now it wasn't and we needed to do a blood transplant so that healthy blood cells can take back over her body. One more round of chemo and then the transplant, now that I can pay for it.
I drove to the hospital behind the ambulance, since Ruth went with her in the ambulance. It was a quiet drive, but I'm glad I made it, because on the way there I realized I still had the gun and the ski mask in the car as well as those photos. It was the first time I thought about the woman, usually these things leave my mind, I'm good at forgetting, but as I sat in the parking lot and stared at the pictures all the faces came back to me. There was the lady form the Mini Market, the man from the 7-eleven, a woman from some place I didn't even bother to learn the name of. All of them, and then the cashier and the woman. There, of course, were others, but they weren't worth remembering, people so down on life that even death seemed a relief. They weren't worth remembering. The lady seemed to be key to remembering all these people. All of them very random and different: Mini Market lady was short with dark brown eyes that went very oddly with her bright blonde hair; Mr. 7-eleven was tall and lean, probably in his 50s, he had eyes that were a dull grey color to match his crazy gray streaked black hair. But it was the other lady, the lady with chestnut brown hair. She was young, very young, maybe newly married, there wasn't anything special about her except her eyes, it's always the eyes. They weren't any special color, just a startlingly bright blue, pretty yet plain, but it was the way they pierced you, like they were looking deep into your soul. This woman was the first I'd ever killed. I shot her in the middle of the vegetable store. That was where I learned to look away. I watched her as she cried out a name, "Jeff!" she'd cried out in a panicked whisper, I'd wondered at the time if that was her husband's name, I guess I'll never know. I watched her body fall to the ground as if in slow motion; saw every drop of blood as it shot out of her body and onto the surrounding veggies she'd been about to put in the refrigerator as she stocked the store. I watched as she gasped, her breath coming in great, heaving gasps because I hadn't thought about aim. I watched, unable to look away, as she struggled towards death, as she labored to suck air in even though she had a punctured lung. I watched the life, slowly, steadily creep out of her and finally stared in her eyes, those piercing blue eyes as, with one last, heaving breath, the light was extinguished from them and her body was finally still.
I shook off the memory as I got out of the car, shoving the mask and gun in the trunk till I could deal with it and taking the pictures with me, as I headed towards my little girl.
