By Lacy

The silence in the car is stifling, so much that I think even Donna is discomfited by it. I had to help her put her seat belt on just before we left the hospital, but since then; she has neither looked in my direction nor spoken to me. She takes a deep breath beside me, and I pray that she will speak. I am accustomed to dealing with her talkative nature, but Donna doing her impression of a mute is something that leaves me adrift.

"The police came by earlier," she says. "They wanted to ask me a few more questions."

"They were supposed to let me know," I respond.

"They said they couldn’t get in touch with you. They called Sam instead and he came to the hospital."

"Sam was there?"

"That’s what I said."

"Okay." Sam hadn’t clued me in. "What did they want?"

"Proctor had said things when they were questioning him. They wanted to know if what he said was true, or if he was just looking for a legal loophole."

"What do you mean? What did he say?"

"He’s pleading down to an assault and battery charge. He’s saying that he shouldn’t be charged with attempted murder because he left me alive."

"He left you to die," I say, between unconsciously clenched teeth. "There’s a difference. When he put you in that trunk he didn’t believe for a moment that you would be alive when anyone found you."

"I know. He’s saying that he could have killed me, but chose not to."

I turn onto our street, pull the car to the curb in front of the house, and kill the ignition. "He did kill you, Donna," I say softly. "The fact that you survived doesn’t change that."

"I realize you’re not a real lawyer, Josh, but I’m pretty sure the law doesn’t work that way."

"It should."

"Whatever." She unclips her seatbelt and opens the door.

"Let me–"

"I got it," she cuts me off again. Donna manages to exit the vehicle with no small amount of pain. She grasps the car door tightly, her head spinning as her equilibrium shifts again. She stands there for a moment with her eyes closed, breathing steadily in through her nose and out through her mouth, allowing her body to adjust to a standing position. When her eyes open she gazes at the house for a long breath.

I realize that’s why she began talking. She was nervous about coming back to the house — a place she was forced to leave long before it became a home to her. She’s not ready to discuss what happened here that night -- the things that were said. I realize that she carefully chose Proctor as the subject of our conversation.

She’s more comfortable talking about the man who broke her body than she is talking about the man who broke her heart. For her, Leon Proctor is among the ‘safe’ conversation topics. I try to keep from hovering as I lead her into the quiet house, but I sense I’m failing miserably.

"You unpacked," she whispers, as she notices the lack of boxes in the living room. She sounds almost…disappointed. She takes wary note of her family photos and candle collection on the fireplace mantle.

"Yeah," I say. "I didn’t want you to worry about it."

"I wasn’t," she responds with finality.

She’s lived a relatively sparse existence since she came to D.C., never collecting an enormous amount of things. But everything she owns is special to her, with immeasurable sentimental meaning.

Another uncomfortable silence passes between us. I sift through my brain searching for an appropriate and ‘safe’ topic. "Are you hungry?"

"No."

"You should eat something," I tell her.

"I’m not hungry," she insists. "Just tired."

"Do you want to lie down?"

"Yeah, I think I do." She heads for the stairs, and slowly takes each step. I follow behind her, ready to catch her should she become dizzy. At the top of the stairs she takes note of the open guestroom door, and the presence of a bed inside the room. "You put my bed together?"

"Yeah," I respond.

"Thanks." She enters the room slowly, heading for the bed.

"I’m sleeping in here," I inform her.

"What?"

"Yeah," I shrug. "You can take the master bedroom. It has the better bathroom."

"This room’s fine."

"No, I already moved my stuff in here." I drop my backpack on the bed to prove my point. "My clothes are in the closet and my things are in the bathroom. You can have the master bedroom to yourself."

"Fine." Her brow knits together, but I can’t tell if it’s from confusion, or from pain.

In the master bedroom -- the room we’ve never had the chance to share -- she pulls back the comforter on the bed and sinks into the mattress. She leans down to untie her shoelaces and emits a small cry of pain, one small hand reaching for the back of her head.

I drop to one knee before her and pick up her foot, quickly unlacing first one shoe and then the other. Removing them, I place them side by side next to the bed, opting to leave her socks on.

"Did you get my prescription?" she asks.

"Do you need a pill?"

"Uh huh."

"Okay." Back in the guestroom I locate a bottle of painkillers in one of the side pockets of my backpack. When I return, I see that she’s removed her cap and the sunglasses are sitting on the bedside table. I open the childproof lid and shake out a pill for her, before filling a glass of water from the bathroom sink. I hand her the pill, but notice that her eyes have glazed over and she's staring at nothing in particular. "Donna?"

"I’ve spent the last few days wondering, you know, why he didn’t kill me."

"Donna--"

"I think I gave him every reason to. The only thing was that I wanted to make sure he shot me in the heart and not the head. I didn’t want to make it any harder for you to identify my body."

"Donna," my throat tightens. She’s not listening to me. In fact, I’m not even sure she’s truly aware of my presence.

"He pointed the gun at my heart at first, but decided he wanted me on my knees. I wouldn’t kneel, so he forced me and then put the gun to my head. I told him to do it — to pull the trigger. I just wanted it to be over. And then the beating began…."

"Donna?" My heart has stopped, but for some reason my breath is coming faster and faster. I need…I need to get out of the room. She snaps out of her daze and takes the glass of water from me, washing down the pill she pops into her mouth. She pulls the covers over her body and closes her eyes as she settles in to the pillows.

I force myself to back slowly out of the room, when what I really want is to run like hell. I close the door behind me before crossing the hall to the guestroom and shutting the door. I don’t want to disturb Donna, you see. It’s important that she doesn’t hear anything. I dive for the bathroom, grabbing a hand towel from the ring next to the sink. With my back against the door, I grip the towel into a ball and hold it to my mouth just in time to muffle the sound of my sobs.

I’ve held it together for so long now. I’ve kept the full force of the anguish at bay. While she was missing, I clung to the slim hope that she was alive. It kept me from shattering to pieces. When she was located, I suffered in the knowledge that she could still die, but as long as she was alive I would do everything in my limited power to keep her that way. In the emergency room I was forced to trust the doctor to save her, but a huge part of my mind was occupied in simply willing her to live.

But I never really thought about it — didn’t want to think about it. What she went through, I mean. I guess it was safe to make myself believe that she really didn’t remember as much as she claimed. How could she with those injuries? But she does. She remembers every harrowing second of it. Even the part where she asked her captor to shoot her in the heart, which she claims, she did for my benefit. Even the part where she...where she…ordered Proctor to pull the trigger.

The strength in my legs evaporates and I slide down the door until I’m sitting on the cold tile with a thick sound-stifling towel pressed to my face. I’m shattering. The thin thread that was holding it all together has finally snapped. Every time I fall I hope I’m hitting the bottom, but I’m coming to the realization that there is no bottom. Just an endless series of emotional lows.

She didn’t die, I tell myself. And yet, I grieve for her. I mourn her. I weep into this towel, knowing that the tears won’t stop for a long, long time. I also know that, for her, I must maintain a certain charade of competence. I need to show her that I’m holding the pieces of our lives together, however tenuously.

So close. Sometimes it's better not to know just how close we come to critical mass. That's why most of the people in the country don't know some of the things I know. And why I don't know everything the President knows. Because if we learn to full truth, if we get that glimpse into the way things could turn out, we would blow apart.

Donna gave me a peek into what could have been -- she opened Pandora’s Box. It was just a flash, really. She could have ended up in a dirty alley with a hole in the center of her forehead and the back of her skull blown away. I can't seem to get that flash out of my head. I don't think I'll ever have another nightmare about Rosslyn.

Even more damning is the fact that I played a large part in what could have happened. A starring role actually. I wonder how things would've been different had I not made my careless accusation. Other than the fact that Donna wouldn't have been forced into that position in the first place. Had it not been for my reckless rage, would she still have been so willing to let a madman end her life? Would she have offered herself so easily as an agreeable victim?

Leon Proctor had a lamb in his clutches, one that exposed her throat for the slitting, and yet he didn't end her life. Only hours before, he'd put a bullet through the head of DC cop; a woman with a three year old daughter, I discovered. It should have been so easy for him to pull the trigger, having done it once already the evening before. But he didn't. He may have beaten her to a bloody pulp and left her dead, but at least he didn't end her life with a bullet. At least he gave her fighting chance. So I guess, in some way, I owe a debt to Leon Proctor.

How twisted is that?

****

The word 'crying' does not accurately depict what I've been doing for the last hour and half. 'Crying' just sounds so...childish, as though I've stubbed my toe on the concrete, or fallen out of tree. 'Crying' implies a certain level of control -- a corporeal waterworks than can, more often than not, be shut on or off at will if one so desires. That's not what I've been doing. I have had no level of control, certain or otherwise.

Sobbing, weeping, and the occasional bawling. That pretty much covers it. Each time I felt the tears subside, I would lean my head back against the door with my elbows propped upon my knees, and take a shaky breath -- maybe two. That's usually all it took for the tears to start again. That sudden feeling of not being able to get enough air in your lungs, which leads to a morose sense of dizziness.

Sobs that wrack my body so deeply my muscles feel shredded from the inside out. Even considering that, the pain is more profoundly spiritual than physical. It's a spiritual exhaustion. Like when you feel the need to give yourself a punishing workout, so you lift weights, or run until your body surpasses its limits. It's called 'maxing'. That's how my spirit feels right now. Maxed. Fully tapped. As in, I've got nothing left.

And it scares me because I understand now that my calcination is complete. I've been reduced to smoldering ash, and I'm not sure if there's enough left with which to rebuild. In the face of this new insight, I am left with two choices, two paths from which to choose.

Reformation or Restoration.

Words that, on the surface have similar meanings, but deep down they’re as different as night and day. I could go into an interminably long explanation on the basic distinctions of the words. But I won’t. What it all comes down to in the end, is that one avenue includes Donna and one does not.

Reformation involves making a change. Picking up and finding a way to move on with my life. Discovering an alternate means of existing in a universe that seems determined to make life difficult.

Restoration requires taking stock for the purpose of recreation. It’s an inordinately excruciating process obliging you to take a good, hard look inside.

I can’t in good conscious make a unilateral decision in terms of my relationship and future, or lack of future with Donna. I have to include her, which means I have to communicate with her. But I’m forced to ask myself if I’m willing to accept whatever determination she will make. Am I prepared to let us go at her assertion?

I manage to lift myself from the floor, which is no easy task. I feel as weak as any newborn kitten. I feel as weak as I did after the shooting. The soreness in my muscles has dissipated to leave behind an all-over lethargy.

A glance in the mirror tells me that, as I expected, there’s no distinction between how I look and how I feel. Bad in equal measure. I can’t face Donna like this.

A shower might help, I decide, so it’s only a few moments before I’m standing beneath a stream of near-scalding water. The shower turns lukewarm by the time I decide to climb out. Standing before the mirror once again, I can almost glimpse the man people used to call the President’s pit bull. He’s still inside there somewhere.

TBC

****