I’m not exactly what you would call easy to shock.  I’ve been around the block… twice… on rollerblades.  I’ve seen a bunch and am, therefore, rarely taken aback by the ridiculous things I see going on around me.  Today, however, I bore witness to an event that served to shut me up, break me down, and obliterate my already shaky faith in people in general.  To be quite frank, I am numb and horrified and disgusted. 

  I was leaned back in my chair at work, pretending to be ever so busy, when my phone went off.  I have the ringtone set as a strange Indian melody and it sounded like a quiet harem-party in my purse.  The caller ID informed me that it was Janet (name changed to protect the innocent) on the other end and I welcomed the break from my dreary routine to chitty chat with her.  We don’t talk as often as we’d like, but that’s because she’s busy trying to keep 3 teenage girls out of trouble.  I imagine I’ll be feeling her pain within the next couple of years.

  Anyway, I answered her call with a cheery, “Yo, Joe!”.  Her response, however, was about a mile outside the Cheery city limits.

  “I need you,”  she whispered. 

  Now Janet is a middle aged gal who has 5 children.  Her body has given over the reigns to both gravity and poor eating habits.  In a word, she’s large.  And she embodies the stereotype of “jolly fat people”.  The woman is always a freaking trunk full of joy… to the point where some days I just want to pinch her to see if it’ll make her yell or giggle.  In the five years I’ve known her she’s never sounded as dejected as she did that moment.  I knew all was not ok in Janet Land.

  “Anything you need…”  I assured her. 

  “I’m at the hospital downtown,”  she said, her voice cracking.

  “Jesus, are you all right?”  Obviously I was immediately worried.

  “I’m ok,”  she sniffled.  “It’s Kara.”  Her daughter is Kara:  a beautiful and talented 14yr old with a superb sense of humour and a quick wit. 

  I didn’t even bother to ask anything else.  Kara’s my girl… like family… and I didn’t need to hear any more before I let my manager know I had to leave due to an emergency.  Maybe I should have asked what had happened because my imagination was getting the best of me.  The drive downtown was torture, my thoughts filled with every gruesome sort of tragedy that might have befallen lovely Kara. 

  When I got to the hospital and found the waiting room where Janet had told me she’d be, I stood briefly in the doorway and collected myself.  Whatever was happening I needed to be strong for her.  Standing there I saw her in a chair against the wall, sitting straight as a rod, shoulders high, lips pursed and eyes expressionless.  Her nose was slightly red, perhaps from crying, but she otherwise had an emotionless air… almost a mannequin.  Only someone close to her would know that look didn’t belong on her face.

  “Janet sweetie?”  I was almost tiptoeing toward her, somehow not wanting the sound of my shoes to disrupt the eerie silence.  I knew she heard me because her eyes slowly moved to settle on me while the rest of her body remained still.  It seemed to take a moment for her to focus on me, but when she did her posture lost its rigidity and she slumped.  Then she began to cry.

  “She’s going to die,”  she sobbed.

  She proceeded to tell me what led to our afternoon meeting in a hospital waiting room.  She had been feeling under the weather today and left work early in the hopes of catching a nap before all the kiddos came bustling in from school.  She’d walked into the house, changed into sweats, and decided to toss a load of laundry in real quick before she lay down.  In the dryer was a load of Kara’s clothes and so she decided to put it on Kara’s bed.  She walked into Kara’s room and found her lying there on the bed, although she was supposed to be at school.  Janet tried to wake Kara to no avail, and in a panic called an ambulance.  Moments later she found a letter on Kara’s desk… a “goodbye letter”. 

  Janet actually had the letter crumpled in the pocket of her jacket there in the waiting room and she carefully smoothed the wrinkles from it as she handed it to me.  I honestly didn’t want to read it, didn’t want to touch it… but she insisted.  The letter turned my stomach and I thought I was going to pass out.  I had to sit to finish it because my legs had turned to rubber and I momentarily thought I might vomit. 

  The note was a two page autobiography of lonliness and despair.  Kara, like my own daughter, has been dealing with a newly returned deadbeat dad who has insisted on coming into her life and demanding that everyone cater to his selfishness.  Kara had seemed, during this past 8mos or so, to handle the changes in her life rather good-naturedly.  She learned long ago that she wasn’t allowed a voice or an opinion, and had seemingly come to terms with having to deal with a man she openly disliked.  I guess she’d fooled us all.  I guess she wasn’t coping as well as maybe we all prayed she was.

  Her letter detailed how hopeless she felt, being strong-armed into playing nice with someone who never loved her and whom she hadn’t a care for.  She said she was tired of professionals telling her how she owed it to her father to give him a chance.  She said it made her sick how he could just show up one day and take away everything that was right and normal in her life.  She said that being in the same room with him made her wish she were dead.  She said that she felt responsible for all that her mother had to go through when her dad decided to be vindictive.  She felt that she was the cause of her mom’s financial problems, and that if she weren’t around her dad would just disappear and her mom could be happy.  She said the only way for her pain to end was to end herself.

  The consensus was (and still is, I imagine) that Kara overdosed on something, although what she took isn’t clear at this point.  What I do know is that she is in bad shape.  I was let into the Critical Care Unit briefly to see her and my heart nearly exploded in my chest.  She looked so small in that bed with IVs coming from every direction and a tube in her throat to breathe for her.  I held her hand and whispered to her, trying not to let her hear me cry.  She probably didn’t even know I was there, but I like to believe that maybe she heard me somewhere deep in her subconscious.  I could hardly choke out the “I love you and we need you here.  I’ll see you soon…” before my throat started to close around the words and I had to rush out of the room. 

  I decided to sit with Janet as long as she needed me, making arrangements for someone to pick up my own little girl and take her somewhere fun until I got home.  We didn’t talk much… until all hell broke loose. 

  I had offered to take Janet to the hospital Chapel, knowing that she’s very religious and believing that being close to God might help to soothe her some.  She’d been insistent that we not leave the room we were in, which I found odd but thought best not to quibble.  We sat holding hands in the silence when thundering footsteps sounded in the hall and stopped just outside the entrance of the waiting room.  Janet’s head jerked and she looked to the door expectantly.  I supposed she was hoping it was a doctor coming to give her an update.  I, too, looked up and, instead of seeing a doctor, saw a slightly haggard man shadowing the doorway.  Janet mumbled something under her breath and launched herself from her seat.  I didn’t know what was happening.  The entire scene seemed to unfold in slow motion:  Janet tearing across the room and stopping just short of the man; her yanking Kara’s note from her pocket and shoving it into the man’s face while he scrambled to grasp it; her voice booming at him.  While it all happened so slowly, there were moments when her voice seemed to fast-forward and her movements were almost too quick to rationalize.  It was a disturbing experience.  I did catch it when she screamed, “I wanted you to be here to see what you’ve done!”.  I also caught the man’s response which was, “If you were a better mom she wouldn’t be here at all.”  The rest of the dialogue came to me in snippets. 

  As the drama played out it became clear that the man was Kara’s father.  It appeared that Janet had called him so he could see first hand what his selfishness had done to her baby.  He kept saying things like, “I’m here now and she’s just gotta get it through her head that I’m not going anywhere,” or, “If she dies it’s because you didn’t do enough to make her want to see me,” or “She’s just looking for attention”.  My personal favourite was his screaming at her, “You’re such a bitch I’d try to kill myself too.” 

  As the scene was going on I was glued to my chair.  I swear I tried to move but I was in such an unreal place that I couldn’t even be sure I was really there.  I only managed to move when the man began swaggering closer to Janet and I began to fear he might hurt her.  Thank god I was sitting next to one of those white courtesy phones… I picked it up and just punched in numbers until I got a live voice, and then I yelled for security to be sent up.  Both Janet and the man were escorted away eventually and I was left there, still in my chair and all alone.  Not being a family member I wouldn’t get any information on Kara so I decided to just go home and wait for Janet to call me.

  So here I am waiting with bated breath and stomach in knots.  I am so angry at Janet for even calling that bastard, but I can understand why she did it.  She did it out of desperation.  She thought that maybe he’d see what he’s done, but what she doesn’t realize is that people like him will never admit that they’re worthless and only capable of causing pain.  She wanted him to finally do something selfless and see that he isn’t good for Kara regardless of what he believes… but he doesn’t love her with the passion that a true parent does and, therefore, doesn’t have the constitution to do something painful to himself in order to do something wonderful for his girl.  This happenstance reminds me of a bible story I read about two women who claimed to be the mother of a child.  The king, once realizing that neither women would admit to being a liar, ordered that the baby be cut into two equal pieces so that each woman could have a share.  The real mother begged for the baby to be given to the other woman because she would’ve rather lost the child and had him live, than to have part of the child dead.  Her selflessness indicated that she was the true mother and she was given her child back.  Kara’s dad would rather she be destroyed as long as he gets what he thinks is his “share”.  *sigh*