A bit from I'll Be Home

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Saturday 6am

“I’ll be home for Christmas; you can count on it...” I didn’t really hear much more of it as I was cursing as I tossed the pillow at the alarm clock. Yelling to no one in particular as the house was as empty as the bottle I had left on the bedside, “The one day I can sleep in and the bloody alarm goes off!” The song was still playing as I groped for how to turn of the music. “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams…” By the time I had heard the last line I was filled with such fury and tears I couldn’t think straight. Thinking to myself I should really just stop threatening and take the final step and get rid of Noah’s stuff. He never again would be home for Christmas, no matter how badly I wanted him to be there to shut off his alarm clock. His side of the bed, his clock that only goes off when it was an anniversary of the day we got married. The alarm clock always plays only his favorite Christmas song, different singers sure over the last five years, but always the same song. The irony was they had married in the summer and it was already 90 degrees this morning and I was chilled to the core. “This is not fair time after time you mess with things Why can’t you just come to me, damn you! Why can’t I see you? Damn near anyone but you!” I looked at the clock, no time, just music, “Aww shit, stop making the clock play when there are no batteries in it too, it’s just creepy wrong on so many levels!” I was sobbing and felt as empty as the house was without him. Peering at the alarm clock that d its cord wrapped around it and had no batteries in it; seemingly my only tie left on this earth to Noah.
Five years since the day he was snatched from me right before my eyes. Shortly after I regained consciousness from the coma and realized I could communicate with the dead. For the next half year after coming back to the realm of the living, I thought I was going insane. One doctor even had me committed for a couple weeks till they realized that I was not a threat to myself or others. I can laugh about it now, but it’s one of those creepy laughs that make many people doubt I should have ever been let out of those locked doors. Thankfully a very smart and well connected therapist in the clinic connected me with The Program. I have since realized that I am not crazy, it is a side effect of my dying on the concrete next to my husband with me child in my womb. I still wonder why I was left to live, while my husband and daughter died. I reach down to and touched the place my daughter had once been. I feel to a point my own body betrayed me that day, if I could have just taken a couple more breaths, just held on long enough for the EMT’s to arrive they could have saved my daughter. I am told this is survivor’s guilt, and is perfectly natural. I want them to carry a baby almost to term only to have her and your husband taken away in the blink of an eye. Or in my case a dirty bomb that didn’t fully detonate. The shrapnel hit our tour party head on, knocking the group of us off kilter; Noah fell backward almost as if he was trying to cover me and my belly. He crashed into me, I remember the blood, screams, indescribable pain, and falling over an old man who was already dead.
I remember looking down on the scene seeing myself; somehow I ended up belly down, and could see the fluids that were to be protecting my baby quickly leaking out of myself. I heard a voice; I looked over still not grasping what I was seeing below it was carnage. Noah had been right next to the bomber as he exploded his bomb belt he was clearly dead most his body covering mine. The police were on the scene within minutes and tied off the area. They knew there was a threat of an attack on the city. They heard chatter for months about a potential attack and think they knew who and the how till right then they didn’t know the where and when. They had the device that detected radioactive matter, and were not letting anyone go in to the area or out till they knew how bad the contamination was. In that time, I died, my baby died and 6 others including my husband died. There were really seven, but who can count someone willing to kill innocent people a human. I was the only one who was revived, and that was after they weaned me out of my six month long coma. By that time my husband and child were long gone and buried and most of the events of that day left at the wayside as another political corruption scandal occurring in administration of hope and change.
Reading the papers after re awaking PC (post coma) I saw that no war would be raged in the memories of those who died that day on the sidewalk with me that day. They feds did however catch on fast enough to avert 2 other such events in the city scheduled during the memorials for those who died. A double hit, first round kill as many mourners as possible, hole off till the help arrives and take out more in the second wave. Stupid bomber left notes about it in his apartment. Somewhere in a cave there is someone really pissed off I am sure.