Chapter 11
| The Story | The Authors |
|---|---|
|
Mary Bamboozle sensed her hesitation.
"It's OK, Mommy, take my hand. Take it." Joan slowly reached a shaking hand across the breach towards the stubby baby fingers. The chill of the damp November rain seeping through her skin and into her blood. "Take it Mommy. Hurry! He's coming!" Behind her Joan could hear the heavy footsteps and then the rattling of the doorknob. "Joan, just what in the Ah Pook are you doing in there. I hear voices. Who the fuck have you got stashed in there. Open this goddam door." She grabbed Mary Bamboozle's hand and before she could even take a breath they were away above the rooftops under Mary's umbrella. | |
| Unfortunately, Mary wasn't real, her umbrella wasn't magic, she couldn't fly, and they were 4 floors up. Joan hit the ground, heard a terrible cracking sound before succumbing to unconsciousness, and woke up in the hospital paralyzed below the neck. The realization suddenly came to her that this was not some drug induced nightmare...it was reality hitting her harder than ever before. How could I have fallen so far, she wondered. She had been an intelligent and talented young woman with immense promise, she took a wrong turn somewhere and became a drug addict with a shattered life, and was now a quadriplegic. What would the future hold, and would it be worth living to experience? Surely there was nowhere for her life to go but up, yet she had thought this before and found out much to her horror that there was still a long way to go to hit rock bottom. One question kept repeating itself in her mind..."What now?" |
7