"Here," Brad says and sits down beside me on the couch. He puts a cup of tea in my hands. I haven't been able to stop crying. There is an unending surgence of water that pours out of the bottom rims of both my eyes.
I never knew I could make so many tears.
Everything aches; my back, the base of my skull, the bottoms of my feet. The front of both of my arms burn as if they are on fire and my chest feels as if it splitting in half. Each time I vomit, the female Detective in the room holds my hair back and rubs my back.
I like having her here.
"We found him a few lane ways down, he shot himself" Brad says. A few forensic officers are in my apartment taking samples of the blood splotches on the floor. They are also taking photographs.
I stand zombie-like and walk towards the bathroom. I turn on the water. They've already photographed and swabbed me, and I want to wash Deandra's blood off of my feet.
The water gushes out of the tap. I want it to tell me that everything will be fine, but it doesn't. It simply offers a service of physical sanitation. My soul is forever soiled.
I sit on the edge of the tub. The female Detective follows me to make sure I am ok. I stick my feet under the running water and watch as the bottom of my tub turns pink, then less pink, then white.
I feel my stomach start to churn and I turn around and reach the toilet just in time. I'm only throwing up little yellow yolks of bile at this point. The frustration my body feels from wanting to hurl an entire full stomach's-worth of contents is exhausting. I feel very weak and very light headed.
The female Detective hands me a Dixie cup with water. I take the tiniest sip.
And then I start to cry...really cry...with sound. This is the first time I hear what pain I'm in. I sound like an animal dying in the woods. There is nothing human or socialized about how I feel. It's raw -- and it needs to come out.
"Would you like me to help you?" she asks, and positions herself between me and the tap. I nod, and a moment later she lathers up the soap and helps me wash the caked blood from my feet. I watch as her hands fill with suds that turn brown, then a quick rinse, then a lathering of white suds that soon turn brown again. She touches my feet softly and with kindness.
I stare stoically at her hands as I watch her wash and rinse my one foot clean, then the other. I am a prisoner in a body that I don't want to be in; feeling emotions that I don't want to feel.
I sob some more; this time louder. A moment later I throw up some white bile. The female Detective hands me the Dixie cup with more water; and pats my face with a hand towel she so kindly wet just a moment earlier.
