2:00 pm

First day home. More like first day in eternal prison. I was desperate to come home from the hospital. I felt like I was going to die there. But the transfer home was agonizing and exhausting. It hurt so much each time I was moved. Now that I’m here, I don’t know if all the pain and effort was worth it, if it will make any difference at all. I’m trapped in a body that doesn’t work anymore, in a narrow world of wheelchairs, numbness and searing pain. Every time I move, my body screams at me. The pain is constant in my upper back and all the way down to where the bullet entered, then below that, nothing. I’m half dead. Why did I survive at all? I don’t know.

I’ve never felt helpless before. I could always take care of myself. I could handle myself in any situation. But now I can’t do anything for myself. Bling does everything for me. He cleans me up. He gets me dressed. He prepares my food. He picks me up and places me in my chair. He carries me to bed. He helps me to sit up and lie down, and he rolls me over when I can’t endure lying on my back for another minute. I am totally dependent on him and I know it. If I try to do anything on my own, my body rebels and sends me into spasms of pain.

Bling treats me so gently, like I am a fragile piece of china, like if he touches me or even looks at me incorrectly, I might shatter into a thousand pieces. The worst thing is that is exactly how I feel. Even though I tried not to show it, coming home today was almost unendurable. Each time Bling lifted me in or out of the wheelchair, I almost passed out from the pain. I feel like my body is barely staying together, that I am on the edge of disaster. Bling is my lifeline. He is the one who is holding me together. If it weren’t for him, I would already be dead. I’m sure of it. Yet I hate having to rely on him. I hate my dependence and my helplessness.

When we first got home, I asked Bling to roll me to the window and set me up with my journal. I haven’t written in weeks. For the longest time, I didn’t even have the strength to hold a pencil, not that I would have been able to write anything coherent. Those days in the hospital are a torturous haze to me. I am so grateful that I can write now, that I can try to get some of this hopelessness and frustration that I’m feeling on paper. If I didn’t have my writing, I would explode. But I found it so hard to get started. I just sat there, staring out the window.

I don’t know how long I sat there, looking out at a world that I’m no longer a part of, searching for some hope, for some meaning in all this. Then I saw her, a figure on the roof across the street, hiding in the shadows, a girl, or a woman, or an angel. She reached out her hand to me like she wanted to give me something, her hope, her strength, then she disappeared. I must be so desperate. I’m imagining angels. This isn’t a world of angels. It’s a world of war and death and pain. There are no angels. There never were. There’s only people fighting and clawing for survival.

People like Max who know how to survive. Maybe it was Max. She’s an expert at covert surveillance, at appearing for an instant then melting into the shadows. I vaguely remember hearing her voice in the hospital once. Was she there? I don’t know. Everything is such a blur. What was she doing there, if she was there at all, and what would she be doing here now?

I must be insane thinking that Max would be out there checking on me. I’m just another fool crusader to her. Yet I wish we could have worked together. We seemed to have an unspoken understanding of each other. I only knew her for twenty-four hours, but we share each other’s most precious secrets. She knows about Eyes Only and I know about her past. But Eyes Only is dead. He died with Peter, Lauren, Sophy, and my legs. I can’t go back to that now. I can’t have any more blood on my hands. Max was so right. The world doesn’t want to be saved.

Bling pushed me back here by the window after we ate. I’ve been looking for her ever since. I know that there’s no one out there. Yet why do I feel like I’m being watched over?

Dark Angel

Hiding in the Shadows of My Life

God, do I need an angel right now. I don’t think I can make it on my own. I can’t handle this endless pain.

Oh God, it’s starting agai...