So, here we go. Therapy.

I raced down to the building, parking in front. I found Eric Waters in my office. Turns out it wasn’t blood, but the place was a mess – some kind of blood substitute from the movies or something like that. I had Mendelsohn clean up his office and flush the shit in his desk. He tooted before he flushed. He was sky high. I called a cab and got him out of there before the police came.

The telephone in my office rang. It was my private line. Eric walked into my office and picked up the handset from the cradle and pushed the lighted extension button. Eric murmured a hello, then turned suddenly and looked at me. He told the other end of the line who he was and his relationship to me, he listened, then said, "Yeah, very close, why?" then he paused, listening intently, then all expression drained from his face. He looked at me, eyes wide, "No, that's impossible." He closed his eyes. His hands were shaking.

I asked him what was wrong, but he wasn’t listening to me. He was getting information about where “they” were. It was Scott Seipel. I'd known the police chief for years. When we moved into our house, he stopped by to introduce himself. Jane thought it was a nice welcome; I thought he was checking us out. Since then, we had become good friends. For the last few years during the winter, we got together every Thursday night at about ten at night to watch a movie, eat a pizza, and talk. And he finally admitted he was checking me out that first day we moved in. Eric handed me the handset.

He said I should calm down and that they took Jane and the boys to North Coast Hospital. I knew Jane was dead, just from his voice. It was the slight pause to catch his breath after he said "Jane" and the slight quiver. I'd known him too long. We didn't talk sports or crime on Thursday nights -- we talked about things that made our voices quiver and eyes overflow. He told me I needed to come to the hospital and that the boys were in surgery.

I asked him about Janie, knowing he knew I knew, and knowing he knew I didn't want to know just at that moment. It wasn't something you told your best friend over the phone; so, he told me that she was in surgery, too. He lied. He said he talked to her on the way to the hospital. Another lie, but I hoped not. A cold wave blew over me, goose bumps rising on my legs, back, and arms. And I hoped that he wasn’t lying to me.

I asked about the boys. I asked, but I didn’t want to know. Tears welled up in my eyes. “I'll be right there," I said, closing my eyes, trying to figure out what the buzzing feeling was rising up inside me. All my nerve endings were screaming. Eric said that he would drive me to the hospital. He grabbed the phone handset. Eric didn't know they were dead. He believed Scott. I thanked him and told him that I would be okay, sniffing. I felt Eric’s hand squeezing my shoulder. I opened my eyes and looked at Eric, my vision blurring. It was strange how I was aware of Eric talking to Scott, telling Scott he'd make sure I was all right. Eric said, "Oh," dully. He looked at me, his lips in a thin line, eyes filling up with tears. He knew. I walked out.

Two police officers, a woman and a man, crossed the threshold of the elevator as I reached the reception area. They looked my way, and the woman asked me who I was. I didn’t answer, but rushed into the elevator. The paunchy male cop said something to me like “Hang on there, buddy.” I was hanging on by a thread that was unraveling quickly.

The doors opened onto the spacious ground floor lobby of the Key Tower. My car was still parked on the street. The police cruiser was parked behind my black Chevy Cosworth Vega. Jane telling me to get a new car streaked through my mind. Both Kevin and Sam whined their "No, Dad." I was panicking. A chill wind blew in from Lake Erie and whipped through the open plaza known as The Mall and around the Key Tower. A shiver shot up my spine as I opened the driver's side door and fell into the bucket seat. I turned the key with the clutch in and the engine roared. I clunked it into first and went into second making the left onto Ontario. I ignored the lights, only a couple of them were red, heading for the entrance ramp to I-90 to go west. A police cruiser sitting in front of Gund Arena at the Gateway complex didn't bother to give chase. I was all alone. The roar of my old Cosworth Vega wasn’t as loud as the roar filling my head. I should have said “Yes” when she suggested that everyone go along with me down to the office. I was the one who was supposed to be careful.

How was I supposed to know what was going to happen? How was I supposed to know they’d come after my family? What was I supposed to do?

North Coast Hospital. Jane had been there before. She was hooked up to an I.V. with Pitocin dripping into her veins. One nurse said those babies come shooting out once you're hooked up. Yeah, right. It wasn't working. I was sitting down at the end of her bed talking to Dr. Weinberg about the medical malpractice crisis, taking his side that the lawyers were to blame, not only for his high insurance premiums, but for most of the world's ills. Blood suckers, vultures, and worse. You're right, doc; you're right. Hell, he was going to go home to get some dinner and be back when they called him. Sure, doc. No problem.

"Dr. Weinberg," Jane said, looking as if someone beat her face to a pulp. Her face was reddish-purple and puffy. She said she felt "okay." Janie had grown up with Jerry Weinberg as her ob-gyn. He wrote her first prescription for birth control pills when she was sixteen. Made me quite happy as he 16-year-old boyfriend. "I think my water broke," Jane interrupted.

We both glanced over at her at the same time. The bed pad she was laying on was bright red. My throat clamped shut. My mouth dried up. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. Weinberg looked at me, eyebrows up. "Yep. Look's that way, Jane," he said, pulling the pad out from under her and throwing it in the waste basket next to the bed. "We're gonna take you to the O.R.," he said calmly, "and get your baby out."

Jane asked if that was blood on the pad, to which he calmly replied that there was a small bloody show when the water breaks. Nothing to worry about, he told her, as he pulled the bed toward the door. An orderly slipped around Weinberg and grabbed a side rail. And what did serious bleeding look like, doc, was my question.

One of the nurses pulled the bed pad from the waste basket and pointed out that the blood on the pad didn’t look normal, that it looked like an awful lot of blood to her. He sharply told her that it looked like that at times. He looked at me with hopeful eyes, lips pursed together in a tight line. "Drop that and grab the bed." You dumbass, he wanted to add.

She let go of my hand. "See you later, honey," she said, the drug the nurse pushed into her I.V. already taking its toll on her consciousness.

Tears tracked down my cheeks, and I wondered what Kevin was doing at my sister-in-law's house right then. And I wondered whether I could raise him alone. I tried to put that thought out of my head, but ... A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; and I knew that, but ... An abrupted placenta. The placenta tears away from the womb, causing bleeding, sometimes massive, into the womb, depriving the baby of life support, depending on how bad it was. Many times, the baby didn't make it. At times, the mother didn't make it.

We were lucky we were at the hospital when it happened. Jerry Weinberg wheeled the portable incubator over to the lounge himself. "Here he is," Weinberg said. "Sorry you had to wait so long. He's fine. Just have to keep him warm. Jane'll be fine. We were really lucky -- near-total abruption. This little bugger wanted to get out so fast that he plugged the opening. If we weren't here, we might have lost them both." I looked at my son. He looked me in the left eye -- yeah, they say that the silver nitrate burns and he couldn't focus, but he stared at me; he could see me. And he knew who I was. And he smiled at me -- yeah, they say that babies can't smile, but he smiled at me.

Now, what? The emptiness had returned. Tears tracked down my cheeks. I wasn’t going to be so lucky this time. She was in the house when it detonated. Didn’t know what hit her. That’s what they said. That’s what they always say to try to make you feel better. But by then, you don't feel. Numbness invades. And it doesn't leave. That was that. Scott Seipel couldn't talk to Jane on the way to the hospital. He lied to me. The truth of the matter was that they didn't find enough of Jane to even take her to the hospital.

Kevin and Sam, on the other hand, were out by the pool. They knew what hit them, though. Kevin was alive when he was thrown into the pool by the blast, but he was unconscious. He would have drowned, except one of our neighbors, Laura, who had known them since they were born and was their babysitter, somehow hurdled on a dead run, her mother told me, what was left of the four-and-a-half foot tall fence, dove into the pool, and pulled Kevin out. She gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and was there when he regained consciousness.

They lost Sam once in the ambulance. Spears of cedar siding from the house blew through him. Unconscious when it happened, said the doctor. I didn't believe him. Sam told me he saw Kevin fly past him. And that he couldn’t breathe right.

He died, but the paramedics in the ambulance didn’t quit. Sam came back.

“Dad, I saw Mom,” he said to me one night. “I walked toward the light, and she was there. Two men were there with her. One of them said he was Joseph, Dad. Who’s Joseph, Dad?”

I squeezed his hand. Kevin yelled from the other room, “Is he talking about Mom and that Joseph guy, again? I told him who Joseph was, Dad. He doesn’t believe me.”

Sam yelled back, “He wasn’t God, you idiot. He was one of the angels. That’s who he was. He was one of the angels taking care of Mom. That’s what Grandma said, and she’s right.”

“Grandma’s right, Sam; but God was there with her, too. Maybe he was the other guy.” I said.

“Yeah, that’s who that was. I couldn’t really see his face. Maybe that wasn’t even a man. Kevin’s right, too,” he said; then he yelled, “Kevin, you’re right. One of them was God. I’m sorry I called you an idiot.” Kevin said it was okay, then, Sam said, “Mom told me to go back. She told me that I would see her later. She told me to take care of you. She told me that you needed me. She said she loves us. Dad, do you think I’ll remember what she looks like when I see her again? Sometimes it’s hard to remember what she looks like, then, I look at her picture in my wallet. Then it’s like she’s there in the room with me. Is it like that with you, Dad?”

“Yeah,” I croaked, tears running down my face. It had been, what, four months at that time. I still expected her to be there when I rolled over in bed. That feeling didn’t go away for a lot longer. I could smell her, taste her.

It just takes a while – putting this into black and white was easier than I thought it would be. It’s the fear of the unknown, I guess. I should go back and fill in the big empty space in the time line.