Chapter 10

3 minutes

I awoke the next morning to a blood curdling scream followed by someone running up my steps to my door.  It was Sara’s youngest sibling Micky. Micky was 10 or 11 and lived with his mom so we rarely saw him unless it was family time for them.  He was in a panic saying something was wrong with Sara. I immediately told him to stay there and I would go help her. I expected to run in and she had cut herself on accident or something. Nothing would or could have prepared me for what I saw.
Her room had a faint glow as if it was a haze. There on the bed lay Sara with a revolver on her chest and dried blood coming out of her mouth. It hit me like a ton of bricks. She was void of all colors but looked swollen. I was still trying to process when I heard Claire come barreling down the stairs. I couldn’t let her see this. I ran for the door trying to get there to stop her from entering the apartment but she made it in the front door before I could. She was in a panic mode and trying to push past me to see her sister.  I tried so hard to be a wall but she grabbed me and pushed me aside. I was in complete shock. Claire screamed as she took in the sight that I had just seconds before. I was frozen. Claire sobbed and collapsed at the bedroom door. I had to pull it together, I couldn’t collect my thoughts but then I remembered Micky. I went to Claire and picked her up and told her to go help Micky. He was only a kid and I didnt want him to be alone. She was in a daze as I instructed her on what she needed to do while I called the corner for her sister. She was still frozen sitting on the end of the living room couch as I picked up the phone and dialed 911. The operator picked up, and I instantly told them we needed a corner. The woman on the other end of the line asked me as many questions as she could to understand the situation. She told me to touch her and see if she was still warm as if I didn’t know what a cold corpse looked like. I just remember telling the woman that I knew she was long gone and I wasn’t about to touch her to feel that cold skin hit my hands so that it could be the last memory of her body in my head.
Claire at some point went up stairs to check in on Micky. I sat and waited on the corner and made the call to Sara’s step mom who had dropped him off.
I didn’t understand why he was even there. Once I got her on the phone she told me that she dropped of Micky to have Sara drive him to school. I had to tell her to come back as fast as possible and I would explain once she arrived. I couldn’t break the news to her over the phone. She arrived just before the corner and I ushered her to my apartment to break the news to her. She sat in shock as Micky and Claire sobbed in silence. I went downstairs to meet the corner and detectives they sent. I watched as they picked her body up and put her in the bag and as the detectives asked questions I tried to answer them as best as possible. One of the officers even went up stairs to talk to the family in my apartment while I stayed in her apartment.
It was mid conversation with one detective when the other found the letter Sara had written. It lay sitting on her desk open and ready for me to read. The detective read through it and collected it as evidence. I never got to read what she wrote. Sometimes I wish I had gotten to other times I’m assuming the universe was telling me I didn’t need that.
Her family was in my apartment when the detectives and corner were packing up and ready to leave so I gathered her phone book and cell to call everyone that we needed to and start everything for the family on the planning side. It was then that the corner gave me the time of death. 3 am was her final time on this earth. It  was 9 am when I awoke that morning. It was 11 am by the time the corner and detectives were done.  I called my work to let them know I wouldn’t be in for the next day or two.  It was 11:15 when I poured my first drink of the day. I gave the phone book to her step mom and she started to make calls. I had agreed it was better if I called a choice few since I was closer to them and they would probably do better hearing it from me. I needed to call her new guy in Pensacola before the day got away. I saw there was a message on her phone so I listened to it. It was him, calling to say he was working like crazy since she had left and that he just wanted to tell her how much he enjoyed their time and couldn’t wait to talk to her when she woke up but he just wanted to call the minute he got off work. The time stamp was 3:03. Three minutes… It hit me like a brick wall. Three fucking Minutes. If she had waited 3 minutes, If I was awake and kept her talking that extra 3 minutes she might still be alive. Three minutes and she would have woken me up bouncing with happiness that he called and her whole world would have been better. 3 minutes…. I poured myself another drink. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to drown out that 3 minutes.
There I sat on my top step numb to the core. Inside the apartment Claire, Micky and their mom sat calling people. Johnny was the first on my list and he went into a stunned silence when I told him. Next was the new guy. He picked up on the 2nd ring expecting Sara. Once I told him he was in utter disbelief. I couldn’t blame him really. He wanted to know when but I couldn’t tell him it was 3 minutes before he called. This was my cross to bear. Everyone wanted answers and I didnt have them all yet so I continued to tell everyone that I would keep them up to date once I knew everything else.
Sara’s family decided to go back to their place and make the arrangements while I continued to help make calls. I didn’t stop drinking all day. One of my friends, Dom, had heard what happened and came rushing over to help me. He became my bartender for the day, pouring cocktail after cocktail and then eventually calling other reinforcements to help me and Claire in the grieving planning. By 11 pm that night I should have been on the floor with how much I drank but I was still excruciatingly sober. Everytime I closed my eyes all I could picture was her room with her lying on the bed dead. Dom decided he needed to stay the next few days with us because he could tell we weren’t in the right headspace.
We had to go gather a few things from his apartment 3 blocks away and since he wanted to get a bag and some other things I decided to drive the Miata so we could bring back more. I packed 4 beers for the 3 block drive and was on to the second one while he went into his place. Normally if there was any form of a buzz I wouldn’t drive, and with what I drank I should’ve felt something but I was sober.
We pulled out of his street and not even 2 houses down I got pulled over. This day was just going to kill me. I was in a mad hatter hysterical laughing fit when the cop approached the car. Dom was stunned into silence. The cop dove into the reason he pulled me over before I could even get a word out. He had pulled me over for a DUI survey test. Dom and I exchanged looks and I laughed even harder. I looked the cop dead in the face and told him, “You mine as well, just take me to jail”. He was puzzled and looked between Dom and I,then flusteredly replied that he had no merit to take me to jail since it was just a survey. Dom’s face fell as I pulled up the beer from between my legs and showed the cop my drink. I spewed the irony of my day. I unloaded on that poor cop the horror of what my day had been and how I hadn’t stopped drinking since 11 am and was now only 2 blocks away  from going back to my place and drowning myself for the rest of the night. The cops jaw was on the ground. He collected himself, remembered his job to do and pleaded with me to please just take the survey. Dom watched in silence as I finally agreed and blew into the machine, only to have it register a .06. All of us looked at each other in shock. The cop tried to clarify how much I had been drinking and Dom backed my story up as I told the cop his machine must have been broken. We retested only to get the same calibration again. At this point I was in a fit of laughter as I could only fathom that this was a sick joke that Sara was playing from the other side. The cop was amazed I was still coherent after the amount of alcohol he had learned that I had drunk that day and offered to follow us to my apartment. I convinced him it wasn’t necessary since I could literally point out my apartment from there. He let us go and wished me better days ahead. By the time I pulled into the parking lot Dom was now in a fit of laughter claiming that it had to be Sara fucking with us from the other side because never in all his life had he seen such luck. I didn’t want this luck. This was just my shit show and the universe’s twisted sense of humor and I was just the Clown in the circus.

3 Minutes… That’s all that kept running through my head. Until that night when I was trying so hard to go to sleep but couldn’t because I kept seeing her. That’s when I realized. I was the one who was supposed to find her. I was the one she planned on finding her that morning as I went in to get the letter or ask her how she was. I was the one she knew would handle all of this. I was the one holding her envelope at the end of the day. Just as I had trusted her with my end of the road envelope, she had left me with hers. Only when I left mine with her, she wouldn’t be the one to clean up the body.
That’s when the realization hit me that I didn’t want her family having to clean up the bedroom. I drank a few more swiggs of rum before I made the list for the next day of things to do and sat awake the rest of the night as I heard everyone else in the apartment sleeping.

I was up before everyone else since I barely really slept. Everytime I closed my eyes I replayed our last conversation or the last moments with her body. I started drinking again the minute I was up. I made a phone call to my grandmother since I knew she had a trailer or truck to help haul off the mattress. I had closed her door when the corner was done but her bed was blood soaked and the bullet had gone down into the wood floor. The corner has given me a clean up crew number but I wasn’t going to leave that to anyone else.My grandmother came and picked up the mattress before everyone else was completely up with instructions to go burn it .

The next week was a blur of drinking and trying to keep Claire watched and decent in both of our downward spirals into alcohol. I had some of the guys from the warehouse days come and take turns supervising us. At the service Johnny and I cried together and leaned on each other at the back of the room. Both of us mourning the love we both felt was ripped away.

It took us almost 2 weeks to get all the pieces to the puzzle she had left behind. The gun was from a friend that had given it to her because Sara had claimed that her Ex Steve was back in town and stalking her. She had gotten the gun without Claire or I knowing and basically had almost planned the whole ordeal beforehand. We realized even before her trip she had been partying and drinking more than usual.  We both became angry that she had literally planned everything behind our back. Even the friend that handed the gun over had no clue how bipolar she was and we were enraged that he even gave it to her. I had also remembered her being mad that her mother had started calling her for money and her father was doing the same like she was just a bank now that she was doing well.
Every piece just brought it more to light how, no matter what, it was just a matter of time…. 3 minutes.

I didn’t have energy for much conversation at work after those 2 weeks. I kept myself drinking, even while working. Not that anyone would notice. I drank myself sober most days.  3 weeks after her death D’s sister called me telling me she was coming to pick me up for the weekend to go to a show out of town in Orlando. I protested that I couldn’t leave Claire but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Kel had planned for the guys to babysit Claire while she took me for 2 days with the crew to Orlando. She arrived and had to pack my bag and shove me in the car with a case of beer to get me to agree.

The drive to Orlando was a blur. Once we got to the location, there was D. He tried to talk to me but I really wasn’t in much of a mood. During the show they had a new girl Nan basically babysit me. She was a cute and small little Spanish girl. She kept trying to talk to me about it all but that was the last thing I wanted. She kept feeding me my alcohol of choice. I ignored most of the crowd and show and when it was done we piled into the car to the hotel for the night. The hotel room was full with all the guys from the band and D. I tried to avoid being anywhere alone with him. Once everyone else started going to sleep I went to sit on the balcony away so I could breathe. D came out after a few minutes with a Cuban grilled sandwich as a peace offering. I commented to him about how Angie would be livid if she knew I was there. He didn’t care. This is one of the few times we sat and shared a sandwich as if there was nothing but a friendship. One of the few glimmers with him that felt completely relaxed and a true connection of friendship since our breakup years before. He picked out the pickles and handed them to me, since that was his least favorite part. We split the sandwich while just talking about the fucked up turn of events of life. When we were done we sat in silence, mainly because I was just devoid of anything else at that point. I don’t remember much else about that night except sleeping on the floor and the next morning packing up and going back to my apartment to Claire. The guys that helped keep an eye on her stayed a few extra days to just try to be the life of the apartment. Both of us were pretty shell shocked and on autopilot in our routine.  I was working but my spark was gone. Everywhere I looked I saw Sara.   Coming home I would almost expect her to come barreling out of her gate and come jabbering away about her day.  I was in charge of basically cleaning out her things in her little cottage. Everyday was another day of gut wrenching pain of truth of the devoid space she was now gone from. Drinking was my daily pick me up, or numbing agent, depending on how I needed it. After her cottage was cleared out and we emptied out the contents between everyone that wanted anything I couldn’t help but sit and find the irony that there in her little yard the tree stump had a new sprout growing from it. Sara had had a dream about that stump when she moved in and told me about her dream. She dreamt that she couldn’t get that stump to grow, no matter how much she tried to help it and she even tried to dig it out in her dream. The sheer fact that it was growing was like her saying, “Look, I just had to give myself for it to grow.”
It was a few weeks later when the landlord re rented her cottage to a new couple. The day they signed the lease I was recovering from a night of working at the club, still on my drinking bender, half waking up from the night before. I was almost completely naked in my g string standing on my little front porch stretching when I heard the latch close to the gate  that was at the foot of the steps to my place below. They got more than a show, rather than be shy I figured, screw it. They were going to see this eventually since I really didn’t care about nudity anyway. They froze and then gave a smile as I said hello and introduced myself as their new neighbor while raising my glass to say welcome and cheers. They were good sports. I got clothed and went to formally introduce myself later that day. Once everyone started to go back to their lives it was Claire and I left to our mental instability. I fed her appetite for alcohol with mine, making us protein shakes with shots in it to get us moving. We were broke and broken, but still going.  I watched as that stump grew more and more after that as the days turned into weeks.  We would just try to party whenever we weren’t working. One of the guys I knew in highschool had come into town and we had hooked up after he tracked me down at the club. We had fun and he was sweet but he lived in Holland so I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere and I still was in no shape to really be with anyone. It was a few months after Sara died when I really just had that “ I can’t do this anymore” moments. I couldn’t stand being sober because all I saw was Sara. At the club I ran memories of her always coming to visit me. All up and down the beach I would remember her and I driving in her Miata and having fun.  The whole city was just tons of memories of us, even though it was not even 2 years, it felt like a lifetime. I missed her horribly and I needed to stop having the flashes of her dead body everynight in my head. Claire was spiraling into the club world and doing more drugs and I knew if we were both to get out of this hole we needed a new start.  Nan the girl that had babysat me the one night in Orlando had tried to commit suicide and ended being Bakeracted so Kel had asked me to go talk to her. It was like pouring salt into a fresh wound. I sat and talked to her in the hospital and all I could say was how I didn’t understand how she didn’t realize the impact of that affect me when she had to watch me right after Sara’s cleanup. There was a part of me that really wanted to make her realize her 3 minutes made a difference. I can only hope that my 3 minutes of talking helped her. I hated that I had to be the voice of harsh words of reality that day. I was so Numb and even after Nan was released she came to me wanting to be close to me, i just couldn’t. It was a reminder just looking at her of those 3 minutes.
It was about that time when my grandmother offered up a solution. She had acquired a house from Billy up in the Pocono’s when he went to jail. The house was weaseled out from a person that did business with Billy and I remembered the whole ordeal how he had basically stolen the house from some artist that had lived there. The house was now in my grandmother’s name and she had been sending family members up there to take care of it and take things up there to store. My aunt Kathy lived there year round and wasn’t doing much but doing hair out of the small salon she had created on the first floor. I decided that this would be the best option, it was just a matter of when.
Kel and the girls took me out with them one day to go do a girls day and kinda get me out of the mix to relax. We decided on lunch and a tattoo and piercing day for everyone.  I had already gotten a tattoo for Sara from a mutual friend that helped me with my internal pain so I opted for a piercing. I was the last of 8 of us to get pierced and settled on an ear piercing up in my cartilage.  The tattoo was cleansing to me, the piercing was another notch. Outside pain was now looking better and better, but I knew that could be a bad vice. It was only a few days later when I finally quit at the club. They understood my reasons, in all honesty I had started to give up on my work even. The manager even confided that he was worried and was looking to possibly firing me only because he could see my luster was gone. I appreciated his honesty. I lived 10 minutes by bike ride from my place to the club and that day I took my time slowly taking in the scenery on the intercoastal on my way home. I arrived home to 4 new messages from other clubs begging me to come work for them offering whatever I wanted and the ability to hire whoever I wanted. I had made a name for myself in the Club scene. I could have cared less. As much as they were all tempting, I just knew it was time for a new start and some change of scenery. I told Claire of my plans and she was on board, as long as she could bring her boyfriend Matt. I didn’t care if there were 10 people coming

at that point, I just needed to go where no one knew me and I didn’t have all these memories of relationships that were poison to my soul. It felt like I was surrounded by sadness and death, everywhere I turned. The street where I drove with people that I once cared about that were no longer there, the clubs where I had kissed them or the restaurants where we would go eat. The beaches where I would swim and play in the water, the hotels we stayed at for fun nights, The neighborhoods where we met and parking lots we would hang out, all the memories. I couldn’t go into a 7-11 without remembering at least one of these people or events.

I packed up the apartment  with Claire. She was still a child in so many ways and fought me with doing the dishes up to the last day. At this point I was having panic attacks daily and it took every ounce of my sanity to be patient with her some days. I kept hearing Saras voice in my head constantly when dealing with her. I replayed our conversation about how I would have her move in with me and I would promise to take care of her and her replies of how she knew if there was anyone to help straighten her out it would be me. Oh how far off that path I felt at this point. Claire hated me some days with how I would make her get out of bed and drag her out of the house. She would fight me constantly on everything that needed to be done, that was just basic lifing. She Never wanted to do dishes, clean the kitchen, clean out the fridge, and forget even trying to put her in a pair of shorts for a beach day. If I didn’t dangle a bag of coke or a cocktail in her face she wouldn’t move. She threw such a fit one day that I literally cut her pants into shorts while they were still on her just to go to the beach for the day with friends. And here I was taking her with me to a whole new state and opting for more of her childish tantrums. Fucking Sara. I felt like I adopted a family without them wanting me to. 

I packed up everything and drove Claire down to the keys to see her dad again before we left town. Claire and Sara’s dad didn’t like me either. It was classic to me that here I was the one trying to help his kids and I was always looked at like the bad guy with him. He was never nice to me even when I was the one helping Sara pay him money when he needed it, I was the piece of shit in his eyes. Nevertheless,  I was the only one picking up the pieces and part of me felt that I at least owed that to Sara for picking up the broken pieces of me after everything with My years with Billy. She showed me how to laugh again and live my best life after years of mental hell. The least I could do was do the same for her family, even if it was only Claire. 

So we packed up after the keys and left for Pennsylvania. Claire and Matt slept most of the way as I drove us to a new start in my little red Honda Civic.