JASON STARR - Panic Attack

In the car, she tried to beg him to let her go, but he put that rag over her face, and when she woke up again, tied to a bed, she screamed and he hit her and drugged her again. She had to go to the bathroom so badly, she could barely breathe, her nose was probably broken, and he still wouldn’t let her go. She knew it was pointless to try to fight it anymore. He was too strong and she was too weak- there was no way she could possibly win. Her only option was to stay alive, to wait. Either he would kill her or someone would come to save her, but nothing she did would change the situation.

She woke up alone, dazed, tied to the bed, her nose hurting like hell, lying in her own feces, the ropes cutting into her arms, and she was afraid that he’d left for good- that he was going to let her die like this. Her throat was already dry as hell from all the screaming and crying she’d done, but she yelled for help until she could barely make any sound.

Then, finally, Xan returned. Weirdly, she was actually glad to see him. At least he hadn’t abandoned her.

Then she saw he had a gun, and she screamed, or tried to scream, “Don’t shoot me.”

“I’m not gonna shoot you, baby. Relax.”

He was such a total maniac, the way he sounded so calm, so detached. How could this be the same guy who she’d thought was so great, who- Jesus Christ- she’d said “I love you” to?

He started untying her, saying, “You wanna live, just do what I say, you think you can do that? I don’t think that’s so hard, just to keep your pretty little mouth shut.” Then he winced and said, “Man, you stink. If there was a shower here I’d let you clean yourself off. I’m really sorry. I know how uncomfortable this must be for you.”

His face was near hers as he untied the rope over her chest, and she wanted to bite into his cheek, hear him scream. But she restrained herself, thinking, Stay alive. Just stay alive.

As he finished untying her, she asked, “Where are we going?” and he said, “Nowhere.”

His tone was ominous, threatening. He lifted her out of bed and held the gun to her head. Was he going to shoot her now? Why untie her just to shoot her?

Then she heard a noise, a door opening.

“We’re back here, Doc,” he said.

Was it really her father? Then she saw him, aiming the gun. She figured he must’ve called the police. The whole building was probably surrounded. In a few minutes, even seconds, this nightmare would be over.

But why did Xan still seem so cocky? And why would the cops have sent her father in here alone? With a gun?

It started to hit her that her father had done it again. There were no cops.

Xan told her father to drop the gun or he’d kill her. She knew he meant it, and she screamed at her father as loud as she could to drop his gun.

Of course he didn’t listen. Her father never listened.

Then he shot her. It happened so fast. One second she was standing, the next she was on the floor, bleeding, pain ripping through her chest.

Then she heard another shot and with blurry vision saw her father, part of his head missing, lying on the floor.

Was this really happening?

The pain was getting worse and she was getting weaker, but she was thinking, Stay alive. Just stay alive.

She knew if she moved or screamed or said anything, Xan would kill her. She saw him walking away, past her father. He probably thought she was dead. With the pain she was in, it took all her strength to stay still, to not even moan. She was shivering, and the blood, her blood, was spreading closer toward where her face was pressed against the floor.

Stay alive. Just stay alive.

She heard the front door open, then close. She spotted her father’s gun a few feet away from her, still partially in his hand.

Marissa crawled through her blood, through her father’s blood, toward the gun. Every moment and every breath was total agony.

She heard noise from outside, footsteps on the porch, and then the door opened. She grabbed the gun. There was blood on the handle, and it was hard to get a grip. She dropped it once, as she heard footsteps getting closer, and then she grabbed it again.

She looked up and saw Johnny looking down at her. He was aiming his gun at her face.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

He took another couple of steps toward her, stopping at the edge of the blood puddle.

“Oh, man, look at you,” he said, smiling. “You look so beautiful right now. I really hate to do this.”

Maybe he didn’t see that she had a gun, too, or maybe he just didn’t care.

“I’m gonna paint a picture of you tonight,” he said, “the way you look right now. I want to remember you like this forever.”

He was still smiling when she squeezed the trigger and a bullet struck him in his right shoulder. His gun fell, and Marissa kept shooting. She’d never shot a gun before, and the next few shots missed. Then she hit him in the upper thigh, close to his crotch. As he started to keel over, she held the gun steady with both hands and shot him in the middle of his chest. He fell to his knees facing her, blood dripping and then gushing from his still smiling mouth. She tried to fire again but was out of bullets. It didn’t matter, though. He collapsed face first onto the floor.

Marissa was sick of everybody telling her how lucky she was. All the doctors and nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan had been going on about it for weeks, making comments like If the bullet had been just an inch to the left you would’ve been killed instantly and If you hadn’t gotten to your father’s cell phone and called for the ambulance and if the ambulance hadn’t gotten there so quickly you wouldn’t be alive right now. This made her lucky? If she was lucky, her parents never would have hired Gabriela as their maid. If she was lucky, that tropical storm wouldn’t have been approaching Florida and they wouldn’t have been in the house the night of the robbery. If she was lucky, she never would have gone with her friends to see Tone Def that night and met Xan, aka Johnny Long. Lying in the hospital bed, she ran through everything that had gone wrong in her life leading up to the nightmare in the bungalow in the Catskills, and she kept coming to the same conclusion: She’d been anything but lucky.

Although she’d been trying to avoid reading the newspapers and watching the news on TV, she knew that the media was calling her a hero, overglorifying everything she’d done. She’d just been trying to stay alive; how did that make her a hero?

While the media was praising her, they were blasting her father, calling him “Adam Bloom, the psycho therapist of Forest Hills.” They portrayed him as a crazed vigilante, who’d driven up to the Catskills to try to rescue his daughter, hell- bent on avenging the murder of his wife and restoring his own tarnished reputation. The media also criticized the police, particularly Detective Clements, for not pushing for a full mental evaluation of Dr. Bloom or revoking his gun license and for giving him the opportunity to go upstate on his own. Marissa enjoyed seeing Clements get attacked, and she agreed with what the media was saying about her father, too.

One day a couple of weeks after the shootings, Grandma Ann came to the hospital to visit and said, “You can’t blame your father forever. You can’t go through life with that kind of anger.”

Her grandmother looked worn and frail. Marissa was worried about her. “I really don’t want to talk about it anymore, Grandma.”

Marissa had been through two surgeries to remove the bullet and repair the deep tissue damage and several broken ribs, and she was still in severe pain, despite all of the painkillers they were giving her. “Your father loved you,” her grandmother said almost desperately. “He just wanted to do the right thing.”