There was a pounding on the door that reverberated through the house. It vibrated down the hallway, around the bathroom, and into the gentle heart’s there. Campbell was in his office on the computer, I was roughing around with my little bear Gabriel who was trying on his hippopotamus Halloween costume for next week’s holiday. He had a mask on over his nose with two white teeth popping out the bottom and two mischievous eyes peering back at me as I hid behind the chair. It was a gray full length costume that covered his feet made out of a child’s sleeper pajama. It was also the first Friday night at home in a long time. It was my tenth year of marriage to Campbell.

The pounding continued. Standing before the door I said, “Hold on,” but the noise slammed the door open with a word of warning and a tornado for a tail. The police were at the door, a Swat Team, and in they scattered, a spilling of blue melting into black with brown guns held ready to shoot. They said, “Police! Get down! Get down! Put your hands where we can see them! Get down!”

I was thrown back by the onslaught of urgency and chaos. Someone’s foot was on mine; quickly I fell with a fury. My ascent was not slowed by the police, a cavalcade coming into our apartment ready to bring freedom to a downtrodden city held hostage by an unbending dictator that lived inside it. My blood splashed as far as the carpet and wet the tile which was the last thing I saw before I woke by smelling salts in the emergency room. Campbell came out of his office and instantly saw the guns and men; put his hands-up, yelling, “Wait!, Stop!, Gabriel!, Nina!,” but it was too late. The funny bear prancing around in a solid gray velvet frock pointed his finger in response to my fall and was shot four times. Hysterical Campbell turned the corner into a living room full of chaotic, shouting, separating, inquiry, frowns, forms, and eventual crime scene. Apparently I hit the credenza, while demonstrating a half-gainer in my nightgown, and they hit the wrong apartment.

Seven stitches below the skin’s surface, nine above, right below the eye along side my broken nose which hurt more than the stitches. I was taped up and on my way home as the doctors and police escorted me to the street. Shot up with pain killer and bandaged eyes swollen to sedation, a police car pulled up to the curb and courted me to the door, saying please and thank you to Mrs. Nina Waterman. Drooling politeness, his big teeth showing, speaking to me of God and sentimental awards, I went to bed for the first time in eight years, without my son in my home. I slept under sedation for two days. I had to loosen myself from the blood sticky pillowcase and stumble to the sink before the flow of raining tears came down the gutter inside my nose and forever outside my eyes. I looked in the cold bathroom mirror, my skin swollen, black, blue, blood reddened and changed profoundly, searching my face for what I knew to find, but could not.

Campbell was with Gabriel. He rode with him in the ambulance holding him the whole time. Even standing clutching the handle of the drawer that Gabriel’s cold body laid inside of at the morgue, his forehead leaning against the top locker. He assisted the Medical Examiner in washing him and the Mortician in dressing him, Campbell never left Gabriel’s side. He was also there, behind the viewing room window, at the autopsy when the Medical Examiner delicately removed the four bullets from Gabriel’s chest.

We stood together for the last time as a family when Campbell and I laid a holy water sprinkled; Christ embroidered cloth over his casket, Gabriel’s color of wood, at the funeral mass. Campbell squeezed the casket handle while carrying his son during his last hours. Carefully dressing him and placing his body into the casket earlier that day, kissing him, as I did, for the last time. He said to the Mortician and me, when he arrives in heaven, I want him to look as beautiful as he did the day God gave him to me.

Campbell guided Gabriel’s entourage out to the car, to the burial site, and in reciting the rosary prayers, strong and calm. Voices rose into the serene air, and then departed amongst themselves, including Morris, blasted, Jones who stood on the periphery reciting the prayers, and crying louder than bombs. Campbell and I limped back to our empty bruised home with our injuries, internal and external, each of us laying a hand on the door knob, together, we closed the door to Gabriel’s room.