by Karina Halle
Another person shot.
Another person shot.
Someone has to stop him.
I can’t stop watching him until he’s dead.
Then it happens.
The moment where it all changes.
He turns around and looks directly at me.
He’s seeing me.
All of me.
His eyes are so pale I can’t even make out the color. Tiny pinpricks of black stare right at me, taking in every inch.
He walks toward me. Slowly but with purpose.
Terrible purpose.
I want to look at the people behind him, find some brave soul who can stop him, can save me, but I can’t look away. I can’t play dead.
I’m caught.
I’m alive when I should be dead.
I will be dead.
But I maintain eye contact with him because it’s my only shot. It’s the only way I can save myself. If he can see me, the real me, maybe he won’t hurt me.
Please, please, please.
Let me go.
Let me live.
Let me live.
Let me live.
He stops five feet away. Standing squarely, feet shoulder width apart. Everything about him is so proper, so perfect, it’s as if he’s programmed.
And that means he’s programmed not to see me for who I am.
I’m still just a faceless monster to him.
The gun is pointing down at me and I’m staring right up the barrel at him.
This is it.
This was life.
I almost had it all.
“Don’t you see,” the man says, British, his voice betraying the blankness of his expression. It’s wrought with desperation, like he’s wanting something from me. “Don’t you see how easy it is? How easy it was? That this is what the government wants from us. But no one cares how easy it is as long as it gets done.”
I’m feeling lightheaded. My mouth is cotton. I can’t even form words to respond.
Please, please, please God, I think. Let me live. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for Christina. For Mom, for my father. I’m sorry for all the things I let happen.
“You see now,” the man goes on, his voice cracking. “They’ll also see now. I was made to do this. To other people who aren’t our people. But it’s all the same, isn’t it? It’s all the same. And now you know.”
His finger shifts on the trigger.
My body tenses instinctively. I close my eyes.
I’m so sorry.
A gunshot fills the air, loud enough that it breaks my brain, then quickly drains out to a muffle.
There is silence.
Death is silence.
Then there is a cry. A scream.
The rattle of metal on pavement.
It all sounds like I’m hearing it underwater but I’m hearing it all the same.
I’m alive.
I open my eyes in time to see the man wobble on his feet, the shotgun lying on the ground beside him, his hand open and reaching. My eyes travel up to his chest, where a hole is leaking out above his heart.
The man teeters and then falls over like a cut tree.
Dead.
Suddenly the world comes alive again. Amidst the screams come barks of authority, of control, of safety.
“Miss, help is here,” a voice says, a flash of a police uniform. “Stay with us.”
I’m not sure I can.
CHAPTER ONE
Jessica
Edinburgh
Six Weeks Later
“Are you sure you can handle it?” Christina asks, pleading with those damn puppy dog eyes of hers.
I’m tempted to swat her away with my crutches, which is something I’ve been wanting to do since the day I got them. Call it sisterly love, call it what you want. “I’m fine,” I tell her, looking up at the sky and squinting into the sunshine. Even though it’s September and Edinburgh is normally shuttering itself in for a long and dreary winter of abysmal drizzle and overcast skies, it’s been warm and sunny, the sky a deep, bright blue. It’s probably one of the last perfect days of the year and I wish I could hold it in my hand and keep it for later.
I sigh and look across Princes Street Gardens. Tourists are still numerous in the city, though their numbers are dwindling as autumn approaches. The green grass is going to explode with people once the after-work crowd lets out. If they aren’t picnicking in the park, staring at the castle with dreamy eyes, they’ll be swamping the high street stores looking for ways to spend their hard-earned cash or piling into the bars to have a pint.
A needle of hopelessness works its way into my heart. I’d give anything to go back in time to when a warm Friday evening brought me comfort and excitement. Now I’m just envious of the lives that are going on around me. I can’t even go to Zara anymore without cowering in fear from the flashbacks. I’m not sure I ever will.
And I know. When someone goes through a shocking tragedy and their life falls apart as a result, the last thing people want to hear is incessant whinging about it, the whole “woe is me” complaint. I’m trying really hard not to be that person. It’s not in my nature. My nature is to rise above the hardships the best I can.
Which is why just succumbing to fear and pity isn’t working out for me. I won’t let it, even if my sister or Paula think that it’s okay to wallow in it and be angry. They coddle me, afraid I’m going to snap, but that’s not going to happen.
I was discharged from the hospital three weeks ago, and the moment I made my way back to Edinburgh and the life that I had—the very moment that my life all fell apart—I started seeking help. Not just for my body and my leg that will never be the same, but for my heart and mind. Every Tuesday night I attend a PTSD group for trauma survivors at a local church. Tonight will be my third meeting with them, and I have a feeling I’ll be attending these meetings for years to come.
“I just can’t stand to see you like this,” Christina says, wiping at her eyes. She’s been a total mess since this happened, handling it worse than I have been. It just makes me want to put on an even braver face and pretend that everything is all right, even when it isn’t. If I tell her enough times, I might even start to believe it myself.
“I can’t just watch you hobble off down the street to the church,” she says. “I could at least walk you there. What if you fall?”
I’ve been doing a lot of falling. I can’t blame her concern for that one. That’s one thing I didn’t see coming, that I would have to learn to fall, that my body would be covered with bruises, that getting back up not only hurts but is sometimes impossible by yourself.
Well, that and the fact that my boyfriend of three years, Mark, dumped me while I was still in the hospital. Oh, and that I lost my job as teacher at the yoga studio because, fuck, I won’t be doing yoga for a long a time. And then I had to move in with my sister and her husband because I couldn’t live with Mark anymore.
Didn’t see any of that coming at all. A nice little cap to the whole “you got shot by a terrorist” thing.
“If I fall, then some handsome man will come to my rescue,” I tell her, hastily tucking my hair behind my ears.
“We should get you a cab,” she says, putting her hand on my arm.
“Christina,” I warn her, giving her the patented big sister glare that I perfected so well over the years. “I’m fine. If I wanted to get a cab, I would get a cab. It’s not a long walk and if I don’t learn how to do this on my own, how am I going to eventually walk on my own?”
She scrunches up her nose in defeat. “I just worry about you.”
“I’m fine,” I say testily. “Let me go to my meeting. I’ll take a cab back home.”
“Oh, I’m picking you up,” she says quickly. “Eight o’clock, I’ll be there.”
I sigh. “If you insist. But I was planning to go to the bar across the street afterward for a bit with one of the circle. So you better make it nine-thirty.”
She nods and I know that if I
don’t start hobbling away right now, she’ll be physically shoving me into a cab. Christina may be younger and far shorter than me (and I’m by no means tall), but she has a temper that gives her super-human strength.
I blow a kiss at her, give her a big “I’m totally cool, don’t worry about me” smile (one that’s been overworked lately), and start hobbling my way across the grass toward Princes Street.
Even though I fall a lot—something my physiotherapist tells me is totally normal—it’s not because of the crutches. Chalk it up to my years of doing yoga, but my body is limber and apparently adapts well to these awkward appendages. But every now and then my mind forgets that my leg doesn’t work, and if my crutches aren’t placed exactly right, down I go. It’s a painful learning curve.
I make good time heading toward the church. It’s located down the hill toward the sea in the gorgeous area of Stockbridge, about a ten-minute walk from the gardens, fifteen if you’re quick on crutches.
I pass the stone facades of Circus Place and the St. Vincent pub I want to pop into afterward and make my way across to the church, St. Stephen’s Stockbridge.
The church itself is old and somber looking from the inside with a tall bell tower that overlooks the streets. Inside it’s been updated, a long swath of pews leading to a great open area with stain-glass skylights over an intimidating-looking organ and giant chandelier. I pause a moment in the foyer to take it all in, trying to find some peace in the air, the smells of cloves and candle wax, before I head downstairs to confront my demons.
I’ve never been very religious. My father dragged Christina and I to church every Sunday, but he was the greatest sinner of them all, and growing up I associated Christianity with lip service and liars. My father was a monster, but on the outside he was a shining example of God.
Now though, I’m turning to it more. Not religion, but faith. It’s hard not to when you’ve looked death in the eye. I’m just not sure sometimes whether to be thankful I’m alive or angry that my life has changed forever.
When I’m done mustering up whatever prayer I can, I turn around slowly—turning too fast usually leads to a stumble—and see Anne staring at me with quiet eyes.
Anne is the person I wanted to go to the pub with afterward. She’s really the only one I talk to in the group. She survived a horrific house fire a few years ago that took her youngest son, and the past still has its claws in her, even though she starts over every day, as she puts it.
“I didn’t want to interrupt,” Anne says in her lilting Scottish accent.
I give her a smile. “No need. I suppose I should be downstairs already.”
I follow her down the stairs to the basement where the meetings are held, taking even more care here. Stairs are my enemy and this country is full of them.
The meeting room is simple but still cold thanks to the stone. It feels like a tomb sometimes, but I’ve heard others describe it as a womb. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Closed in, dark spaces can feel comforting or suffocating, and it changes day to day.
The meetings are simple. Pamela is the group leader, a member of the church and a survivor of the London subway bombing of 2005. She created the group so that others like her, like myself, like Anne, could overcome their fears and bond with others who have gone through something similar. Almost everyone is in therapy or has been in therapy (with the exclusion of myself), but this group provides something extra that even the most understanding psychotherapist cannot.
There are nine of us, men and women, as young as twenty-two and as old as seventy-five. We’re all here for the same thing—to get better. To let it out. To be understood and treated as a human being, not someone to be coddled or pitied, or in my case, revered.
My first meeting I sat in the back, happy to be silent, to take it all in. The second class I spoke about the attack on Oxford Street, what it was like to be made the poster girl of the incident. In fact, I am still the poster girl. There were two other survivors, but for some reason the media latched on to me. Maybe it was the fact that it was my dramatic moment between life and death that was caught on everyone’s iPhones and showed to the world. If it wasn’t me, if I hadn’t gone through it, if it was a stranger I was watching on the news, I could see how harrowing and gripping the event could be.
But it wasn’t a stranger. It was me. And as nerve wracking as it was for people to watch the event on the news, they have no idea what it was really like.
Yet these people do. Maybe not entirely, but they know what it’s like to come back from something you shouldn’t have, even if you’ve just come back in body only. Sometimes your spirit dies in the past.
Tonight though, I don’t feel like talking. I offer up vague feelings, just enough to do my part, to be a piece of the collective, but I just want to listen. I want to find the hope in their stories, to get lost in a world that’s not my own.
By the time the meeting is over, most of the night taken up by a man named Reggie, an old veteran who lost his legs in the war—a situation I try and take to heart and remind myself that it could have been worse—I’m ready for a beer or two.
I wait until everyone in the room has left, not wanting to hold anyone back, then make my way up the stairs after Anne.
Gone are the mid-summer nights of sunshine until eleven p.m. Now it’s dark out at eight. I used to mourn the loss of summer, pouting my way through August as the brief season wrapped up to its close, but now I’m starting to see the appeal of darkness. It calls to me, comforts me. Maybe because my attack happened in broad daylight, among crowds of people, in a public place, and I feel safer somehow when people can’t see me.
The St. Vincent pub is a cute little place on the corner, tucked beneath a row of Georgian buildings. There’s a table outside that’s currently occupied by a couple of smokers, one man with a nice looking golden retriever. As I carefully make my way down the three stairs, the men all look my way, but their expressions are more predatory than ones of concern. I’m used to it. I never realized until I was injured, how often I’m viewed as a fallen doe, something the wolves close in on.
I ignore them—as usual, none of them offer a hand, just a leer—and make my way into the pub behind Anne.
It’s pretty busy tonight but most people are standing around the bar. In the back corner there are a few half-booths backed with red and green leather, and wine barrels topped with velvet covers act as stools on the other side of the tables.
We manage to snag one, and while Anne takes the wine barrel seat, I ease myself into the booth. I’m lucky I had a lot of ab and upper arm strength coming into the incident. I’m still not sure what to call it. An “attack,” even though that’s what it was, makes me feel victimized. Years of strength training and yoga have definitely paid off, and while my legs won’t be useful anytime soon, at least my upper body is constantly working to carry the strain.
Anne goes and gets us a drink, and while she stands in line at the bar, I let out a sigh of relief as I look around the pub. Even though it was a short distance walking from the church to the pub, I feel more myself when I’m sitting down. And being here, at a pub, listening to eighties rock coming from the speakers and the chorus of laughter and conversations and clinking glasses, makes me believe for a second that everything is right again. That I’m not crippled. That I still have a job, an apartment, a life. That I still have a boyfriend.
Things between Mark and I were on the rocks before I got shot. The trip to London, as impromptu and unlucky as it was, put space between us and gave me time to think.
Unfortunately, that all changed. And while I knew Mark and I wouldn’t be together for the long haul, I never imagined he would break up with me while I was still in the hospital. Oh, he had his reasons, but every single one of them told me I had been living a lie for the last three years and that I didn’t really know my boyfriend at all. It had been a blessing in disguise, but I’m still hurt, and more than that, angry.
Anne is now paying for the pints, and
as I sweep my eyes back to the drink menu on the table, tucked between the plastic bottle of ketchup, mustard, and mayo, my gaze pauses at the man sitting at the table across from me.
I see just his profile, facing the rest of the pub. He has a pint in front of him and his face is pointed down, reading something I can’t quite see. There’s something so familiar about the cut of his jawline, the scruff of his beard, that I can’t help but stare at him in awe, my stomach doing little flips as I try to make sense of it all.
As if he feels my eyes on him, he turns his head to face me. I want to look away, I probably should, but I let his gaze meet mine.
He’s a damn handsome man, that’s for sure, though the more I stare, the more I realize why I had such a visceral reaction to him. The strong shape of his jaw and chin, the beard, it reminds me of the actor Gerard Butler. Obviously he’s not Gerard Butler, but those slight similarities bring my heart back in time.
When I was seventeen and finishing up my last year of high school, trying to find some way to get through the endless hell that was my life at home, I became obsessed with the movie The Phantom of the Opera. Gerard, playing the mysterious phantom, became my favorite actor, and after that I plastered my walls with his posters and watched 300 millions of times. I was young, angry, scared and stuck, and he provided some fantasy life, a means of escape.
I still think Gerard Butler is a pretty fine actor, even though he’s picked some shit roles lately, but the association with something good and safe is apparently in full swing.
Of course this guy is different, someone else entirely. His lips are fuller and set in a hard line, his nose prominent, but it still suits his face. His hair is dark brown, short on the sides, longer up top, his sideburns flecked with grey.
His eyes are striking, so striking that I know I should only hold them for a second. It isn’t just that they’re almond-shaped and this dusky green color like the underside of a leaf, but they’re wise and broken and mysterious all at once. The kind of eyes that tell you a person has lived many, many lives, and some of those lives are starting to wear them down.
