The Satellite

Nobody knows what it was or who might have done it. It may have been a cause of nature. It may have been man made. But if it was nature, it was so unexpected. Nature can be very mean and cruel and deadly when it needs to. When the balance of our world has been so thrown out of whack that it feels it needs to put it all back right, it doesn't do it by mail or email. It doesn't do it with a pleasant phone call or a nice quiet visit and discussion. It does it in a ugly and violent way. It screams in your face, because up until then you have ignored its whispers. Nature makes sure it gets your attention, or you die.

My window faces out onto the freeway. Today I had my youngest daughter, Leyef, with me, and she is also witness to what we saw. A bright flash in the sky. From way up in the sky. That is what we saw. Nothing else. I got up from my chair and put her under my desk. I told her to stay there. The other ladies in the office didn't see what we saw. They saw a light in the sky, but they didn't see where it came from. Everybody got up and ran outside. I ran up front and looked out the windows that face the hospital. The sight was scary and fascinating at the same time.

Everything started to move. Like a tornado had touched down near us but no sound of the train. You know. Everyone who has ever been in a tornado says it sounds like a train. Parts of trees and trash flew through the air. The trees that did not break off bent over with such force that they almost touched the ground. Everyone started to scramble outside, and I started screaming that that was NOT the way to go. I ran back to my desk. Back to my child who sat crying there, scared out of her mind and probably thinking I had abandoned her an left her alone forever. Luckily, she stayed where I told her to and I was able to get to her and run into the old x-ray room. Everybody else wanted to go outside and see what was happening. I wanted to also, but something told me not to. I needed to take my child and hide and pray that the building I decided to keep us in didn't fall down on our heads and kill us anyway.

She was crying so hard she could barley breath. She wanted her daddy, sister and her brother, but I was all she had, and I had to keep her safe. I wanted them too, but all I had was her and she was my main priority. She mattered then and so did I, because without me she wouldn't make it and I knew it. I was her sanity in mommy form, and I was going to do my job and keep her safe.

In the x-ray room there was nothing but boxes and stuff we stored we no longer used. The big equipment had been gone for a while and storage was the main job for the room now. Fortunately, it had a sink and cabinet in the far-left corner of the room behind a door. that is where we are headed. That was where she was going to survive whatever we were going through, and that was where we would come out of this alive. I hoped all that anyway.

I took all the shit that was in the way and tossed it behind me into the vacant room. Leyef stood there and screamed in my ear and pulled on my hand to leave. To go find her daddy. That he would keep us safe, and we would be ok. It is a shame when you can't make them understand. Daddy is 50 miles away. I don't have tome to get him. I don't have time to call him. I don't have time to warn him that he may ever see his wife and youngest child again. I don't even know if I have time to toss this shit into the room behind me and shove my child, who will fight me, into this cabinet before something worse happens. I don't know if there is time to save her as she cries, and I can't make it better with a kiss and a hug.

"Leyef, get in here." I tell her. "Get in and stay there until I let you out."

"NO!" she creams back at me with all her 6 years, height, and voice. "I want to stay with you."

"Mommy is going to be right in front of here protected you. Keeping the door safe. Keeping it closed. Now get in!"

"Get in with me, mommy!"

"I can't fit. Get in! HURRY!"

I shove her in scrapping her arm in the side of the door. Starting to cry because I can't make her understand that this is going to keep her safe and keeping her safe is all that matters right now. Our life before this is over. I mourn that in that instance. I know it will never be the same. No more late Saturday mornings lounging in the bed, sipping coffee and listening to the kids argue over who's turn it is on the TV. No more TV either probably. I know it is all over the life I knew. The life she knew. The one where she would go to school, be the the smartest kid in class. Grow up, fall in love and laugh a lot. Marry and have kids of her own. That kind of life is over.

She screams and fights me. She is strong my youngest. Always has been, but today I am no match for her. Today I will win because she is 6 and doesn't know better. I close the door to the cabinet and close the door to the room. There is just enough room for me to sit straight up against the cabinet keeping the door closed and put my feet flat on the door to the room and hopefully hold it closed. I still don't understand what is happening, but I know this is what I need to do. I follow that feeling and pray that it won't let me down. This all happens in a matter of minutes and a matter of minutes is all it took for our world to change.

The light is on, and I wonder for how much longer. I don't have to wait long for the answer. It goes out and I am plunged into darkness in the small room where my child is still screaming at me through the door to let her out and banging on it with her hands and feet. I hope she doesn't hurt herself. Then there is a crash of breaking glass and I know that all the windows in the office have been blown in. The huge 10-foot-tall picture windows where we all would gather to look at the sky for rain or sun are no longer there. There is nothing separating us from the outside world anymore. The wind, dust, trash, trees are all able to get inside the office now. The mini blinds blowing back from the blast that broke the glass. Some may even be falling off and on the floor making that funny little sound they make when you move them.

There are screams as well. Some I know are my coworkers. My friends. Some are from the patients. People I don't know. I can't tell the difference in any of them. I just hope and pray that Leyef is too busy doing her won screaming that she doesn't hear them. That she is so preoccupied with her own situation, she is not thinking of anyone else's. I hope I will be able to sleep again and not hear any of them in my dreams. I seem to be the only one not screaming. Shock, I guess.

The whole thing seems to go on forever. But I guess it really only took a couple of minutes. A person can die in seconds if done exactly right and whatever "it" was I guess knew what "it" was doing. Everything went quiet. Just that fast. Even Leyef stopped screaming, which scared me. I was in the dark and I couldn't see her. She had stopped banging on the door. She had gone just as quiet as everything else. She was the only thing that mattered, but I couldn't take the chance to open the door. Not yet. I wasn't sure I wanted to leave the room. The one with the darkness and the quiet. The one where, for just that moment, we were ok and maybe there was a chance that this was a dream, and I would wake up next to my husband snoring and my little girl breathing her really bad morning breath on me. Where my other tow were sleeping in their beds and everything was just as it should be. There in the quiet. Quiet was good.

But then I heard her say, "Mommy?". It was the softest whisper. She sounded stuffed up and extremely tired. Barely able to muster the strength to say that one work. All that fighting me to not put her in the cabinet wore her out. My baby was exhausted, and I really needed her to be strong. How could I ask her to do that after everything that had just happened?

I answered her that I was here and to stay quiet for a few more minutes. She said OK and we stayed just like that for about 3 minutes. I didn't hear anything. Nobody yelling for help. No crying, No screaming. Nothing but silence. I clutched at my heart shaped locket and just listened. It was one of the scariest moments in my life up until that moment. After that moment, there were a lot more, but that is for later.