I could hear the water running as I stalked down the hall. The water has been running for two hours… how any one can take a two-hour shower is beyond me. But besides that, there are other people in this household besides her who would like to get clean sometime before thanksgiving, hello! I come up to the door and I can see the steam seeping from underneath the door. “Nicole, Nicole! You’ve been in there forever… other people want to shower too!”

I’m banging on the door by now…there’s no answer from inside. Fuck modesty, this shit’s getting ridiculous. So I bolster myself up and prepare myself for the scream of teenage outrage that will be sure to follow such an absolute violation of privacy. Only there wasn’t a shout or a shriek… just a steady sound of water as it flows over the top of the tub and hits the stone floor slap slap slap.

I don’t see anything at fist, but when my vision cleared, my first thought was, she was taking a bath, not a shower. I must have been screaming. I’m not positive, though. Everything seemed to be muffled and blurred, everything was slowed down, until there was no time at all. But I must have been screaming. My fourteen year old, Scott, came running into the bathroom, almost slipping on the wet floor. “Mom…” he starts to cry, but I can see the words die on his lips…

“Oh Jesus, oh Jesus Christ,” he starts to babble, “What happened?! We have to call 911, the cops or an ambulance!” He’s right of course, but I can’t move. I’m stuck, frozen in the moment when I first opened the door. I’m aware of Scott running out to get the phone… I seem to have a vague notion of telling him not to scream in the house. We must always use our inside voices when we are inside.

I don’t know how much time has passed… it seems like seconds…it seemed like hours. I can hear the sirens, becoming louder and louder as they came closer. The noise was deafening, as the ambulance reached the house. I can feel hands on my shoulders, ghost hands, leading me away.

I become aware of my surroundings once we reach the ambulance outside. But it was a hazy awareness, as if I had been asleep for days and days. As one of the medics wrap a blanket around me, a kind faced police officer asked me if I could remember what had happened, if I could recount it.

As if I could forget. The image was branded into my head and burned into my mind. The last image, of Nicole's lifeless body, submerged in a bath of her own blood; one pale, lovely, motionless arm slung carelessly over the edge, marred only by a blood stained razor still firmly lodged in her wrist.