I've been rewriting Cathy for the past few weeks, but now I have writer's block. So I'm going to use this as my release and just free my mind in hopes that I'll be able to continue Cathy. Cathy has to be finished by the end of the school year in June. I really need Cathy to be published because that could be my college fund; God knows I need help with that. Beginning is true, except I'm a daughter not the wife, but it fits the story better if it's told this way.

It happened like this: Gary's footsteps on the tile floor and the glass shaking. His door slammed. Silence. Then my heart beating.

I was in my bed trying to fall asleep. I have horrible insomnia and it takes me five hours to fall asleep. I had a big meeting in the morning that required me to get up at four. My husband, Gary, on the other hand was able to fall asleep right as his head hit the pillow. He had no troubles at all sleeping and he didn't have to get up until seven. He liked to stay up late. I envied him.

It was a cold Sunday night. All day it was cloudy and depressing. I remember watching the sun set and the clouds around all the color. It looked so dull and depressing. I felt like something bad and inevitable was about to happen. My nine month baby Lily had the flu. If I wasn't taking care of her, I was in bed working on my thesis statement for my research paper on sleep paralysis.

For Gary, it was unusual for him to be quiet. When he walked, it felt like an earthquake. When he slept, you had to leave the house. When he ate fruit, you had to wear a raincoat. God forbid he ever ate chips. Nothing that man did was silent. He couldn't have been asleep already because he had to change his medicine. He had pulmonary hypertension.

I got up to investigate. I opened the door and took one step in; my hand was still on the doorknob, when I saw him lying on his bed with his medicine in his hand. His eyes were blood shot red and they staring up at the ceiling. "Are you dead?" I asked. I waited two seconds before turning around and grabbing the phone. I quickly dialed 911 and answered the questions the operator asked me. I went back into his room and performed CPR for five minutes.

Finally the paramedics came and started working on him. I ran into my daughter's room when I heard her crying. It's like she knew her father was dead. I brought her back out to his room and stood there waiting. I answered more questions about what medication he was on. The police man went into his room and talked to one of the medics. He came out and told me they were planning on bringing him to the hospital.

I watched as they put him on the stretcher and tried to bring him out of his room and down the long narrow hallway. They scratched the door frame on their way out. His stomach was a balloon. They had to cut open his shirt to shock him back to life. His skin was completely purple. I didn't need a doctor to tell me he was dead. If there was a slight chance he could live, they would have rushed him out of the house instead of slowly walking down the long narrow hallway. I pressed myself up against the wall and slowly slid down with Lily in my arms. I started to quietly sob.

The two police officers stood there awkwardly until I was done. They asked if I needed a ride to the hospital. "No. I'll drive myself." They looked at each other, and reluctantly agreed to let me drive.

I must have looked like a mad woman driving down the road. I drove through two stop lights and I was way above the speed limit. Lily played happily in the backseat with her stuffed animal. If only she knew what was going on. I wished I could be as carefree as she would be in her younger years.

When we got to the emergency room, I brought with me a Kleenex box. I knew I would need it. As I walked in the doors, everyone sitting in the waiting room looked up at me. It was like they all knew from the look in my eyes that he was dead and I would have to raise a little girl on my own. The people looked at me with sympathy and pity. I was lead off into another room. Another sign that he was dead.

I waited for five minutes tops before a doctor and a nurse came in. The doctor told me they could get a slight blood pressure, but not enough to bring him back. The nurse looked down as I fell to my knees, ripped the Kleenex box in half, and cried. The nurse looked like she was about to cry.

They took me to go see the body. I didn't really want to see it. I knew it wasn't him. I just came to collect his stuff. His body was whiter than the sheet he was under. His skin felt like fish scales. It wasn't Gary. I cried over his body for a few minutes before I left. It may all seem fast paced, but that's how it happened. Event after event after event happened, one right after the other, with no break or warning in between.

The very next day I went to work like I usually did. I said the meeting and I slept in. But I worked and I stayed home with Lily until she was healthy. Everything went on as it normally would with Gary around. One day I decided to drive down to the church and give a few donations. Lily had already grown out of some of her clothes and I didn't want to keep Gary's. I left Lily with a babysitter, despite my instinct to keep her with me. I didn't leave her alone for one second after Gary's death.

It was raining, as usual. A block away from the church, I came to red light. There I saw a bunch of delinquents defacing public property. They were drinking and having a damn good time. My knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. I felt like the bone was going to rip through the skin as my knuckles turned the same white as Gary was.

I envied them. I wanted to be young again. I wanted to be as carefree as them and have a good time. I didn't want responsibilities. I wanted to go home and have my parents take care of me again. I didn't want to pay bills, work for a living, take care of a nine month baby all by myself, or deal with the grief of my husband's death. I was only twenty five and my life was already put on hold.

I knew those kids. They were the Curtis brothers and their friends Dally, Two-Bit, Steve, and Johnny. They were the local gang. I went to school with Darry and Soda. I knew they were good kids, but after they got mixed up with Tim Sheppard and his crowd, they got all evil. It looked like they were initiating Ponyboy into their little group of JDs. I wanted to run over and save him. Poor kid didn't know what he was getting into. I envied them, but at the same time, I pitied them.