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see what was on the floor on the other side of the car.  For a moment, my feet felt too heavy to lift.  I took a deep breath as preparation for what I might find and took a step and then another.  Eventually, I reached the other side of the car. 
         My hand on the car was the only thing keeping me from collapsing to the ground.  I looked down to see what the small shape was and then I puked all over the floor behind the little red car.
         There on the floor battered and covered with blood that made it almost unrecognizable was one of Bonnie’s fuzzy pink slippers. 
        My mind immediately flashed back to the first time I saw her wear them.  It was two summers ago right after my first feature story ran in the newspaper, and I had celebrated by getting drunk with some friends at a bar near the office.  Not sure if I got home by taxi or if someone from work drove me.  But I did remember stumbling through the living room at around two o’clock in the morning and breaking a lamp.  Bonnie had come charging out of the bedroom in a baby blue bathrobe and those fuzzy pink slippers. I had laughed so hard that I had nearly pissed myself.  Bonnie had initially been enraged, but soon she was laughing along with me.  I had joked that she would soon be wearing curlers in her hair and gossiping with all the neighborhood women. 
         The memory made me smile and then cry at what that fuzzy pink slipper in that puddle of blood meant had happened to my wife.  My emotional reaction was interrupted by a sound from behind me. 
     
    Chapter 5
     
         There was a sort of soft scratching sound coming from the other side of the garage.   It was easy to find the exact source of the sound since there was a trail left as if something had been dragged from the puddle of blood. It looked just like skid marks left by tires.  That is, except for the color was red.  My eyes reflexively followed the path. 
         Whether it was simple curiosity or something more, I was immediately enthralled by that path of smeared blood and wanted to follow it wherever it led.  My feet carried me forward as though someone else was controlling them.  I could not say how long the journey across that room took or the precise manner in which I completed the journey.  All I know is that I found myself coming to full consciousness as I stared at the source of the scratching sound.
         In the corner of the room in a crouch holding something bloody with both hands in front of her was Bonnie.  Her eyes were downward, fixed on the thing in her hands, so we did not make eye contact at first. 
         I stood there at the end of the last row of cars , watching her.  She was still wearing her old blue bathrobe and one fuzzy pink slipper.  The difference now was that blood soaked her clothes. She continued to fidget with the bloody thing in her hands.  From where I stood, I could not tell what she was holding.
         Like someone sneaking up so as not to scare away a wild animal, I inched slowly closer to the corner where my wife was crouched. Both my sight and Bonnie’s became absorbed by the thing in her hands. In fact, I was concentrating so intently that I did not immediately notice that Bonnie was no longer gazing at her hands.   Her eyes were now raised toward me.
         But they were not the deep blue eyes I had come to know.  These e yes were pale as though the color had been washed out, and they were without the spark of life that had always shone within them.
         “She needed a ride to the drugstore,” Bonnie muttered. 
         “Who?”  I asked as I moved closer to her. “Who needed a ride to the drugstore, Bonnie?”
          My words appeared to startle her as if she hadn’t seen me. Her head tilted slightly as she looked right through me. 
         “She needed a ride to the drugstore,” she repeated quietly.
         I thought that she must be in some kind of shock.  Given