Me, Kate in Fragments of Life

I lived in Arizona until a year before I met Michelle. I actually moved up to Cali with a friend in the fall of ‘87 who had left Arizona for Cali a few years earlier. She was the one who got me a job at the police department since she had connections there. She drove down to Arizona to visit some friends there and that was when I returned with her to her condo. The plan was to live on my savings until I found employment. She and I were roommates until the night a drunk driver killed her as she was crossing the street. Fortunately, the bastard driver didn’t make it either when he smashed into a utility pole.

By then I had begun work but didn’t have enough money to swing the condo payments myself. San Francisco has always been pretty expensive. So it was either live on the streets or in a hostel. I decided the hostel was better than the streets in the shelters. Even so, it was horrible.

I slept on a rickety old cot with one eye open, never knowing who might swipe my meager belongings or try to harm me. I did make friends with the woman that slept on the cot next to mine but I would say she was more like an advisor than a friend. I wasn’t stupid. I knew she had a serious drug habit.

I’d already met Angela and was about to meet Michelle. The turning point in my life was when a traumatic event landed me in the hospital for a few days. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time one day when I decided to deposit some money in my bank account to save for a place I could actually afford on my own when some asshole decided to hold it up and take me hostage. This wasn’t someone trying to rob the bank either. It was a very pissed off individual who didn’t appreciate being fired. The guy’s beef was with the manager who wasn’t present at the time. I was held hostage with the promise of death if they failed to get the manager he wanted to confront. Before this could happen, though, a sniper shot him in the head and it was over in seconds.

Well, that part was. Stunned and in shock, I was brought to the hospital and checked out. They wanted to keep me overnight because I was so shaken up when it was exposed that I didn’t exactly have a real home to go to. This was something I kept to myself but then one of the nurses mentioned it to Michelle and Angela.

I was uninsured because I hadn’t quite worked long enough to qualify for insurance. I was close, though, but it took time partly because I had to start off working part-time. I wanted to work full-time but there wasn’t enough work available at first because the person I was replacing had dropped to part-time before leaving to be a stay-at-home mom.

The department kindly picked up the tab and Michelle, horrified to learn where I was staying, insisted on taking me in. I was eternally grateful and our relationship blossomed from there. It was a scary yet exciting few days.

I was only in the hospital for a few days and found it to be boring when no one was visiting so I tried to lose myself in books and magazines. I was glad I had my own room.

I lit up like a torch in the night when Michelle would visit and Angela visited once, too. There was talk about her staying with us for a while because her own living situation was about to change but that’s for another chapter along with the very big secret I had no clue she held the day she visited, vivid blue eyes gazing into mine with more compassion and emotion than I’d ever seen before, though she was still laid-back, quiet and reserved. It was obvious to her and pretty much anyone else that Michelle and I were now an official item and Angie would hang back and give us some time together when they visited. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if she was uncomfortable or envious, wishing things had turned out differently, but quickly dismissed this notion when I learned she’d begun dating Jamie.