As my eyes fluttered open I was met with over sterilized walls and the incessant beeping of machines. The air was filled with the smell of alcohol, disinfectant, anesthetic, and sickness, mixed with the medicines that ran through the IVs of the patients. It took over all my senses so much so that I could almost taste it. It lingered on my tongue leaving a nasty taste in my mouth. But even more noticeable was the pounding in my head, a crippling pain that pounded against my ears. I reached up and ran my fingers over the area to massage the headache away but was only met by more pain and the feeling of gauze instead of my hair. Panic began to flood me, and a million questions filled my mind. I looked around frantically for a way to call the doctor, a nurse, anyone. I began pressing any and every button hoping that one would do what I needed. My bed went up then into a sitting position, the T.V turned on then off. None of the buttons did what I wanted and soon my mind was fogged down. I must have pressed my morphine button because I fell into a drug induced slumber only to wake hours later.

“Hello there miss.” A female voice said as I was roused from my sleep. Looking up there stood a nurse in brightly colored scrubs checking the machines that were hooked up to me. After brushing her dirty blond hair out of her face she said, “You seem to be doing better. Much better than you were.” I stared at her but asked no questions as they had all seemed to leave my mind. “Gave all of us quite a scare, the cops brought you in all bloody and broken. Said they found you at Florence Street Park on a bench unconscious and bleeding. No ID or nothing on you and leaving the cops and I to wonder how you got there and why.” She said asking the questions that I had not voiced. “So, now that you're back in the waking world would you like to tell us your name?” It was then that it hit me, here in this hospital I was safe but if I were to give her my name they’d call my father. No, I couldn’t do that so I began to fiercely shake my head keeping my name to myself. I continued to shake my head as if I stopped my name would just come tumbling out of my mouth.

All the shaking brought back my headache and made me dizzy forcing me to stop. “Okay, okay if you refuse then we will have to just refer to you as Jane Doe.” I was fine with that, they could not call Jane Doe’s father so that he could come stomping in and take me away from this white walled safe house. The nurse walked out realizing that she was not going to get my name out of me, leaving me to my thoughts. I racked my brain trying to figure out how I had ended up here and how it had gotten this extreme. I was no stranger to the result of my father's anger and drinking but this was a new low. I sighed and began itching to move and walk around, maybe this would jog my memories. I sat up and flung my legs over the edge of the bed and there staring back at me was a cast that ran up my leg. I cursed at my immobility and flopped backwards onto my bed. “Great.” I grumbled and stared up at the ceiling counting the tiles and trying hard to remember what had gotten me here. I heard the door open and looked up as an older women with curling gray hair walked in carrying a tray of food. My stomach let out a loud, low grumble as the smell of food wafted towards me. It then hit me my injury, my father, everything. It all crashed upon me like a ship would upon a shore.

I snuck into the kitchen in the search of food while my father was out on a liquor run. I had not eaten in three days and was starving. This was his new punishment when I did so much as breathed wrong and I got no food. Yet with my father now out to buy booze I took to searching for food. The cabinets and fridge were bare and lacked any remnants of food but in the bread box laid two pieces of plain sandwich bread that had begun to grow mold. It was not much, but it was food so I walked over to the sink and with my fingernail began to scrape off as much mold as I could. As the first piece was cleared I started on the second when I heard my father pull up. I stuffed the first piece in my mouth and turned the handle to the sink to wash the mold down the drain, no water came out. I cursed, the water had been shut off since the bill money had been spent on beer. The door opened and I look frantically at the mold in the sink and the bread in my hand, I shoved this piece of bread in my mouth despite the mold. As I began chewing he walked in and upon seeing this marched over to me and stood looming above me.

I was about 5’6 and he was 6’4 and double my measly 100 pounds. Glaring at me, he slap me hard across the face yelling curse words, sending spittle in my face. Holding my head over the sink he forced me to spit what was left in my mouth out. “I told you not to fuckin’ eat.” He screamed the beer fresh on his breath. “Ungrateful, useless, stupid brat!” He spat as I cowered next to him. He stomped away leaving me to believe that his rage was short ended for once. I slumped against the sink as I rubbed my now red cheek. I turned around and stared at the half chewed bread mix with mold in the sink, I was tempted to scoop it up with my fingers and eat it. As I contemplated this his shadow loomed over me again, causing me to turn and when I did something made contact with my skull, shattering it on impact. Suddenly another blow landed on my thigh sending me to the floor, quivering in pain. He glared down at me with his blue eyes clouded in hate, growling and snarling like a wild dog. He raised what I could now see was a metal baseball bat, as I covered my face and brace for impact I heard the bat clank to the floor and him lumber off.

I began to hyperventilate as I contemplated what would happen if they found my father, or if my father found me. I began to shake and cry appearing as I was having some kind of fit. The doctors rushed in again and I woke up hours later from another drug induced sleep. When I next woke a police officer sat next to my bed flipping through the pages of a magazine. I quickly closed my eyes pretending to be asleep still but this did not fool him. “Ma'am?” He questioned looking at me with green blue eyes that shone with concern. “Your father, or who we believe to be your father, is here.” He said looking directly at me, I averted his gaze as my heart began to pound so loudly in my chest I was sure the officer would hear it.

“How?” I asked leaving the officer confused and attempting to fill in the blanks.

“How do we know it is your father?” With a quick glance up at the man I nodded. “Well we are not 100 percent sure but he kept sayin’ something about his daughter and how we needed to find her, that she was missing, and we found a picture of a girl who looks a good deal like you in his wallet.” This is when I notice his southern accent it was repressed as if he was ashamed to have it but it still snuck out with some of his words.

My mind began to swirl with unanswered questions I was too scared to verbalize. I mean a picture? I never knew of this, why, how? A picture, this made us, him, seem so, so normal. Keeping a picture of his normal daughter in his normal wallet as a normal father would but for me, for us, this was beyond normal. That wallet was always empty with money lost to booze consumed within the hour. “It’s only a picture.” I told myself, “It doesn’t mean anything.” I shook my head trying to rid these thoughts of my mind and turned my attention back to the officer still patiently waiting by my bedside. “Why is he here?” I asked. My voice quivered with these words but it did not break. “Is he here to see me?” I asked nervously afraid to hear the answer. The officer shook his head.

“No he is here at the hospital being treated, he was in an accident. One we believe was caused by driving while under the influence of alcohol.” That sounded like my father to me always drunk and always so careless.

“Is he, are the others all right?” I asked as a realization hit me. I did not really care if my father was all right or if he was in a vegetable state unable to do anything, this also meant he couldn’t do anything to me. This was the same really if he was paralyzed, or even dead. No, I shook my head, no, I did not wish my father dead no matter what he did and I kept repeating this in my head, but something else told me that I did.

The officer’s face appeared grim and his eyes tired as if it had been a rough day at work. “It was a two car collision, the man, who we believe to be your father, and a young woman and her three year old daughter. The mother survived but just barely and sadly the young girl did not.” The voice inside my head spoke up again, sneering “See you do want him dead, he should be dead, he killed a child.” This repeated over and over in my head no matter how hard I tried to ignore until I yelled, “No!” causing the officer to look at me confused but concerned. “S-Sorry.” I said flopping backwards onto the cushions of my bed. “What was the guys name?” I asked hoping, praying that by some slim chance that this was not my father. That some other man had messed up and killed an innocent child. That he was really a normal guy with a normal family that had made a mistake.

“Why don’t you tell me?” The officer asked simply interrupting my thoughts. “Tell me your father's name and yours while we're at it, just so we can be sure” He added on seeing my confused look. Should I? I wondered, if I told him then what did this mean for me? Was I free from the shackles that bound me to my father? Or if I told this man would it just come right back at me, my last name after all was Murphy, and Murphy’s law seemed to stick to me like glue, a shadow always looming over me. With a ragged sigh and a racing mind I made up my mind, not for me but for that child, that had been killed at the beginning of life.

“My father’s name...,” I said with a shaking voice “I-is Jack, Jack Murphy.” My voice cracked and my eyes darted everywhere as if expecting my father to jump out of the shadows and strangle me for speaking his name to the law. Yet nothing moved from the shadows and all that could be heard was the breathing of the officer and I, and the beeping of the machines.

“And your name?” The police officer asked softly. I let out a tired and ragged sigh before looking at this man, this man I barely knew who wanted to help me so badly, and began to cry. He looks startled at this like he had done something wrong, like this was his fault, but no it was not. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. I just had to allow it, the pain, the hurt, to run it’s course. Sobs wracked my body as I sank into the bed, I had lived my entire life in fear, without my mother, my father was a monster. My mother, my heart ached, I missed her, but this is not what she would want. The thought of my mother did not cause more tears to fall but caused them to stop, she would want me to be brave. I composed myself wiping away the salty tears that still dripped from my eyelashes onto my cheeks covering them in a glistening film of tears.

“My name is Skylar, Skylar Rose Murphy daughter of Jack Lee Murphy and Scarlet Ann Wallis.” I said pronouncing every syllable just to be sure that the officer heard me. He looked at me with a solemn look in his eyes. He nodded his head and scribbled a few notes down on his notepad. We sat in silence as I listened to the scratching of the pen against the paper as my mind raced, memories flooding my senses. We sat like this for some time before another officer walked in, boots clicking against the floor. He looks older with a drawn in face and a wrinkled forehead from years of stress and worry.

“Charlie,” he said causing the officer to look up, “We need to speak.” He said gesturing for him to come outside. Charlie, the officer, heaved himself out of the padded chair next to my bed and stepped outside. They talked in hushed voices as I strained to hear what they were saying, I knew they were talking about me. I watched as Charlie looked down at his pad listing off what he had just written, retelling what I had just told him. I wonder what was to happen to me now. I had lost the only family left, mom was gone with only a sister who died at a young age from an accident and her parents gone too, her father dead, and mother’s mind riddled with alzheimer’s. My father was an only child and both his parents were dead, it was just me and my mother and father. Then it was just me and my father but now, now it was just me. I had become so lost in my own thoughts that I did not notice the officer walk back in. Only when he cleared his throat did I notice and look up. In the doorway stood not Charlie but the older officer, his eyes were blue almost grey, and his hair was black with streaks of grey running all throughout it. He held no emotion in his face, unlike Charlie, I couldn’t tell what he was about to say, what he was feeling. The officer’s face was blank and no emotion could be read from his eyes. “Ms. Murphy,” he said “While officer Wilson was supposed to get a statement from you about your father we, we no longer need it.” He hesitated on those last five words and something in his eyes changed. I looked at him confused.

“Why?” I asked oblivious to the current situation.

“Your father,” He said hesitating “Your father died, the docs thought he would be fine but then went into cardiac arrest and they- they couldn’t resuscitate him.” This news hit me like a load of bricks smashing my chest and constricting my breathing. I was really alone my father was dead, my throat closed up but though this sadness took over me tears never fell. I had no tears for this man, this man who had been so cruel to me my entire life.

I looked at this man, this man who I barely knew, and whispered quiet as the wind “What now?” The question hung in the air like a thick fog that the officer had no answer for. This question ate away at my mind and bubbled in my chest. Yet there was no answer from this man standing in front of me. “WHAT NOW?” I yelled ending in a desperate cry that alerted the nurse who ushered the man still as a statue out of my room leaving me without an answer. I sat there staring at the covers that hid my feet thoughts filling my mind, situations of what was to come. I pulled the scratchy blue cover that smelled of over sterilized water and a flowery detergent over my head.

Boots tapped across the tile floor and I heard a person sink into the cushioned chair as the air leaked out of it. Who could be here? I thought. I stayed like this for a few minutes but could feel their stare burning holes through my covers, and curiosity of who was there ate away at me. I pulled the covers just barely off my head letting only little light in, and there sat officer Charlie Wilson. He looked concerned and worried, I rarely had seen anyone look at me like this but this man, this stranger, was looking at me like this. I blinked at him and opened my mouth and with this everything spilled out, like coffee out of a spilled mug. I just started talking telling this man of my life story. He sat there with an open mind absorbing it all like a sponge but never judging.

I told him about the time when I was 12 how he pushed me out of the car at a red light before speeding off leaving me in the rain, about the time after my moms funeral that he blamed me for her death, locking me out of the house at only eight years old. I told him about the events which led up to me being laid up in this hospital bed. I told him about my mom, how she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Long flowing hair with princess curls and green eyes the color of emeralds that shone bright with a warming love. Then I told him about how that love, that light, was put out with the death of my to be brother/sister, the light in her eyes never shone after that. Then lastly about how she died, how I was the one to find her the day of my eighth birthday party cold on the bed with a handgun in her hand. I told him all of this and more, it was an ever flowing waterfall of words that I could not stop.

I tired myself out and when I finally gained controlled and finished my life story he still sat there. He looked at me with eyes filled with concern but not sympathy he only cared even though we had just met hours ago. After telling him this I felt free, a weight lifted and burdened shared. The future still loomed over me and the prospect of being alone at only sixteen ate away at me. It wasn’t as bad because one word rang in my head bouncing off my ears, “Free.” It whispered throughout my head. I was free, no longer having to live in fear of what damage was to come next. No longer did I live in fear of what my father would do next. “Nobody knows what the future hold for them, right?” I thought. “Right,” I answered myself and let out a sigh of relief before whispering a simple “Thank you.” So soft that I was at first unsure if he had heard me but he looked at me and nodded his head. This look said it all, it was a warm and inviting look that said “Everything will be all right.” And at this moment I knew he was right, I knew that everything, and that I, was going to be okay.