Free She Survived by M. William Phelps

iron smell was dried blood). Some describe it as “electric.”
    “Something I will never forget. . . .”
    After her “friend” took off, Melissa sat and asked herself: Why would you leave me alone in here?
    Melissa looked around.

    There was still blood on the walls, on the bed, on all of my stuffed animals, on the phone where I called 911. On the nightstand. Why would a person walk someone back into a chamber of horrors and basically say, “Here, you work it out by yourself.” I get that maybe they couldn’t handle the scene themselves, but, my God, couldn’t they imagine what it was doing to me?

    As she began packing, Melissa zoned out. She was able to take herself out of the situation and get the work done. If you’ve spoken to Melissa and gotten to know her even in the slightest, you’d understand how she could overcome this setback and, with her nose to the grindstone, take it on by herself.
    “I honestly don’t remember how anything got moved. I just know it somehow went to storage and I went to live with my grandmother.”
    An emotional blackout. Many violent crime victims have expressed this same sort of emotional amnesia when confronting traumatic events after the incident.
    “The thing about that apartment complex for me today, and for many years since then, is that I view it as a Brigadoon —a place where I became lost in the woods. I used to have to drive by it every day on my way to work, but as I passed, it wasn’t there, or at least I couldn’t see it. It’s like a cloud or fog that sits along the highway, and I can never see the apartments I know are in there through the haze.”
    Back on that first day Melissa was released from the hospital, she had her mother drive her straight to see a woman who had been her longtime hairdresser and friend. She’d spent the past four days in the hospital with dried blood in her hair, her jaw wired shut, the functionality of her left arm in question (she could hardly move it), and not enough energy to stand in a shower on her own and even try to wash her hair. One wish straight out of the hospital was to have someone clean her hair of all the blood. A second was just to take a hot bath.
    These were simple, everyday things in life that all of us take for granted. For the victim of a violent crime, such as the one Melissa endured, these common chores we don’t even think about become a great challenge, both physical and emotional.
    “It’s funny what you find to be your creature comforts in a situation such as this,” Melissa recalled.
    From the hairdresser’s Melissa and her mother headed to the store where Melissa once worked. She needed to shop for her new diet of baby food and soup.
    “I lived on baby food, milk shakes, and soup for ten weeks.”
    Melissa was so desperate for good food near the end of this period she actually put a Taco Bell Burrito Supreme in a blender, gave it whirl, and ate it.
    “I realized how limited my choices for eating out were. We didn’t have Steak ’n Shake in Anderson at the time. So I was pretty much limited to Dairy Queen (which, unfortunately, was seasonal) and Chinese restaurants, so I could order egg drop soup. Of course, I frustrated the hell out of my doctor when I kept asking, ‘But how am I going to brush my teeth?’ I was one of those people who never left the house without brushing my teeth. I probably brushed my teeth six times a day.”
    Even today, twenty years after her attack, Melissa still has issues eating solid foods. Every meal is a challenge.

CHAPTER 25
    AFTERMATH
    Scott Saxton was formally arrested on August 23, 1992. He faced charges of public intoxication, resisting arrest, and voyeurism. He was held while the MCSD ran his prints against the evidence it had in Melissa’s case.
    Detective Becky Buttram was in the office two days later, going through another day, waiting, watching the clock, wondering when the call with the results was going to come in.
    Her phone rang.
    “Yup,” she