Free Drt by Eric Thomas Page B

number.” The she left too. I sat alone again but this time at the table that was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel.
    I sat dazed. I had never felt so abandoned.

11
    Well that didn't work at all. The Metro train wobbled side to side with its high speed. The lights in the tunnel screamed and streaked though the windows. The speakers bubbled with announcements of the next station. I didn’t really register any of it.  
    I sat on the bench seat utterly defeated. The dangling rope from the helicopter that would pull me to safety turned out to not be strong enough to support my weight. I was alone, the meeting and this solitary ride home confirmed it.
    I had looked for hope and only found empty chairs and the retreating backs of people whom I had turned to for help. ‘Be Well’ had done nothing to release me from my prison. The train felt like a conveyor belt, destined for the metal teethed gears.  
    The train rushed forward underground. Then, it was outside. The sun was still burning in the sky, and the world beneath was hot as murder.  
    There would be no relief. There was no hope. No light at the end of the tunnel. No prayer that the end of this torture was in sight. The doors around had closed. Buried alive and I had just come to terms with the uselessness of beating on the coffin.
    I was tired of feeling this way, about the ghost, about my entire life, and I reached out for help. The world had offered its full throated rejection in return. Not the theoretical rejection that had been as constant as my shadow. This was the real stuff. I reached out for help and the answer was no. The fact that this had happened in a group of people only reinforced that the rejection was personal.  
    The train squealed to a stop at the Vienna station and I sat motionless. The Metro official shook my shoulder to break the trance. “End of the line, sir.”  
    I gathered my feet beneath me and sauntered out of the car. The rays of the sun attacked the bare skin at the top of my head. I felt my skin roasting, drying and peeling in the radioactive breeze. I stepped off the train and walked toward the concrete steps that would carry me to the parking below. I fished the fold of paper from my pocket and thumbed it open. The name ‘Sylvia Barrio’ was scrawled with a series of numbers beneath it. I bunched the paper into a ball and bent my elbow to toss it in the trash.
    I stood on the platform a moment, with my arm crooked like a child making a shadow swan on the wall. I was frozen with indecision. I had faced my fears but the rejection I received ate at me inside like an aggressive form of cancer. Should I stick my neck out again, only to risk further injury? You hide inside yourself as a form of protection. To protect yourself from precisely what happened at ‘Be Well’. If you have information about me, you can hurt me. Did I really want to expose myself to that again? I put my hand and the paper in my pocket. I decided to hang onto it. It was the only hope I had left, and it felt a little early to kick out the stool.  
    I twirled the wheel out of the parking garage and toward I-66 West. I got on the on-ramp and sat. The line of cars ahead of me sat stubbornly attempting to join the larger traffic that would take me in the direction of home.  
    Of course I thought about suicide back then. It would be a stretch to suggest that I ever stopped thinking about suicide. But only occasionally I would enter the planning stages. That was for the especially bad days. Today was one of those days.  
    The cars inched down I-66 before finally starting to loosen. I hurdled the car toward home, found the street and within two turns was there. The neighborhood buzzed with Sunday afternoon activity. There were children playing in yards. Fathers gathered in garages away from their wives to compare stories of their virile past. Families congregated in back yards where the smoke from grills lifted lazy into the sky.  
    The summer air