You didn’t have any connections and were a failure and worked at a municipal hospital in emergency surgery. Which meant: overtime, modest pay, and a very good chance of having a heart attack. On that particular day there were just two shooting victims laid out on the examination tables. A white man the same age as Brown with a single bullet hole in the lungs, and a nondescript swarthy woman with multiple holes in the chest region. Both were stabilized, and then Brown had to decide, of course. One after the next. He couldn’t be both places at the same time, after all. And who does one opt for? The person who resembles oneself, or the one who, in skin color and texture, in gender and most probably in social status, is wholly and completely beneath oneself? One must necessarily be judgmental in a situation like this. But. While the dark-skinned woman died on her table, while Dr. Brown operated on the man who on aggregate resembled him. Nobody noticed Hannah, who was standing in the operating room. She tried to hold her mother’s hand. She tried to commit Dr. Brown’s face to memory. And at some point was pulled outside by her father.

Unclear is how

HANNAH

And her father got home.

How they survived that first night,

If indeed they did.

Forgotten. Along with the subsequent period, that all muddied together into a blur without a beginning or an end. Following tradition, the funeral took place quickly. A rabbi and a few congregants, the gravestone, and still it wasn’t the moment when Hannah broke down and finally cried. She had to comfort her father. They sat shiva at home for a week. A few acquaintances came over with food, then nobody came.