Self Repair

Yeah, me too, I love it that the company has its own gym and we can pop in like this before we go home. We’re lucky. But even with all the hours that I spend working out here, I can’t get this weight off. I’ve still got the same butt and thighs. … No, come on, not “me too,” you look great … Thanks, but I want to lose 20 pounds, to get back to where I was when I was young, and no matter what I do … I know, but still … And all the other women our age around here, they’ve had “some work done,” too, huh? You know, the facelifts, the Botox … Oh, come on, you don’t need it, but I do, even though I’m not sure it would help …

Because with me, it’s different, with what happened to my face. … Well, this side is paralyzed … That’s nice, but come on, everybody notices … Really? You mean that? … That’s great… Of course, I still notice every time I look in the mirror, even after all these years… I thought everybody would, but, hey, great … No, not a disease, I know what you’re thinking of, Bell’s Palsy, where half your face gets paralyzed … That’s not what happened to me … You don’t know? I thought everybody knew! You’ve worked here, what, two years now? … Wow, I thought someone would’ve told you. I guess people don’t talk about it as much anymore.

It was ten years ago. Almost eleven years, now. I had my own software company. My brother was working as an aerospace engineer when I was in high school and he told me to get a college degree in computer science. It was hard. Harder than I thought. That was before a lot of people were doing it. But I did it.

Then I worked at a small company for a year. It was going nowhere, but I met my husband there – you’ve seen him, he comes to pick me up at work sometimes. We got married and started our own company.

I was doing the R&D. We were looking for what they used to call the “killer app” – you know, something like VisiCalc. Software that could change the way people worked, something everybody would need to do their job. We were working on a bunch of things, programs that everybody uses today, computerized troubleshooting and self-repair. We were really close to finishing a self-repair program. That was the goal, a product like that. They’re common today. But not back then.

Meanwhile, we were doing consulting for about a dozen clients. My husband was running that part of the business. He was installing their computer systems. Freight companies, small newspapers and magazines, a lot of companies with a hundred or so employees that needed to get their accounting systems off the ledger books and onto computers. We were growing twenty percent, thirty percent a year. We were making serious money. Things were great.

I had two assistants, two gals, interns from the college where I’d studied. We were working late one night, we were all getting tired, so I told them to go home. We had an office out in the suburbs. They didn’t want to leave me alone. But it was a low-crime area, everybody always said it was the safest city west of the Mississippi – FBI statistics – so I wasn’t worried. I didn’t lock the door when the other girls left.

About ten minutes later, this guy came in. I knew right away. A vibe. They say a chill goes up your spine, but I’d never felt that until then. It’s true. A chill does go up your spine.

“We’re closed,” I said.

“I don’t care if you’re closed,” he said. “I’m here to kill you.”

And he came toward me and I knew if I didn’t get away I’d be dead. So I tried to run around my desk to the sliding glass door to get out on the balcony and jump over the side. Fourth floor. That’s how scared I was. It was worth a chance. But I didn’t make it.

He hit me on the side of the head while I was trying to get to the balcony. Maybe with his fist, maybe he had a club or something. Then he grabbed me by my hair, from behind, and he cut my throat. Here, see? Then he must’ve hit me again, because that’s all I remember.

Then he raped me. Oh gee, you’re turning white. No, no, no, it’s OK, I don’t remember that part. They told me that later. They told me he took off my pants and he raped me. They think he got turned on by doing violent stuff. Or that what he wanted was sex with dead people. …. No, I didn’t even know it happened. I have no memory of it, none at all. And it was so long ago. Don’t cry.

My husband was out of town, he called home, called the office. After two hours, it was getting late, he couldn’t find me, so he called my brother, and my brother went to the office and found me there. The ambulance came. I had lost almost all my blood. As soon as they got me to the hospital, I flatlined. No pulse. No nothing. For four minutes. Gone. They thought I was dead. They were doing chest compressions and they got a pulse again.

I was in a coma for two months. They induced the coma so I could heal. After that, it took me, oh, something like three months to learn to walk again, and six months to learn to talk again. It was slow progress. It was a year or more before I got back to normal again. Well, I never got back to normal completely. Never got back like before. This side of my face is still paralyzed. But after a year, I could do most stuff.

We lost everything. The company, the house. My husband had to take care of me full time. Even with insurance, and insurance was better in those days, there were extra things I needed that weren’t covered. But I got better. Almost all better. That’s the important thing. Right?

No, they never caught him. Everybody asks that. The detectives worked really hard on the case. They had me look at thousands – maybe tens of thousands – of mug shots over the years. They thought that he’d get arrested eventually for beating up some woman somewhere and his mug shot would make its way into the books. But no, I never saw anyone.

The four minutes? That’s funny, nobody asks about that. Everybody asks if they caught the guy; nobody asks about the four minutes. I don’t know; I don’t remember. But here’s what they told me: When they brought me back to life, I started sobbing and crying, and they thought it was because I was in pain, but I guess not, I guess it was something else. Because they told me I said:

“Why did you bring me back? It was good there! It was BEAUTIFUL there!”

… Yeah, that is something to think about, isn’t it? But I swear I don’t remember. I wish I did.
Uh huh, it was great that my husband took care of me. I have a great husband. He always said it didn’t bother him, what happened to me. But we had money then. I wonder if he hired a private detective, found the guy and had him killed. The first few years, I was bitter, so angry that it happened to me, that I lost so much. And my husband was always really Zen about it. A little too Zen, sometimes, if you ask me.

The statute of limitations ran out a long time ago. One of the detectives made a joke about it. He said: “Maybe we can pop the statute by saying he killed you. There’s no statute on murder. And you were dead.” … Yeah, quite a sense of humor. I guess you’d need one, dealing with cases like mine all day. Otherwise you’d go insane, right?

… No, we couldn’t start another company, we fell behind in the technology. We couldn’t put in the hours. And by then we knew that even if we’d finished our self-repair program or made some other killer app, Microsoft would’ve reverse-engineered it, then put it in Windows and driven us out of business. That happened to some people I went to school with who started their own company the same time I did. Ruined them. They called me and told me all about it. … Hah, right, that’s exactly what I said, too. After what I’d been through, I heard that story and I said to myself: Big deal.

You just do the treadmill? And that works, that keeps you trim like that? We’re about the same age, and you look so much younger. So you don’t do the other machines, that chair you bend over in? Have you tried that? That’s supposed to tone up the butt and the abs. I’ve tried. Half an hour, forty-five minutes. Nothing. … Yeah, I know it’d be worse if I didn’t work out. But still, I’d like to see some results. I’d like to get my body back looking it did when I was young. … I know, we all do, everybody does. But I want to really, really badly. I really want to get back to the way I was when I was young. That’s why I work out so much. It’s so important to me. You understand.