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    It was about 7:30 P.M. when the phone rang in the office of the group home where I work. Thanksgiving night, 2005, and a relatively quiet night in the house. The timing of this call was a little difficult, because the 8 P.M. meds were about to be given out, and that called for my full attention. This wasn't something to be done while talking on the phone at the same time. Still...the residents didn't come into the office until after the time. Some were out, and hadn't returned. It was my wife...not unusual, as she sometimes calls during a shift. We could perhaps talk without interruption, and I could still then give the medications without having to cut her off. We should have enough time, I thought, as we began talking. I could afford to talk, because of the hour. She asked me how I was doing; I asked her how she was doing. She gave no hint what was coming in the conversation, which then rambled. I now wonder she was able to do that. She said something about not going to work tomorrow.

"Not feeling well?"
"No...it's Robby. He's dead."

My breath left me in an instant. Her voice had gone flat. His face flashed in front of me, the last time I remember seeing him, after I married his sister in 1991. And that would be the last memory I'd ever have of him...alive. I felt sick in an instant. My heart began to race uncontrollably. My stomach sank...only I wasn't on a roller coaster.

"Oh, no! What happened?"
By now I was numb...
"He was assassinated."

Not again! This was the second time that someone from my family had died like that. Murdered, in cold blood, by someone. By now, my wife was hardly up to talking. I couldn't ask her how he died. Not in the office. No sense torturing my wife like that. She told me her sister had called with the news. By now, my stomach had sunk lower still, just as it would if I were on a roller coaster, going down. Only this was due to utter shock and dismay. Now it was difficult for me to talk. I tried to reassure her, not sure how well I'd be able to. She was asking me to come home. What had begun as a good shift was rapidly going sour. Because I was the only counselor in a house that needed to be manned 24/7, I couldn't just leave.  I told my wife I'd be home as soon as I could, then hung up the phone.

There was just one thing to do. I quickly scanned the on-call list on the wall across from my desk, to find the on-call person. I dialed the pager number listed, then hung up. When 10 minutes elapsed without an answer, I rang it again. When the on-call answered, I discovered to my shock, it wasn't the on-call and I had now killed more than 15 minutes in this exercise. I began mumbling to myself..."Come on, Murph! You've got to think straight." I looked at the on-call list again, and saw my regular boss was the on-call; indisputable proof that my brain now wasn't working. I dialed her number and hung up, waiting for her page, and trying desperately to recompose myself. If I felt this badly...how was my wife feeling? It was her brother that had been killed. I needed badly to regroup; I was still due to give medications, and wondering I was going to do that without poisoning the residents. Rational thought had left me at this point. I felt sore, and my brain was squirming. Rapidly, I tried to put together a plan to send my wife home; I thought with some doing, I could barely put together the money to put her on a flight...if I didn't pay the landlord his rent that was now coming up very quickly.

The phone finally rang, and I asked my boss if she'd let me go early.