Prologue

"Leslie, help me! Please, help me!” Deborah yelled and slurred into her cell phone at her best friend of more than ten years.

"What's wrong Deborah?” Leslie said, trying to be calm, though she was really afraid of what had happened to Deborah. Leslie loved Deborah like a sister, but she was tired of getting these kinds of phone calls from her. It reminded her too much of her mother.

"It was Al! He raped me, and I’m on my way to the hospital!" Deborah was panicking as she drove her black Mercedes way too fast on Route 83. After a night of too much drinking, she woke up in a coat closet with her own blood dried to her legs and saturated into her blue silk dress.

On Deborah’s first wedding anniversary, just two weeks ago, her husband, Brandon, told her that he was fed up with her drinking and staying out all night; however, she didn’t go home again last night. Even worse, Brandon had no idea where she was.

"Deborah, please try and calm down, OK Sweetie!” said Leslie. “I’m going to call Karen, and we will meet you at the hospital. Which one are you going to? Deborah, listen to me, where are you going?!" Leslie, Deborah and Karen had all been best friends since middle school. They had been through many tragedies together, and now it seemed like another one was about to be added to the list.

"I’m going to Damien's hospital; I’m already downtown." Deborah pulled into the parking garage, found a secluded spot and parked her car. She pulled down the driver side visor, hardly daring to take a look at herself. Her eyes were red and swollen; her lips were puffy, and her lipstick was completely gone. Deborah wanted to cry but she held back her tears. She reached down and grabbed the silver heels that she had worn to Al’s bar the night before. As Deborah staggered into the emergency room, she saw Karen's husband, Damien, standing at the front desk. Deborah called out to him for help, and he ran to help her.

"Deborah, what in the world happened to you, and where is Brandon?" asked Damien. Despite asking the question, he could easily imagine what had happened to Deborah because Karen had told him many stories about Deborah’s drinking habit getting her into trouble in the past. Besides that, Damien was a resident doctor, at the hospital in the middle of downtown Baltimore; there wasn’t much he hadn’t seen.

Deborah asked Damien not to tell Brandon what was going on, but she knew that he would. Brandon and Damien had been best friends since college, and as much as Deborah hated to admit it, she wanted Damien to tell Brandon what happened because that meant that she didn’t have to. Deborah had faced that fact before she’d entered Damien’s hospital, not that she could have driven any longer if she wanted to with her body losing so much blood.

Deborah sat down with the help of two nurses in the wheelchair that Damien had given her. She was being rushed to the operating room for surgery to stop the bleeding.  Deborah knew that she was bleeding profusely but was not sure from where. She moved her hand to the right side of her

head attempting to stop her pounding headache, when she realized that her headache was coming from the echoing sound of her mother’s voice in her head.

"The money you make and that big house you live in don’t mean you don't need Jesus Child; you still need Him. We all do," her mother had said a million times.

Grasping the fact that she couldn’t make the voice go away, Deborah pulled her hand down from her head and saw that it was covered in blood. Admitting that she was in over her head wasn’t something that came easily for Deborah, but she knew that her mother was right. She knew that she needed some divine intervention in her life.

          Deborah loved her career, but being a young, accomplished lawyer that had never lost a case and was fighting to keep that record had successfully destroyed her life. If she wasn’t withering her liver from drinking, then she was yelling at her husband, who had been nothing but patient with her. The expectations that came with being the late Ronald Tracy's daughter were just too much pressure.

          When Karen and Leslie arrived at the hospital, they were frantic. Damien did everything he could to try to calm them down, but his efforts were unsuccessful. Damien told them that Deborah had in fact been raped, beaten with a gun and had lost a lot of blood.

          "Karen, Deborah asked me not to call Brandon, but I had to. There is no way that I can keep my job without contacting her next of kin. Also, Deborah needs surgery, and someone of sound mind needs to sign her paperwork,” said Damien. He knew how much Deborah meant to both Leslie and his wife, so he would never intentionally betray

Deborah’s trust; but Brandon was his friend. Even beyond his job duties, he felt obligated to call Brandon. Damien was expecting Brandon to show up at any minute.

          "Damien, do what you have to; if Deborah knew what was best for her we wouldn’t be here would we?" shrieked Leslie. Leslie was angry with Deborah, and she was not doing a good job of hiding it.

          Karen understood Leslie’s anger, but she also knew that Deborah was just struggling with shaking her drinking habit. Karen knew that Brandon was the most important thing to Deborah, but she just couldn’t seem to escape the stress of her father's past and the pressures of her success. Alcohol had become her only way to cope.

          Deborah knew that she was hanging onto her life by a thread, and she began to wonder if anyone had called Brandon. She hoped that Damien had called him against her expressed wishes. More than that, Deborah hoped that Brandon would be loving and sympathetic, but she felt guilty. Deborah felt guilty for even hoping that her husband would show love to her after the way she had been treating him.

          Leslie and Karen sat in the waiting area as Damien walked away to check on another patient. When Damien turned the corner, he ran right into Brandon.

          "Hey Man, thanks for calling me,” said Brandon. “Where is she? Can I see her?" Brandon had all kinds of thoughts racing through his head. He had no idea what was going on with Deborah, just that she was in the hospital. He wanted Deborah to be OK, but he was also angry, wondering what her drinking had gotten her into this time.

"You can see her, but she is pretty bruised up. She was raped and, umm, beaten with a gun.” Damien paused briefly to try and comfort Brandon as he adjusted to what he was saying.  “Brandon, she was coherent enough to drive herself to the hospital, and she walked in by herself, but we need you to sign some papers because she has lost so much blood that she needs a transfusion."

Brandon fell to his knees, weeping in a thunderous tone for his wife. He cried out to God, begging for her to be OK. Damien grabbed Brandon and tried to comfort his friend as a stream of tears rolled down his face.

When Karen and Leslie heard the loud crying, they ran from the waiting room into the hall to see what was happening. They saw Brandon crying and Damien hugging him. Karen tried to comfort Brandon, but Leslie was so angry with Deborah for hurting Brandon and destroying herself that she stormed out of the hospital.