The Square Room

THE SQUARE ROOM

              Nia Cantu was a beautiful vibrant teenager with talent and ambition. She was an honor student, played on the volleyball team, played the trumpet in the marching band, ran track, and was on the dance squad. She even was popular at her high school amongst all the other students. But that was just her life outside of her home. Home life for Nia was even better. Her parents were loving and supported her in all her endeavors. They had careers that paid them well, her mother Alaina being a UI/UX designer and her father Salvo, working as a lead project manager for a tech company. They even adored her high school sweetheart, Cameron Nelson. He was the only guy her father didn’t run off and her father ran them off regularly.  See, Nia was gorgeous. She was the epitome of natural beauty and great genes. She had the skin of rich caramel, thick black, springy coils of locks on her head that kissed the top of her shoulders, and if you took and stretched one of the coils, they would almost touch her lower back. She had perfect almond shaped eyes of amber and her curvy athletic body made all the high school boys wishing they could be as lucky as Cameron to be able to date her. It was her genuine smile of perfectly aligned white teeth that was the highlight of her beauty. She looked just like her father who immigrated to the US when he was only a boy from Panama. He met Nia’s mother at college who is of African-Guyanese heritage. The relationship between them was rough living in a society that wasn’t very open to interracial dating. They also came from different religious paths that made it extremely difficult for their families to communicate with each other. After they got married, they moved to Pasadena, CA and from there they raised their one and only child Nia. The Cantu’s tried having more kids but Alaina’s endometriosis forced her to have a hysterectomy after 3 miscarriages. Nia was only 6 at the time. So, the three of them completed their family and focused solely on making sure Nia would have the best life ever. 

              Cameron Nelson honked the horn of his 2005 Grand Am. He was waiting for Nia to come out of the house so they could head to school. It was the last 6 weeks of school before summer break, and it was also the month of the Junior Spring Ball. Him and Nia had already picked their matching formal attire out and after school they were going to go find some accessories. He also wanted to try on his tux one more time. He loved how Nia looked at him when he dressed up. She said he reminded her of the actor Michael B. Jordan on the cover of GQ magazine. Boy did that boost his confidence. Nia ran out of the house dressed in their school’s blue and gold tracksuit and Cameron got out to open the door for her. He was such a gentleman and very attentive. Nia adored his chivalry. “Good morning baby.” said Cameron while he guided her in the passenger seat.  Nia smiled and said, “Good morning my Cam Cam.” He loved it when she called him that. He hopped back in the driver seat and off to school they went.

              It was a typical Friday at Winfield High School. The basketball players were tossing balled up paper into the trash can in the halls showing off their jump shot skills. The drama club students were talking to their friends about their latest auditions for the spring play with deep animated gestures, the science geeks dragging their latest inventions through crowds of students to the science lab, and the rest of the student body joined their desired cliques discussing the latest gossip and what party or event was going on the upcoming weekend. Farrah Dean, Nia’s best female friend, walked up with Cairo Nelson, Cameron’s older brother who was a Senior.

              “Hey Chicka!” Farrah said to Nia while giving her a hug. Farrah was dressed in a long denim dress with tan wedges, matching tan shoulder bag, complete with a denim phone case. Farrah was always stylish and made most of her outfits. It is why her clothes always fit her perfectly just as the dress she was wearing today neatly hugged every curve of her petite figure. Her hair was also neatly styled in a Paige boy cut with flame red highlights. Cameron dodged his older brother’s attempt to pick him up and run with him down the hallway like he tried to do every morning. Cairo was huge for his age. He was 6’4 and 220 pounds of muscle, he had big hands, and feet. All he did was work out, play sports, and work out again. He also played defense on the varsity football team. He was good at it too. He already had scouts looking at him from the NFL. He was that good. Nia and Farrah burst into laughter as the two brothers ran around crowds of cliques and annoyed faculty trying to get the halls under control before the first bell. Cairo finally caught his brother and tackled him down to the ground pining him. “Why did you leave this morning Cam? I had to ride the school bus man!” Cameron was laughing so hard he barely could get the words “get off me asshole” as his big brother tickled and punched him. Suddenly the assistant principal, known to the student body only as Hulk, because a student simply existing pissed him off, walks up and grabs Cairo off his brother and told the boys to get their things together and stop horsing around. They quickly got their composure and politely flipped him the bird as he walked away to regulate some other fiasco happening. But Cameron was a little too slow with his flipping of the bird and Hulk saw him.

“CAMERON NELSON, I KNOW YOU DID NOT JUST FLIP ME OFF!?,” belted Hulk. Hulk stomped his burly body right up to their group and right directly in Cam’s face. He just glared at him. Cairo, Nia, and Farrah held their heads down, painfully trying to stifle their giggles. Cameron glared back at Hulk and said in the best deep southern US accent ever, “Naw Mr. Hulk I did no sucha thang.” All the students exploded in laughter as Hulk started screaming at them all to go to the office. As Hulk was about to start giving write ups a loud pop echoed through the halls. It was so loud that the ringing in Nia’s ears hadn’t subsided before another loud pop echoed. She fell to her knees and covered her ears as the slow rise of screams blended with the ringing in her ears. She hadn’t even realized that her eyes were closed until she was knocked completely backwards from her knelt postion as students trampled over her screaming at the tops of their lungs. She was able to free herself and tried to stand but another pop went off a little further away. Kapow, Kapow! Now they were getting closer. Nia fell to the floor as she was weak, in shock, and confused. She lay there on her side in the blood of her classmates staring at a man in a red ski mask, army green cargo pants, black hoodie, and black combat boots. He was holding a sawed-off shotgun, the active shooter. Nia closed her eyes. Kapow, pause, kapow, pause, kapow! The shooter walked past her and nearly slipped in the bloody mess that he caused. He was whistling. The tune was Square Room, by Cowboy Junkies. Nia heard the sirens as she was slowly going unconscious. She looked around and saw Farrah looking back at her, but her eyes weren’t focused on her. They were looking far off in the distance as she gurgled through her last breath. She heard Cameron calling out to her and his brother. “I’m here Cam Cam. I can’t see you.,” Nia whispered then slipped away.

Nia awoke in a hospital room. She felt something lodged in her throat and begin thrashing. Several nurses ran in and removed the breathing tube as the ICU physician on call was paged over the AP system. When Dr. Vaughn arrived with her parents, they were asking her a million questions. Nia, do you know what day it is? Nia, how many fingers am I holding up? Nia, are you aware of where you are?

“I, I, don’t know what d, d, day it is. What is happening?” Nia said in a raspy whisper. “My throat hurts.” Nia tried to sit up a bit in bed and felt agonizing pain in her head, and right leg. “Ugggghhaaaa!” she screamed as she tried to move her body. Dr. Vaughn told her to calm down and relax. Her parents were standing at her bedside. They asked Dr. Vaughn was it ok to tell her what was going on. “I think we should let her rest a bit. After all she has been in a coma for 4 days.,” he stated.

“Mom, Dad what is happening? Why can’t I move? Why does it hurt so bad?” said Nia. Alaina grabbed her daughter’s hand and sobbed. Salvo mumbled something in Spanish that was inaudible as he wiped away tears and walked out towards the nurse’s station. He was beyond angry. He felt defeated, guilty, and totally helpless. This was the 4^th mass school shooting since the beginning of the year. He did not care that the shooter at Winfield High School was apprehended as he was exiting the school. He didn’t care about all the lucky praises his family received because his only child survived. He was tired. It needed to be stopped. How many times was this supposed to happen until better gun laws were placed? He felt like it was always the same process of events in politics to address the issues with mass shootings only for the same thing to happen again, and again. Now he and his family were victims, his beloved daughter, left with physical and emotional trauma, other victims left with their loved one’s death.

Over the course of 5 months Nia Cantu struggled with PTSD. She lay there in her hospital bed high on pain meds with a cast covering all her right leg. She had 3 surgeries to rebuild her right kneecap that was shattered when the shotgun blast hit her right knee from the side. She had several fragments lodged in her head that were too dangerous to remove and caused her to have a mild stroke which was why she was in a coma after the incident. A week after she awoke from her coma, she learned that the shooter took the lives of 8 students and Assistant Principal Hulk. She lost her best friend Farrah Dean, her boyfriend, Cameron Nelson, his brother Cairo Nelson, and 5 other classmates whom she knew very well. Four other students were critically injured including herself. Nia sighed. She had grown use to the square room filled of hospital smells and the sounds of annoying machine monitors. Now she just zoned out in her mind of depression staring at the ceiling from her bed in her little square room. At first, she had tons of visitors from teachers to classmates, law enforcement officials, news reporters, etc. But those visits soon died down and she was left alone. He parents stopped by every evening in rotation, but she missed her boyfriend and her best friend. Cameron’s parents came to see her once but the grief of losing their only sons was too much to bear. Although they didn’t say it, she knew that they were resentful. Her parents said that the Nelsons just ignored them when they saw them at the supermarket. Knowing that the love of her life parents resented her made her survivor’s guilt feel like a huge lump lodged in her throat and her body felt heavy as a ton of bricks. She did not want to start over again. She longed for her boyfriend, the conversations and silly cackle of her best friend, and Cairo’s silly dance when he made a touchdown. She had nothing. She felt empty.

Therapy days were the worst. Nia felt ok but knowing that she may never be able play sports, dance, and dealing with her new stuttering condition just wasn’t the path she saw for herself until she met a girl in her group therapy class named Jori Phillips. Jori had been hit by a car when she was just 3 days shy of her 16^th birthday. She was instantly paralyzed from the waste down and had major head trauma. She had to learn to speak, and write, and use basic motor skills all over again. Jori had been invited to her therapy group to encourage the other patients to never give up even if you’re not getting results. She loved Jori’s acceptance of her new life and how she keeps trying to improve herself mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Jori said to Nia, “It’s a process that isn’t easy. At some point in your life and sometimes more than once, you will have to go back to square one. It is ok to have to start over. It is ok if you keep trying with no progress. Try it again at a different approach. Life is going to keep happening, good experiences and bad, but you will prevail and eventually conquer your quest. Do not under any circumstances, give up. You may need to give in from time to time, but don’t give up.” Jori wheeled herself out of the classroom and down the hall. She knew she had reached at least one person and she was right.   

Nia sat in the classroom waiting for her parents to come. She felt the tears streaming down her cheeks, wiping them away. It was the first time since the shooting that she felt like existing again. She grabbed her cellphone and dialed the first number. “Hello” a familiar voice answered. “U,uumm Mrs. Nelson? This is N, N, Nia Cantu. C, c, can we please talk?”