On the morning of May 5, 1885, in lower Manhattan, a worker fell from a building’s scaffolding to the ground. A splintered bone protruded from his bloody trousers; a plaintive wail signaled his pain; and soon he was taken from the scene by horse-drawn ambulance to Bellevue Hospital. At the hospital, in the dispensary, a young surgeon named William Stewart Halsted frantically searched the shelves for a container of cocaine.

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A polar bear did him in. The biggest damned polar bear anyone had ever seen in or around Prudhoe Bay in the last twenty-five years, or so it was reported.

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If Dave had known, before he’d picked up the phone, how much trouble this one call would cause, he would’ve let it go directly to voice mail.

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The first thing I noticed as I was sitting in a squad car was that police cruisers don't have seatbelts in the back. Me, I'm used to traveling through life without a seatbelt. I'm a no-restraints kinda girl. But today my wrists were in handcuffs so tight I felt like a Christmas turkey, and I planned on bringing up the issue with my arresting officer.

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In Fort Hood housing, like all army housing, you get used to hearing through the walls. You learn your neighbors' routines: when and if they gargle and brush their teeth; how often they go to the bathroom or shower; whether they snore or cry themselves to sleep. You learn too much. And you learn to move quietly through your own small domain.

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When I imagined my funeral, this wasn't what I had in mind.

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A few days after Benny's death, Ellie and Frank Benton broke into separate people.

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It was the persistent sense of impending doom, not the nor'easter, that made Natalie flee from Cape Cod back to New Jersey in the predawn hours of Monday morning.

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The ravens were the first sign.

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The bomb aboard the number nine tram claimed 17 lives. Sixteen were passengers.

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