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beside the point? I straddled his body, refusing
     to look at his face, his eyes.
    Could he not be dead? I wanted to believe there was a chance, so I clasped my hands together and began furiously pumping his
     chest. Over and over, pumping. Praying. Please, God, let me know what I’m doing. Make it a miracle. Make it work. “Come on,
     Barry, please. Live, for Christ’s sake. Help me out!” I shouted.
    Gently, as if he could still feel it, I tilted his head back, working hard to avoid the open, alarmed eyes. My hand was covered
     in blood. I wiped it on the floor. Putting my finger to his lips and nose, I tried to feel air—even a slight movement. “Please,
     Barry!” I whispered. “Please!” How long could you go without breathing?
    I sucked in the biggest breath I could with every intention of forcing it into his lungs. But as I lowered my mouth toward
     his, I stopped, unable to move closer.
    Nothing flickered in Barry’s eyes, nothing beat from his chest. I exhaled, releasing the last, strained hope. No emergency
     procedure could change the bullet hole in his forehead. No medic, no matter how well trained, no matter how high tech the
     equipment, could bring this man back to life. I searched again for the cordless phone Barry kept on the counter. I found it
     lying underneath the toppled magazines and dialed 911.
    I did not cry or stumble over the words.
    After remaining numb through two hours of intense questioning at the police station, I sat at an extra computer terminal at
     the downtown newsroom of the
Chronicle
writing with an oddly detached professionalism. As if I were watching myself at the computer, reporting a crime I hadn’t
     witnessed. As if I weren’t hearing the bullet blast over and over in my head. As if I hadn’t felt my knee slide through his
     blood.
    I sat at a U-shaped configuration of computer terminals that’s called the Rim. In the daytime, it was occupied by a gaggle
     of copy editors clarifying and correcting the grammar of the day’s events. But now, at nearly nine at night, the
Chronicle
was a lonely place with only half a dozen people scattered through the vast, open newsroom. I shivered in my jacket, separated
     by a dozen desks from a sole copy editor who wouldn’t look up from his screen.
    Barry was dead. I’d known it when I’d heard the thud, when I was still hidden behind the Italian biscuit display. The beat
     cop, a young guy who already had a seen-it-all expression, went through the motions of checking for vital signs. Medics eventually
     arrived, but they did nothing but cover the body with a sheet.
    Providence—A man at the Mazursky Market was shot to death in an apparent armed robbery shortly after 7 o’clock last night.
     Police are pursuing a man wearing a khaki parka and driving a white midsize car.
    “You sure you’re up to this?” Dorothy Sacks, the city editor who was running the Desk, appeared beside me.
    The Desk was another configuration of computer terminals, where half a dozen news editors made the final decisions on breaking
     news. At this hour on a Friday night, the Desk was empty except for Dorothy and another male editor whose name I didn’t know.
    “I’m okay.” I looked across the vast expanse of bright-blue carpeting and flickering computers. Was I okay? Raised a Catholic,
     I hadn’t gone to church for years, except for Christmas. Still, I had the urge to pray. But when you can’t pray for someone
     to recover, what can you pray for?
    “Sometimes it’s therapeutic to write about it,” Dorothy said. She was a tall, quiet woman in her late forties who was dressed
     in pleated jeans and what looked like an old, favorite sweater. Carolyn didn’t like her. There was something steely and humorless
     about her eyes, and her lower lip curled in, as if she was trying to figure something out. But her tone was genuine enough.
    I shrugged. The young beat cop had sequestered me in the back of the cruiser, even before Barry’s body was