Saturday night

I don't often "need" a drink, but I do at the moment.

The Producer is in town, and I'm waiting impatiently to get the call so I can go fulfill my desire to get partially inebriated.

I'm a rape/domestic violence survivor advocate at a local hospital. I've been with the program for months, and have not gotten called in to the ER. Until today.

I was still sleeping when I got the call shortly before noon. I asked the questions I'm supposed to ask, Male or female? Rape or DV? How old? and got my answers; female, DV, 18. I jumped out of bed, washed my face, got all of my materials and hopped into a cab, reading over my what-to-do checklist on the way. I arrived at the hospital and they directed me to her room. I took a deep breath, knocked and then opened the door.

The first thing that hit me was how young she looked. She was tiny, and didn't look a day over 13. She had a bruise on her cheek and her lip was cut. When she moved around, she winced in pain.

It was a long day at the hospital, for both of us. In the five hours I was there, I talked to at least 10 staff members, a freaked-out mother, two frustrating cops and one very frightened girl who was being told exactly what everyone else thought she should be doing. It's weird to be in a situation where you agree with what everyone around her is saying, but your job is to make sure she does what she feels is right for her, even though you desperately want her to make a different decision. At one point, she told me about his family history, and how he grew up with abuse and that's why he's the way he is and I said what happened to him is a reason, not an excuse and something changed in her face and she said yeah and then she repeated it out loud, like it hit her on some level.

Is she going to take him back? Maybe. Is he going to do it again? Probably. Was she 100 percent safe after she walked out of that hospital? No. That's the hardest thing, and something tells me, it always will be.

If I keep getting called in, my entertainment value is going to go way down.