"Golden Texas Tea" (pg 17)

Right then and there, Walter knew that his number was up, possibly for good. A feeling of doom, accentuated with panic, soon began to engulf him as the real possibility of being pummeled by multiple in-laws, was starting to become very real.

"Azalea! What a pleasant surprise it is to hear your voice!"

"Stop, just stop. Enough with the fake superlatives already. Please, just stop talking in gibberish and answer this one question truthfully, okay?"

Mostly silence and heavy breathing answered her in return. Briefly putting the phone down, she squeezed her eyes for a good thirty seconds in a futile attempt at regaining her composure before continuing with the conversation.

"Are you still there? Better make it easy on yourself and answer me!"

After another minute of heavy breathing, she heard a loud click, which confirmed her worst suspicions about Walter. Staring at the phone in utter disbelief as her previously rock solid marriage crumbled to dust, Azalea collapsed to the concrete extremely hard. Immediately sitting upright, she then painfully wiggled her way to the balcony fence, stuck her extremities between the gaps, and lost it.

Sobbing quite heavily while slowly rocking back and forth, not too many people paid much attention to her. Most figured that she was some kind of drunken loser, with the crying and rocking. A couple of people did stop to see if she was okay, to which the reply was, "No, I'm not. But thanks for your concern."

Twenty-five minutes later, an emotionally spent Azalea ceased her rocking to and fro, and instead starting banging her head against the rail. Every couple of minutes she would stop, stretch her arms to get the blood flowing, before continuing with the head banging.

After about twenty minutes of this self-infliction of pain, Azalea decided to stop. Not only was this act of self punishment wrong (since the root cause wasn't her fault to being with), but she was in the major throes of a splitting headache. Resting for a moment, she felt that a short walk would help cleanse the mind, ease the headache and focus her concentration on what her next move with Walter should be.

Standing up, Azalea became suddenly became quite wobbly. Taking hold of the guardrail, she slowly made her way back to her room. Grabbing some essentials, she locked the door and took her time walking to the car, in order to get some functionality in her wobbly legs.