She stared at the floor. It was hard to believe it had been a year since she’d been caught, chopped up, and fired. She’d barely made it through those last twelve months, days on end with no reason to get out of bed. In the early months, before she started the sculpture, she would stand by the main road near her apartment and imagine stepping into traffic. Death, a quick fix for the pain. But she was hard, and beneath the despair lay a kernel of iron that refused to quit. More than anything, the lack of purpose came close to killing her, the echoing void of a pointless existence. How could she stand another thirty years like that? She couldn’t, and here was a reason to get up tomorrow, so why the hesitation?