Writers Tricks of the Trade Volume 5, Issue 6 | Page 9

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Life Stories (CONT’D)
Ten minutes. So many other events in our lives had been governed by ten minutes, and now there were
only ten minutes left to know if he would live or die. My heart pounded in my ears, my breath was short. I
have never been so afraid in my life, not even when I was found guilty of ordering my father’s murder.
Was it a higher power? I’ll never know, but a miracle happened. After he was clinically dead for forty-three
minutes, Rob came back to life, two minutes short of the ten he’d been given. That simply doesn’t happen
very often, if at all. The doctors said they’d never had a case like his. This year Rob was named Nurse of the
Year - New York. What if we hadn’t had those ten minutes?
Time passed. While my daughters were growing up I knew I couldn’t subject them to the media circus,
taunts, hate mail and actions I’d endured, so I remained silent. My daughters are adults now, and after
twenty-seven years of silence it’s time to tell my story as it happened—mine and Rob’s, because they have
been so intertwined from the day I met him, my story is his story and his is mine.
As you read, you may think it is dramatized or even made up in certain places. So please remember,
everything in this memoir is backed with documentation. Nothing has been made up.

Cheryl and Rob Cuccio

WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE

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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2015