Patricia couldn't imagine it getting much worse than this.
In the space of two years, she was in a car wreck, was forced from her apartment by a threatening neighbor, and her fiancée, the father of her two young children, died.
And then on Sept. 15, 2006 at about 2:30 a.m., fire struck her Weymouth apartment.
A burning cigarette started the blaze in her neighbor's apartment, then spread through the building. When the smoke hit Patricia, all she could do was frantically gather her children, 4 and 7, and try to wake the neighbors.
She watched from the street as firefighters doused the fire, which ruined most of her family's belongings and left her apartment in unlivable condition.
``I thought it was just a very bad nightmare that I was having,'' she said. ``It didn't feel real.''
Patricia made do in a smaller apartment while waiting for a subsidized place to open up. She plans on moving into a Section 8 apartment soon. That is, if she can get there.
She crosses her fingers every time she gets behind the wheel of her rickety 1994 Chrysler. She never knows if it will get her kids to school, church and mental health counseling.
``My car is on its last leg,'' she said. ``When my car goes, my son cannot go to school because there's no busing for him and we have no public transportation near where we'll be moving to ... That's all I'm really concerned about, getting them where they have to go.''
Patricia struggles to talk about two other particularly traumatic events of her life, offering only spotty details. She said she was forced to flee an apartment after a neighbor victimized her children, and the father of her children died from ``a very bad disease'' that is ``uncontrollable for some people.''
Tears flow and her voice cracks when she broaches either subject.
Justine Jarosz, a counselor at Bayview Quincy who works with Patricia, said circumstances have really tested her patient's ability to hold it all together.
``It's a lot of trauma on top of trauma,'' Jarosz said.
Everything is on hold while Patricia deals with the aftermath of the fire. She figures she's $5,000 in debt at this point, and worries constantly about her credit.
She suffers from anxiety, panic attacks and has endometriosis, a condition that causes abnormal tissue growth and causes her constant pain.
On disability and food stamps, she said the $135 she gets a month is barely enough for a week's worth of food for her children.
``My son has to bring his lunch and a snack every day and my daughter brings a snack,'' Patricia said. ``They do not go without. I go without, because that's a mother's job.''
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