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  The words partially stuck in my throat as I tried, and failed, to get them out.

  Her eyes read my lack of answer, and she closed them, breathing deep.

  When she opened them again, her eyes were swimming with tears.

  “A mother is supposed to die before her child,” she whispered, her shaking hands coming up to cover her face. “I failed him. I failed him so badly that now I wonder if I should’ve just admitted I couldn’t make it.”

  I reached forward and caught her hand with mine. “You gave him thirty-three beautiful years.”

  Her breath hitched as she said, “I was a stubborn fool.”

  I tilted my head in confusion. “What?”

  She sniffled. “My mom and dad kicked me out when I was young,” she said. “Pregnant with Alessio. We were a big, loud and proud Italian family, and my dad the proudest of them all.” She rested her hand against her chest. “I was poor, proud, and refused to ask for help. When I found that job with your grandmother, it was the best opportunity that could’ve ever been given to me. And that’s why I’m not mad, because despite being ‘let go,’ I was still there for two years. That was enough time to get me settled and grounded. But, when we left, I was so wrapped up in making our paths on my own, that I didn’t notice how my son was suffering.”

  I swallowed hard at the look of utter desolation on her face. “I mean, I let him starve to the point where he had to beg, borrow and steal to feed himself. If I’d just admitted that I needed help…there are so many government assistance programs made for people like we used to be. But no. Just so damn stubborn.”

  I smiled then. “Don’t you think that you’re being a little too hard on yourself? I mean, Murphy is just as stubborn as you are. He doesn’t blame you.”

  “No,” she agreed. “But he should.”

  “I think, deep down, you love him so fiercely that you wanted to be the provider. And you eventually became that, even at the young age that you were at. With a child to boot. I’m not sure that even I could’ve done as well had I not had my sister and my nursing job to fall back on in case of an emergency.” I pointed out to her. “And I was much older than you were when you had Murphy.”

  Dinner was a quiet affair after that.

  Together, Guilia and I got Murphy into bed.

  He didn’t even open his eyes as we situated him.

  We stared at the man, so deathly still, taking up the majority of my king-sized bed and knew.

  Today was the last day that he would be alive.

  Today was the day that he went home.

  CHAPTER 20

  I hope life isn’t a joke, because I don’t get it.

  -Mavis to Fran

  MAVIS

  “I have to go,” Guilia whispered. “I’m going to…”

  She was going to leave, because she couldn’t bear watching her son die.

  I couldn’t blame her.

  I didn’t want to watch him die, either.

  I swallowed really hard. “Would you take Vlad to my sister’s? He…”

  He didn’t need to see this. Didn’t need to witness the breakdown that was coming.

  Something in which I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, would absolutely break me.

  And I would stay broken.

  I would learn to work around that brokenness, but I would never heal.

  I would always have that large part of my heart just…gone.

  “Yes,” Guilia croaked. “I’ll…yes. I’ll drop him off. I’ll be back.”

  We both knew she wouldn’t be back.

  She would come back eventually, yes. But not in time.

  Not in time to watch everything that happened next.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  Then Guilia was gone, and I was left sitting by Murphy’s bedside, listening to his labored breathing, and wondering if each breath would be his last.

  I was supposed to call the home health nurse.

  She was supposed to be here when I thought he was close, just to offer extra support for me if I needed it.

  But…I didn’t want her here.

  I wanted to spend the last bit of time with him.

  I wanted…

  I got up, tears rolling down my cheeks that I hadn’t realized I’d been crying and scooted into the bed beside Murphy.

  He didn’t move or react in any way to my closeness. Not like he once would have.

  Hell, even when he was most ‘mad’ at me in the very beginning, had I gotten close to him, he would’ve pulled me in closer. He would’ve hugged me tight. He would’ve yelled at me while his arms were firmly around my smaller body.

  “When I met you,” I spoke, not sure if he could hear or not because he appeared to be sleeping, but he’d been a good fake sleeper for a while now, trying to hold back the alarm that it would cause his mother and me. “You were the prettiest thing I’d ever met. You had all that golden skin and black hair. I wanted your hair so bad.” I smiled softly, and the salt of my tears dipped into my mouth. I licked my lips clean and kept speaking. “Then you came and spoke to me, and I felt like my whole entire world just opened up, allowing you inside. You might not know this but…I had a really shitty childhood. I hated my grandmother with the fire of a thousand suns. And the day that she kicked y’all out, I never spoke to her again in a cordial tone.”

  I spoke with him for what felt like hours.

  I was so lost in thought, my voice raw from speaking, that at first I didn’t hear the ringing of my phone.

  I stood up from my curl against Murphy’s body—he was still breathing—and went to the phone.

  I frowned when I saw the unfamiliar phone number.

  Placing it to my ear, I said, “Hello?”

  “This is Dr. Battle. Get Murphy here now. We have a heart.”

  I cried out in surprise and said, “I’m getting him there!”

  “You have an hour. We’ve been trying to call you for a while,” he grumbled, sounding pissed.

  I hung up, not replying.

  Then I looked at the man that was on the bed, dead weight, with nobody around to help me get him in the car.

  I already knew that it was going to be bad, but I’d be damned if I didn’t get him there.

  • • •

  I made it with a half an hour to spare.

  I was sweating, my head hurt from the strain of getting the man in my van, and I was fairly sure I’d torn something in my shoulder.

  But I got him there.

  I rolled up to the entrance doors of the ER and found the transplant team already there waiting.

  They looked pissed.

  Little did they know that there was no one there but little old me, and they were lucky that I did CrossFit. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get him there at all.

  Functional fitness at its finest.

  They had him out of the car ridiculously easily, and then he was being wheeled into the hospital with nary a word to me.

  Which I was okay with.

  The moment that he was gone, I sat down in the middle of the breezeway in front of the ER doors and stared.

  I stared, and stared, and stared until a security officer came out and asked me to move my van.

  I got up on noodle-like legs, opened my car door with my good hand, and sat inside almost on auto pilot.

  I closed my door, put the van that’d been running for who knew how long into drive and drove right out of the parking lot.

  I turned around only when I realized what I was doing and went to find a spot in the back of the lot.

  There I sat in silence, and the dark, while my husband had a heart transplant, and waited for the call.

  And the entire time I was sitting there, I wasn’t once aware that I was twirling the wedding ring Murphy had given me around my finger.

  Not even when my finger was bleeding and raw.

  • • •

  MURPHY

  I felt like I was looking out of a looking glass.

  When my eyes
opened, I wasn’t confused for once.

  I was completely comprehending of everything that was being said around me.

  “Clear!”

  I felt my entire body jolt.

  The shock went from my fingers all the way to my toes.

  “No pulse,” I heard.

  That’s when something changed.

  I went from being on the inside, to the outside.

  At least, that was what it felt like.

  I stared at the frantically working hospital workers as they poured around my body.

  There was blood everywhere.

  There were people in the room looking on in shock.

  The man that had his hands inside my chest, manually pumping my heart, wore a look of complete and utter desperation.

  “One more time.”

  Paddles came out of nowhere, the man at the doctor’s side handing them to the doctor.

  He pulled his hands out of my chest, his fingers coated slick with vibrant scarlet, and placed those paddles against my heart.

  The shock hit me again, and this time, I gasped and came to for a second time, back inside the body.

  Before I could comprehend what was going on, I heard, “We have no pulse!”

  Then…nothing.

  At least, not until I stared out at the water.

  There was so much of it.

  And I was walking on it.

  I looked down at my bare feet and saw that, though I had a ripple where my feet were pressing against it, I was still suspended as if it was solid.

  And the sense of profound peace stole over me.

  I was…home.

  I looked over the grassy hills and sunshine for miles and was surprised to see that I wasn’t alone.

  “Jasper?”

  Jasper looked up, a grin on his face. “I never thought it’d be so peaceful.”

  Peaceful was an understatement.

  Gorgeous.

  Breathtaking.

  So beautiful that it hurt to look at it.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I guess the same thing as you.”

  • • •

  MAVIS

  I got the call to come to the waiting room on the third floor six hours and fifteen minutes later.

  At receiving that call, and the lack of ‘he made it,’ I texted my sister and asked her to meet me at the hospital before turning my phone off and heading for the place where I was told to wait.

  I’d just arrived at the location specified when I saw it.

  The doctor came out of the room at the end of the hall, and I stared at him, trying to gauge whether he was there to deliver me bad news.

  He looked…blank.

  As in, he was trying very, very hard to hide his emotions.

  I knew that I wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

  “There was a lot of damage,” he said, face weary and broken.

  CHAPTER 21

  Just wing it. Life, eyeliner, everything.

  -Facts of life

  MAVIS

  “He was dead on the table the moment that I opened his chest…had to be revived eight times…given up…heart didn’t want to work…”

  I didn’t want to hear the rest of the words.

  In fact, I’d all but shut down and collapsed against the wall while he explained everything that went wrong.

  I was so wrapped up in the utter and complete grief—in the knowledge that I wouldn’t see Murphy again—that at first I didn’t hear Dr. Battle’s words.

  “He’s alive.”

  My eyes blinked open, and I stared warily at him as if he’d just spoken in a foreign language.

  “What?” I croaked.

  Dr. Battle smiled warily then. “He’s alive.”

  I never thought to hear those words.

  In fact, I was so in awe of what those words had evoked in me, that at first I didn’t notice the other words he was speaking before he said, “There’s still a high chance he won’t make it. He was in way worse shape than we thought he would be.”

  I cleared my throat. “Today…tonight. I think he’d given up. I think today was the day that he was calling his last. He wouldn’t have woken up this morning.”

  Dr. Battle nodded. “I could tell when I told him that he wouldn’t make it much longer that he was defeated. I’m glad that we could get it today. Despite where the heart came from.”

  With that last comment, he then told me what I could expect over the next few days, not giving me a chance to question him.

  “He’ll be in the ICU for the next week or so. We’re going to keep him sedated.” He continued to talk, telling me when I could and couldn’t visit. What I was allowed to do. When I was allowed to do it. And ultimately ending on, “But don’t get your hopes up, darlin’. He has to want to live first.”

  Then he left, leaving me without a single doubt in my mind that it was a good thing Dr. Battle was on Murphy’s side. Because I had a feeling Murphy wouldn’t dare die after Dr. Battle had put that much work into him.

  The next few minutes were spent with me trying to compose myself.

  When I realized that Murphy had made it through surgery and died so many times that he shouldn’t be alive, and lived anyway…well, let’s just say that I had a feeling that he wouldn’t leave me again. He’d fight hard.

  I walked down to the lobby and took the very first breath that I’d taken in a very long time. One that felt like it reached my soul.

  Even the chaotic nature of the ER didn’t dim my happiness.

  There were people milling about everywhere. Uniformed cops. Plainclothes. Hell, when I glanced outside, I could see reporters out there.

  What was going on?

  I passed by a couple of very upset looking police officers and moved to where I’d told my sister to wait for me.

  I found her standing there, Vlad asleep in her arms, looking forlorn.

  I frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  I wiped the happy tears from my eyes as I looked at the woman that I not only counted as my sister, but my best friend.

  “Don’t you know?” she asked, looking warily behind us.

  She was staring at Taos.

  Taos looked…bad.

  Really bad.

  Like, he looked like his guts had just been ripped straight out of his stomach.

  “What?” I asked, all of a sudden understanding that there was something more going on than my happiness at my husband getting a heart.

  A dawning sense of horror started to rocket through me.

  I wasn’t liking what I was adding up.

  “The person who died. The one that you got the heart from. It was Jasper.”

  • • •

  I read the post on social media and felt my stomach dip further and further.

  With each word I read, the farther my heart would fall once more.

  At 12:54 AM, a local police officer was offering crowd support and control, as well as protection for country music star Bayne Green.

  A stalker of Mr. Green proceeded to come into the arena where the officer, Jasper Madden, and Bayne Green were located and attempted to burn down the building with them inside.

  Firefighters were able to rescue both Bayne Green and Officer Jasper Madden from the structure, but Officer Madden later succumbed to his injuries.

  Bayne Green is in critical condition in a burn ward in Dallas after being life-flighted there after being seen at a local hospital.

  Officer Jasper Madden was with the Paris Police Department for three years. He was an exemplary member of our team, and he will be deeply missed.

  At this time, we have no further information to release. When we do, we’ll be updating this page.

  Please keep Officer Madden’s family and friends in your thoughts and prayers.

  Chief Jenkins.

  The sobs were back.

  That ache that was an ever-present feeling in my chest was once again firmly lodged into place.

&n
bsp; And my eyes were once again swollen.

  The chair creaked beside me, and I looked over with my watery eyes to find Madden sitting there.

  He looked…broken.

  I sobbed harder. “I’m so sorry.”

  He leaned back in his chair, then reached for me.

  I had no other choice but to bury my face into the chest of the man that’d just lost his son. The same son that had allowed me to get Murphy back.

  Yes. Broken was a normal feeling for me, I guessed.

  CHAPTER 22

  Hakuna Masquata.

  It means nice booty.

  -Text from Murphy to Mavis

  MURPHY

  Everything hurt.

  From the tips of my toes, to the skin of my teeth.

  When I opened my eyes, the last thing I expected to see was my wife.

  I don’t know why I expected to once again be in that hovering state, but I had.

  To find myself in a bed, with wires all around me, and my wife on the bed asleep with Vlad in her arms at my side, was a little bit…saddening.

  I didn’t know why, though.

  I just had a feeling that I was missing something. That I’d left a very perfect place to come back here. And it was a little sad that I wouldn’t get to go back for a while.

  But I didn’t stay sad for long.

  Because then my wife woke up.

  When she saw me looking at her, her entire face lit up like she hadn’t quite expected to see me awake yet.

  “You’re awake!” she cried out.

  She did it so loudly that Vlad woke with an angry cry.

  “I don’t want to be.”

  Vlad, following the sound of my voice, turned to survey me.

  His eyes lit with excitement, and that sadness of leaving that wonderful place that I’d just been ripped away from dimmed a little bit.

  He reached for me, and Mavis stopped his angry leap.

  “No, baby. Not today. Your friend is hurt,” Mavis cooed.

  Vlad wasn’t having any of it.

  I reached out a hand, one that had wires and tubes hanging off of it, and grinned when Vlad laid his entire face in it.