Old and new. Women and men. TX DPS. Gregg County Sheriff. Harrison County Sheriff. Texas Rangers. Longview Police Department. Kilgore Police Department. Bear Bottom Police Department. Uncertain Police Department. Shreveport Police Department. K-9 officers.
There was a black Malinois. A tan and brown German Shepherd. An English Cream Retriever. A hulking Rottweiler. A Bloodhound. A Beagle. And then there was the last one. My mom’s dog. The dog that, thank God, wasn’t with her when the accident happened.
A Boxer named Joe.
Joe went from sitting next to his other K-9 handler, Sean, to alert.
“Stop,” I whispered as I stepped forward and lightly touched the woman ahead of me on my side of the stretcher. “Stop for a second.”
Sean’s eyes met mine.
Sean and my mother were best friends.
Best work friends anyway. They worked opposite shifts from each other and shared a K-9, a drug dog named Joe. Joe Boxer, to be specific.
Mom and Sean had just made the switch when the accident had happened, and this was the first time that Joe was seeing my mom in over twenty-four hours. Something unheard of for them.
Joe whimpered.
I whimpered right along with him.
Dad’s hand went limp in mine as he let me go, then walked over to Joe and picked him up.
He placed him in my mother’s lap, and Joe fucking cried.
He fucking cried.
I didn’t know dogs could cry.
Joe didn’t have any tears or anything, but he whimpered. He sniffled. And he buried his face in my mother’s hand, urging her to move it. To pet him like she always did.
Yet my mother’s hand didn’t move.
Didn’t reach out and stroke that silky nose.
I sniffled, my hands shaking, then moved until I could place my mom’s hand on Joe’s forehead.
“It’s okay, Joe,” I said, petting him with my mother’s hand. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay.
Things were never going to be okay again.
I turned to Sean.
“I’ll bring him back, okay?” I said.
Sean gave one big nod, then we were off again.
More people were crying.
There were doctors and nurses interspersed within all the cops.
Some wives of the cops were there, too.
Children.
Then there were more random people, and I realized when I saw one face in particular that these were all people my mother helped save in one way or another. All there to watch her one final ride.
“Do you want to stop again?” the nurse with the pink pin asked.
“No,” I said. “Let’s go.”
My dad walked beside me like a zombie.
And when we finally got to the OR area, and the big red line that we weren’t supposed to cross, we stopped one last time.
Dad got Joe down and handed his leash to me.
Then he leaned down and spoke to my mother in hushed, whispered tones.
Then he took one step back, and walked away, leaving me alone with my mother, Joe, and the nursing team that was about to do the organ retrieval.
I looked at the first man that was standing there, a big blue lunchbox in his hand that said ‘Live Organ’ in it.
I swallowed hard. “What are you here for?”
He looked at me, his voice soft as he said, “Her heart.”
I asked the next person. And the next. And the next.
Until finally I looked down at my mother.
“Did you hear that?” My voice cracked. “You’re going to save seven lives today.”
I trailed my fingers over her hair.
“You’re not going to be there to help me get married,” I said. “You’re not going to be there to help me raise my future baby. You’re not going to be there to look at my pictures, give me a ‘yes’ or ‘definitely not’ on whether I should share it on Facebook anymore.” I swallowed hard. “How am I supposed to live without you, Mom? How can I be here and you’re not? I’ve never lived without you before.” My voice sounded like I’d smoked a thousand cigarettes a day as I said what I said next. “I’m sixteen, Mom. I didn’t get to keep you long enough.”
I touched the pin on her chest, pressing it with just one finger. “You’re my best friend. Always have been, always will be.”
With that, I backed away, and they forced Joe to go with me.
“You can take her in now.”
The nurses and doctors moved as one, the OR filling with so many people that I was scared they wouldn’t all fit.
Leaving me alone in the hallway with just Joe.
At least, I thought I was alone.
When I looked back toward where I came, one lone figure stood there in uniform.
***
I woke up from my nightmare. My memories. My plague.
That was the first day that I saw the military man.
But it wouldn’t be the last.
“We’re here,” Dax said, startling me out of my thoughts.
I blinked, then looked around at my neighborhood.
The one that I’d once shared with my family.
“Thank you,” I said, bailing out of the cruiser.
Just as I did, Derek parked my car in the driveway.
In my mother’s spot.
I tried not to hyperventilate.
I succeeded. Barely.
But only because Derek tossed my keys at me, hitting me in the face when I failed to catch them.
Derek didn’t even notice. He was already half the way to Dax’s cruiser.
I bent down and picked them up, ignoring my headache.
“No problem,” I said to nobody. “Thank you for the ride.”
With that, I walked inside, slamming the door closed behind me.
The moment I did, I smelled the familiar smell of my home.
The one that was beginning to fade the longer that my dad stayed dead.
The smell of gun oil wasn’t so prominent anymore.
Neither was the smell of my dad’s cologne or my mother’s perfume.
There was no sound of the television in the study anymore, or my mother’s humming along as she sewed on her sewing machine.
There was nothing.
Just… nothing.
Chapter 2
Give that bitch a wedding. Bitches love weddings.
-Things your sister doesn’t like to hear
Derek
Two months later
“Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?” the preacher asked.
I missed my future brother-in-law, Dax, answering because my eyes were busy being trained on a certain black-haired goddess in the third row.
The shit of it was, Avery would look at me, sneer, and then turn away.
Except I wasn’t able to stop staring.
There was something seriously wrong with me.
I couldn’t make myself pay attention.
“The rings?”
“Derek,” my sister growled.