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She nodded her head. “I will.”
I smoothed my mom’s hair off of her face.
She would’ve hated looking so disheveled.
I leaned forward and pressed my lips to her forehead.
It was battered and bruised.
The man that hit her? His bumper had hit her on the head.
She had an imprint of his license plate on her face.
I smoothed my fingers over her closed eyelids, then swallowed hard.
“I can’t do this,” I said, shaking my head.
My father’s head jerked up in surprise.
“Someone help me,” I ordered. “She can’t be seen like this.”
There was confusion for a few seconds, then two large hands were there, helping me sit her up.
The breathing tube in her throat made it almost impossible to do, but eventually I had her hair braided and tied off with a rubber band that’d come from someone.
We laid her back down, and I smiled.
“There,” I said softly, my voice thick. “Now you’re beautiful and perfect.”
I felt a tear slip down my cheek, and it landed on her face, sliding down her neck.
I closed my eyes, then took a step back.
“I love you, Momma,” I whispered. “The first time that you told me that, was a day I can’t remember. But I’ll never forget today. I’ll never forget the last time that I told you.”
I stepped back even farther, then gestured for the two women, both in scrub hats, standing there ready to push the gurney to the operating room. “We’re ready now.”
So that was how we ended our day. May Nineteenth.
The day that I would remember forever.
My dad and I walked, hand in hand, down the length of the hallway behind my mother’s stretcher that was being pushed by the two women.
A woman that I’d requested to take care of my mom, even though she wasn’t usually one that worked in surgery.
The woman with a pink heart that said ‘yes.’
The length of the hallway was lined with officers.
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.
