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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.
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.
“Hey, bud,” I said softly.
Vlad cooed, not lifting his face.
“What happened?” I asked after a while, lifting my face to find Mavis staring at me with tears streaming down her cheeks.
Mavis swallowed hard.
“You got your heart,” she answered softly.
I frowned. “I did?”
I looked around the hospital, only then realizing that my chest hurt like a motherfucker, and I didn’t feel like I was dying any longer.
That memory of the night, what felt so long ago now, that I knew I was about to die, rolled over me.
I couldn’t lift my face out of the pillow. My arms felt like lead. And I couldn’t even make out the sound of Mavis’s voice.
“How?” I rasped.
I felt like I was left out of the loop.
“A heart became available,” Mavis choked on the world ‘available,’ causing me to frown. “I got you to the hospital. Dragged you out of my front door actually. You might have some scraping and bruising from that on your back because you’re a big dude, and I had no help at all. Got you to the hospital on the floor of my van that, might I add, I rammed into the stone steps at the front of my place and needs body work. They did the heart transplant. You survived.”
