THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series (81 page)

“A month, if I’m lucky. More if we do chemo.”

“How much more?”

“A couple of months, maybe.”

“It’s really that bad?”

“It had already spread by the time they found it. It’s in my bones, my liver, my stomach. Pretty soon I’m not going to be able to speak because of the one in my brain. Then I’ll never be able to argue with your father over the things he wants to do.”

She was right. I knew she was right, yet I couldn’t make myself wrap my mind around what she wanted.

“If I talked to him—?”

“He’s convinced himself that what he’s doing is right. But it’s my life. Shouldn’t I have a right to choose how I live my final days?”

“Of course. But, Momma, wouldn’t you want to spend your final days with us?”

“I have. I’ve spoken to each of you and said what I needed to say. I’ve said goodbye to everyone, and I think they’ve all said goodbye to me, except maybe your father. And he’s never going to say goodbye.”

She was right about that, too. He wouldn’t. I didn’t want to.

“Please, Sean. I know this is terribly unfair and that I shouldn’t do this. But it’s what I want. Do you understand?”

“Of course.”

She took my hands and held them between hers. “I love you so much. I knew you would do this if I asked.”

“I just…”

I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to make this about me. It was about her, about her right to choose. I was just the one who was going to have to live with it.

She held my hands for a long time, and we stared into each other’s eyes. I liked to think that we communicated a great deal in those final moments. Maybe we did. Maybe not.

With a deep breath, I turned to the IV machine and tried to open the little door that covered the programming buttons. It wouldn’t open. I worked at it and played with it, but it wouldn’t open. They’d put a lock on it to keep people from doing exactly what I was about to do.

I could pick the lock, but I wasn’t sure it would do any good. There was likely some sort of code I’d have to input.

I searched the drawers under the medical cart that held all the supplies they could possibly need to treat her. There were syringes in one of the drawers. I took one out and clumsily used the ports on the IV lines to draw out a large amount of morphine from the bag hanging above the machine that couldn’t be tampered with.

They didn’t think of everything.

I injected the medication into my mother’s arm, but as I did, I noticed the writing on the IV bag.

Saline.

The morphine must be inside the machine.

“Momma…”

“Please, Sean. I don’t want to keep living with this pain.”

“But the medicine is locked up. I can’t get into it.”

“Is there something else?”

There wasn’t. They hadn’t left any potentially fatal medications in the room. There were no scalpels, no ropes or belts. There was nothing. Nothing except the pillows under her head.

She saw me looking at them and understood the direction of my thoughts. She reached behind her and tried to tug one of the pillows free, but she wasn’t strong enough. My beautiful, jolly, angelic mother wasn’t strong enough to simply pull a pillow out from under her head.

I gently lifted her head, as she must have done for me when I was a baby, and tugged the pillow free. Then I lay her back on the remaining pillow, straightening her hair as it flowed around her face.

“It’s okay, Sean,” she said softly. “This is what I want.”

“I know, Momma.”

I kept hoping they’d come to check on her, that something the nurses did or said would change her mind. I hoped they would find me suffocating my mom, and they would call security, drag me out of there, and put me in jail. I hoped someone would come to their senses and realize this was not what was supposed to be happening in here. But no one came, even when instinct caused her to kick her legs, even when she clawed my arm with her fingernails.

No one came as she grew still, as she stopped breathing and the life slowly left her body, as I continued to hold the pillow over her face for impossibly long minutes, waiting to be sure she was gone. I didn’t want to have to put her through this a second time.

And then I collapsed, my arms shaking from the effort, falling onto the mattress beside her. I was breathing hard, like I’d just run a marathon, not sure where that was coming from. Then I moved the pillow aside and saw the blood trickling from her broken nose, the surprise and shock in her eyes. I tossed the pillow onto the floor and gathered her up into my arms, sobbing like I was five years old again.

“Momma…momma…momma!”

I didn’t even remember the nurses coming in; I didn’t remember when Pops got there. All I remember is waiting for the police arrive to take me away for killing my own mother.

But they never did.

~ END ~

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