Quitting

Light pierced the cold darkness when the door opened and my husband's face looked down upon me. Unshaven, with haggard eyes, I almost didn't recognize him. I hadn't seen him in this state since he had returned from Iraq. I screamed for attention but I could not utter a sound. His hand passed by me, grabbed a beer, and doomed me to the darkness once again. I remember almost nothing but sudden pain, my daughter's shrill scream, and then blackness.

Time unknown passed and the door opened again. His hand, the one I've held since our first date lifted me onto the kitchen table. I felt small in the expanse of the house we had built together. Dottie's bronzed baby shoes, my vacuum-sealed wedding gown, and my wedding ring sat on the table surrounded by a dozen empty beer cans.

'Derek, what is going on? You need to call your sponsor," I thought but couldn't speak.

"I can't let this happen. Not for him. Anyone but him," Derek screamed and tossed a half-full beer can against the stove, "This is so messed up. I don't care if he's important, a senator."

A bullhorn squawked from outside the house,

"Derek Peters. This is the police. Come out with your hands up or we are coming in."

"Merrie, I can't do it. I'm sorry. I know you always say forgive and forget but this is too much," Derek said in his combat voice, "Not after what he did to you and Dottie."

My sweet husband, the love of my life, lifted me and held me close to his chest. Dropping to the floor his tears splashed on me as he sobbed.

"I can't baby. Just can't let them do this. I had to bring you home," as an explosion rocked the kitchen door and six armed police in SWAT gear rushed across the room. Derek was Tased into submission and the police pried me from my husband's loving hands.

*

Sirens filled the air as I was rushed to the hospital in a patrol car.

"We have her sir. I think we can get there in time," said an officer into a radio mike.

In a blur of blue lights, the patrol car stopped at the hospital's emergency room entrance. A team of Doctors and Nurses hoisted me onto a gurney and rushed me to an operating room. My confusion was diminished when the man on the surgical table turned his head toward me. I recognized him. The round pudgy face and bloodied lips had leaned over mine in my smashed driver's seat. His fetid breath reeked of alcohol.

He had spoken into his phone to someone unknown, "I think, the little girls dead. The moms still breathing," as he clutched his chest and slid to the ground.

Clarity struck. This is our senator but he is also the man who killed my daughter. He had crossed the center line and hit us head-on while driving drunk.

A masked doctor peered down at me and lifted me in his gloved hands. After a thorough inspection, he said,

"I think we are good. Let's get this heart transplant started. Stat. The senator can't last much longer without it."

Helpless, I screamed in silence at the injustice. My heart had pulsed a billion beats, loving my husband and bringing my sweet daughter into this world. Now this same heart was going to save the man who had murdered us? I am about to be misplaced into the body of a horrid man to pump his poison for him. I object.

Hours passed and the surgeon lifted me into the senator's open chest.

"This is wrong," said a nurse to the Doctor.

"We don't make the law Julie, we fix people the best we can."

"So, this idiot drives drunk, kills this young woman and her daughter. The senator suffers a heart attack and needs a transplant. Against a million to one odds, she just happens to be a match. This is wrong," Julie said.

Stitches pierced my flesh and joined me to the senators. Minutes later, warm blood flooded me and an electric paddle shocked me to life. I pulsed and pumped the lifeblood of my murderer. A monitor beeped the sound of life around the surgery like Poe’s tell-tale heart. Tainted by his darkness, evil passed through me like a poison.

“I will not do this. I will not be misplaced,” I shrieked within.

With all the willpower I could muster for my Dottie, my husband, and me. I did the one thing I could do. I quit.

The surgeons jolted me to life with their paddles and I quit again.

"We're losing him Doctor," said the nurse.

"Atropine, now," ordered the Surgeon.

Three times they revived me and three times I stopped. The last beat of my heart was a resistance of rabid revenge for the death of my six-year-old Dottie, for the pain of suffering of Derek, and for the life stolen from me. Quitting never felt so good. I laugh at the irony.

The beeping of the monitor stopped and a flat line tone filled the room.

Light pierced the cold darkness when a door opened and my daughter's angelic face looked down upon me.

"Momma!"