Chapter 9

It was a week to the day that Asher and Mia had spent their night together. They hadn’t had a chance to make love again since then, but he closed his eyes and relived it every night. Each time he kissed her he felt closer to her and he knew that she was the one he wanted to spend his life with. Marry and have children with. She had been his bright shining light during the worst storm of his life and she hadn’t faltered.

He was in his room getting ready to pick her and Travis up. They were meeting Dean at the edge of the lake. A bunch of kids from school and some of the men and women from Dean’s college would be there. They were having a bonfire to close out the end of winter and the beginning of spring.

He had just picked up his keys and was headed in to tell his mother good night when he heard his father’s raised voice. He had grown accustomed to the sound of it after he had a ‘few’ drinks. He was slurring his speech and his tone sounded shocked as Asher heard him say, “No Lily! I can’t believe you would ask me that.” Asher was curious what his mother would ask him that he would deny her. He was a worthless drunk these days as far as his son was concerned but he still wouldn’t deny his wife anything, now more than ever.

“Please Greg. The pain is too much.”

His father’s voice softened and Asher stopped outside the door and listened. “Oh baby. Oh God I’m so sorry but I can’t. I can’t do that and live with myself.”

“Even if I’m asking you too to do it. Begging you?”

“Lily, listen to yourself. You’re asking me to end your life.” Asher’s body stiffened. What the fuck was going on?

“I’m just asking you to give me a little more pain medication than usual. I’m so tired Greg and it hurts so much all the time.”

Asher knew his father was crying when he heard him say, “Baby I can’t. I just can’t!” His mother was crying too when she said, “Greg, please.”

“No!”

Asher flinched at the sound of his father raising his voice to her. He suddenly couldn’t breathe. He needed air. He ran down the stairs and almost ran right into her nurse.

“Is everything okay Mr. Fury?”

“Yeah,” he said, barely able to talk. “I’m just…I have to go.” He brushed past her and ran outside, gulping in the fresh air as soon as he hit it. Every time he thought things couldn’t get worse they did. He waited until he could breathe normally again and then he got into his mustang and went to pick up Mia and Travis. For tonight at least there was nothing he could do about what he had overheard. His father wouldn’t do it…he was sure of it. He found himself wondering as he drove, ‘Why didn’t she ask me?’ As soon as that thought ran through his head a violent shudder ripped through his body. There was no way he could do it. That’s why she didn’t ask him, because she knew.

**

Mia noticed almost as soon as she got in the car that something was wrong. Asher had smiled at her and said hello, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. That wasn’t normal. His green eyes usually sparkled when he looked at her. Travis noticed it too because they were only a few miles from the house when he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” He smiled at Mia again. She got the feeling he was trying hard to convince her he was good but something was definitely off.

Asher parked the Mustang in the small lot near the lake and they took the bag of marshmallows Mia had brought for roasting and the blankets she brought for them to sit on. They made their way down to where the party was. It was already in full swing. The college crowd had brought a keg and there was a chick passing out paper cups. Asher and Mia both passed and while Mia roasted her marshmallows Travis horsed around with Dean and some other guys. Asher laid back on the blanket and stared into the fire. Mia stopped what she was doing and laid down next to him. “Baby, is there something going on? Is your mom okay?”

He wrapped his arm around Mia and said, “She’s the same.” Then he just held her there under his chin and against his chest for a long time. She could feel the beat of his heart as her ear pressed into him. The party was going on around them and several times Dean and Travis both came by to ask Asher if he was okay. He kept insisting that he was but his friends all knew different. Unfortunately none of them knew how serious his thoughts were.

**

Asher spent as much time with his mother the following week as he possibly could, even cancelling on Mia a time or two. His friends had all tried to reach out to him and find out what was going on, but he just kept telling them all he was fine. There was no way he could tell them what he had heard his mother ask his father not even Mia. He didn’t just think about that though, he thought about the sound of her voice as she told her husband how bad the pain was and how tired she was of fighting. He couldn’t stop thinking about that and he couldn’t stop wondering if keeping her alive was the most selfish thing they could do.

He was in the middle of reading her new book to her a week later when she said, “Asher.”

He put the book down. “What’s up, Mom?”

“Baby I have to ask you a big favour.” Asher felt a pain in his chest. He knew what she wanted and he didn’t think he was any more capable of doing it than his father.

“What do you need, Mom?”

She reached her pale, skinny hand out and put it on his face. Asher leaned into it. The tears were already forming in his eyes. He was praying he was wrong and she wasn’t going to ask him. “I need to go, Asher.”

“Go where?”

“Go. You know. It’s too hard for me now, Ash. It hurts too much. This is no kind of life. I’m ready to go.”

Asher could feel the tears slowly spilling down his cheeks. “Mom, please don’t ask me to help you do that.”

“I asked your father but he’s not as strong as you…”

“Mom, I can’t.”

“Baby, please! Please help me.”

Asher was sobbing now. “I can’t Mom!”

She started to say something else when the bedroom door was shoved open. His father rushed in, smelling like booze as usual. “No! Do not listen to her! She has no idea what she’s asking. The medication has fucked her up.”

Asher was stunned at first. His dad was yelling at the top of his lungs while his mother lay there in excruciating pain, crying, asking her son to end her life. He was in shock that his own father could be such an insensitive ass. Without thinking it through any further, Asher stood and put his hand on his father’s chest and pushed him out into the hallway. He shoved him into a wall and said, “Do not yell in front of my mother.”

His dad reached out and shoved Asher back into the other wall. “She’s my wife and this is my house and I’ll fucking do as I please.” That was it for Asher. That flipped the switch. He grabbed his father by the collar of his shirt and shoved him so hard into the wall that the plaster cracked.

“You don’t get to be the master of the house any longer. You’re a drunk piece of shit and we don’t fucking need you.” He tossed him back into the wall and then he stormed away from his father and out of the house. There was only one person who could calm him down. He needed to see Mia.

**

Asher had picked up Mia and they were laying in each other’s arms in an old Barn on her father’s property. She knew something was wrong, but he hadn’t told her what. He just told her he needed her and she didn’t hesitate to meet him there. He was just holding her, not talking. She was worried about him, but if that’s what he needed, then that’s what she would give him. Probably an hour passed before he said anything and when he did it was, “Is it selfish of me to want her to go on living when she’s in so much pain?”

“It’s human.” she said. “You’re not ready to let her go. She’s your mother. That’s human.”

“So what if I’m never ready to let her go?”

Mia hated to be the voice of reason but she was sure he didn’t want her to lie to him. “At some point we all have to accept that it’s not always up to us. Maybe if you think of it that way; her pain will finally stop, it won’t be as hard for you to accept when it happens.”

He ran his hand through her soft hair and she felt his lips brush against the side of her face. “It’s not fair.” he said. “None of it is fair. And it’s only been a year, she was supposed to have two.” He had her wrapped up in a bear hug and Mia could hardly breathe. Instead of pulling away though, she pulled him in tighter. Suddenly she felt his body begin to shake and she knew he was crying. Her heart was breaking for him and she felt so helpless.

**

When Asher got home he sent the nurse on her dinner break and sat next to his mother’s bed again. She had her eyes closed and her breathing was shallow as it had been since she started taking the morphine. It was hard to tell sometimes when she was awake or asleep.

“Mom?” She didn’t answer and Asher breathed a sigh of relief. He had left Mia and come back home to talk to her about what she had asked him to do but he really didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to do it. He took her hand in his and she opened her eyes slowly. It always seemed to take her several seconds to focus lately. When she did, she offered him a weak smile. They meant a lot to him because he knew how hard it had to be for her.

“Hi baby.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry about earlier.”

“It’s okay. I know I’m asking way too much. I would do it myself if I could.”

“Shh, Mom. Don’t say that. I’d never let you do that.” He laid his head next to hers on the pillow. He felt her weakly place her lips against his forehead. He knew he had to do this for her, but he never hated anything so badly in his life. When he finally had the strength to pull his head back up and look at her he said, “You’re sure, Mom? This is what you want?”

She licked her dry lips. “I can’t stand the pain anymore Asher. I’m so sorry.” Asher brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.

“Don’t be sorry, Mom. Don’t be sorry for anything. All you have ever done is take care of everyone else. It’s time I did something for you.”

He laid his mother’s frail hand down gently on the bed and got up. He made his way to the cabinet that held her medications. He took out the vial of morphine and held it in his hand. A chill ran through his young body as he realized he was holding his mother’s departure from this life in his hands. He held both his own pain and the relief of hers. He didn’t want to be fucking God, but since he didn’t seem to be doing his job and his father had proven himself useless once again, Asher would be forced to do it for them. He took a syringe down off of one of the shelves. He had given her the medication many times by injecting it into the port she had in her chest. Her poor veins had been stripped from the chemotherapy long before all of her hair had fallen out and her bald little head still held the tattoos and scars of the thirty radiation treatments she had to endure.

He put a needle on the syringe and drew the thick liquid into it. He had researched the effects of a morphine overdose the day after he heard her ask his father. He knew she would turn to him next. He wanted to make sure it would be a pain-free death for her if he decided to do it. He had never imagined he could go through with it but the pain in her eyes was tearing him apart.

Once the syringe was full he twisted off the needle and dropped it into the sharps container and walked over next to the bed. Her eyes were closed again. He hoped that she was asleep and he silently hoped that she would wake up and tell him she changed her mind. He knelt down next to her again with the instrument of death in his hand and slid his free hand back into hers. As if she had heard his thoughts, she fluttered her eyes open and said his name weakly.

He replied instantly, “I’m here, Mom.”

She was dying, and in excruciating pain, yet again she managed a smile for her son. “Where is the nurse?” she asked him.

“She’s downstairs. I told her to take her dinner break. She’ll be gone for at least an hour.”

She nodded almost imperceptibly and said, “It’s time my love. You have brought me nothing but joy and pride in my life and I thank the Lord for giving you to me. You have always been the strongest one of us. Your father didn’t mean to leave all of this on you. He just wasn’t built to handle it like you were. Please forgive him, Asher. Please take care of him.”

“I am only worried about you right now, Mom.”

She smiled again. “I’m so lucky,” she said with tears in her green eyes. “Please help your father move past this. Everything has fallen apart while I’ve been sick. Everything is a mess.”

“Mom.”

“Let me finish, honey. His son and the family business will be all your father has left when I’m gone. Please help him Asher. Please help him rebuild it and please forgive him. Don’t leave him alone.” she closed her eyes again and Asher could see the evidence of the pain as it crossed her face. When she opened them back up she said, “I can’t fight anymore honey. I’m so sorry, but it’s time.”

He gently wiped away the tear that had escaped and was rolling down her cheek. “I know, Mom. I’m sorry that I’ve tried so hard to keep you here when you were hurting so badly. It was selfish but I just don’t know what I’ll do without you.” He felt his own tears begin to well up in his eyes as he leaned forward and kissed her paper thin cheek. She was a shell of the woman she used to be and this cancer had not only taken her, it had killed their family as well.

“You’ll be a great man.” she said. “That’s what you’ll do. You’ll make me as proud in death as I was in life.”

“I love you so much, Mom. I couldn’t have asked for a better mother.”

“I love you more,” she said with a little smile. It was what she used to always tell him when he was little. “Good-bye my sweetheart.”

Asher inserted the syringe into the tube that came out of her chest and pressed down on the plunger. “Good-bye Mom. I love you.” When the syringe was empty he pulled it out, put the cap back on her tube and tucked it underneath her body. Then he popped the syringe in the same container as the needle and knelt back down by the bed. He lay his head down on the pillow next to her once more and listened to her breathe. The tears ran silently from his eyes. Her breaths became shallower and long, agonizing seconds stretched out in between them. They were agony for him. He waited for her to die. It was less than ten minutes later when she slowly pulled in her last breath. He waited for the exhalation, but it didn’t happen and he knew she was gone. His quiet tears turned into deep, heart-wrenching sobs as he wrapped his mother up in his arms and held her for the last time.