Asher: A Second Chance Novel (8 page)

**

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.

Present Day

It was a few days after the accident before Asher was alert enough to really grasp what had happened. The thoughts were jumbled up in his head and he wasn’t sure what was real. He knew he was in the hospital. Dean had been there, but not his father and not Mia and he knew why. First, he killed his own mother and then his father had thrown him out of the house. Then he had gotten drunk with Travis and now Travis was dead. They probably all hated him. He couldn’t fucking believe it. He wished that none of it was real.

When he had first woken up in the hospital a couple of days ago he had just come out of surgery. He had a dislocated shoulder, a broken femur, a few broken ribs and he’d lost his spleen and had a chest tube for a few days while his punctured lung healed. None of that mattered though when he finally got them to tell him what had happened to Travis.

A sheriff’s deputy had come in to talk to him and told him that he had been thrown through the windshield and landed about twelve feet in front of the car on the pavement. That would explain all of the cuts and abrasions on his chest and stomach and arms. Travis had been wearing his seatbelt. When they had impacted the tree, the car had crushed him, killing him instantly. The deputy had asked him if they had been drinking and Asher had told him honestly, yes. There was a part of him that was hoping they would arrest him, a part of him that needed to be punished for killing his mother and his best friend. The deputy said they knew Travis had been driving and since he was the one that caused the accident, there wouldn’t be any charges brought against Asher.

“Can you do me a favour?” he asked the deputy before he left.

“What’s that?”

“My mother died right before all of this happened. Can you call the mortuary for me and find out when her services are?”

“Sure,” the deputy replied with a sympathetic look in his eyes. Asher hated that. He didn’t deserve the man’s sympathy. He didn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy. A little while later the deputy came back and said, “It’s today son, in a couple of hours.” Asher started to climb out of the bed. “Whoa, I don’t think they’ve discharged you yet.”

“I am not missing my mother’s funeral!” He yelled a the deputy.

“Okay, stay in the bed for a second and let me get a nurse.” Asher watched the deputy leave and then he climbed out of the bed. There wasn’t a spot on or in his body that didn’t hurt, ache or throb. He could barely hold himself up as he searched the room for his clothes. He finally found the plastic bag that had his shirt and pants he had been wearing the day of the accident. He pulled the shirt on over his head and looked down at it. It had holes in it and it was all bloody. He struggled with getting his jeans on because he couldn’t bend over. He had staples in his abdomen and shoulder, stitches in his face and arms and chest. He was a fucking mess, but still better off than Travis and his mother.

He finally got his pants on and started looking for his shoes when the deputy came back in. “I thought you were going to stay put.”

“My mother is dead. I’m going to the funeral.”

“You can’t go looking like that.”

Asher looked down at himself again. He remembered his father throwing him out. He couldn’t go by there and change. He picked up the phone at the bedside and dialed Dean’s number. When Dean answered he said, “Man, I need a huge favour.”