Free TYLER (Blake Security Book 2) by Celina McKane

life. When I finally had the strength to pull my head back up and look at her, I said, “You’re sure, Mom? This is what you want?”
    She licked her dry lips. “I can’t stand the pain anymore, Tyler. I’m so sorry.” I brought her hand to my 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.”
    I laid her frail hand down gently on the bed and got up and went to the cabinet that held her medications. I took out the vial of morphine and held it in my hand. A chill ran through my body as I realized that I was holding my mother’s departure from this life in my hands. I held both my own pain and the relief of hers. I didn’t want to play God, but since He didn’t seem to be doing his job and Dad had proven himself useless once again, I would be forced to do it for them. I took a syringe down off of one of the shelves. I’d 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’d had to endure.
    I put a needle on the syringe and drew the thick liquid into it. I’d researched for hours the effects of a morphine overdose after the day I heard her ask Dad. I knew she would turn to me next. I wanted to make sure it would be a pain-free death for her if I decided to do it. I’d never imagined that I could go through with it, but the pain in her eyes was tearing me apart.
    Once the syringe was full I twisted off the needle and dropped it into the sharps container and walked over next to the bed. Her eyes were closed again. I hoped that she was asleep and that she’d wake up and tell me that she’d changed her mind. I knelt down next to her again with the instrument of death in my hand and slid my free hand back into hers. As if she had heard my thoughts, she fluttered her eyes open and said my name.
    “I’m here, Mom.”
    She was dying, and in excruciating pain, yet again she managed a smile for me. “Where is the nurse?”
    “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’ve brought me nothing but joy and pride in my life, and I thank the Lord for giving you to me. You’ve 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, Tyler. Please take care of him.”
    “I’m only worried about you right now, Mom.”
    She smiled again. “I’m so lucky,” she said with tears in her eyes. “Please help your father move past this. He can’t do it on his own.”
    “Mom…”
    “Let me finish, honey. You and the family business will be all your father has left when I’m gone. Please help him, Tyler. Please help him rebuild it and please forgive him…don’t leave him alone.” She closed her eyes again, and I could see the evidence of the pain as it clouded her face. When she opened them back up, she said, “I can’t fight anymore, honey. I’m so sorry, but it’s time.”
    I 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.” I felt my own tears begin to well up, as I leaned forward and kissed her paper-thin cheek. She was a shell of the woman she used to be.
    “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