AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“In Phoebe’s room. Dexter, you have to apply pressure.” I started crying and when I moved to touch him, he pushed me away.
“Stay here. I need to see my kids.” He turned away and leaned against the wall as he all but slid to Phoebe’s room.
I looked over my shoulder and saw Ralph squeezing Rachel’s neck. After a few moments, she went still and Ralph gasped, rolling onto his back.
I saw the blood pouring from his thigh and I knew he wouldn’t make it. He was bleeding so much that I knew the bullet had gotten his femoral artery.
I cried harder as I ran over and laid his head in my lap, taking off my jacket and pressing it into his wound. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, hugging him close with one arm.
Ralph shivered in my arms and I yelled for Dexter, unwilling to believe that this sweet man was dying in my arms.
Rachel’s dead body was in the corner, and I wondered if the Angel of Death knew from the day they met each other that they would be each other’s ends.
“Dexter!” I cried for him. “Dexter, I’m losing him!”
I could feel death in the room.
And when I looked up, there was the old man, leaning over Rachel.
Then he came to where I was seated, ignoring me entirely before leaning over Ralph. I felt Ralph leave his body. His last sigh was ragged, and then he was gone.
I heard Dylan crying in the next room and I sobbed, not knowing what to do. I wiped away at the tears mingled with the mess of my nose, only to belatedly remember I was covered in Ralph’s blood.
Dexter didn’t answer and I laid Ralph gingerly on the floor. The Angel of Death turned toward Phoebe’s room and I became frantic as I ran past him and toward the room.
Dylan’s cries were a steady wail and when I opened the door, I saw why.
He was tugging on Dexter’s sweater, but Dexter looked like he was sleeping. Had I not seen the spread of dark liquid on his shirt, I might’ve believed he was asleep as well. Phoebe still wasn’t awake. Instead, getting paler and paler. I grabbed the blanket on the bed.
I took Dylan into my arms and held him close, tucking his head into my neck while reaching down to press the blanket where the blood was oozing from Dexter’s stomach.
When the Angel of Death entered the room, I covered Dexter’s body with mine. “You can’t have him! You can’t!” I felt his hand on my shoulder and I looked up.
He shook his head and I pulled a crying Dylan in closer, refusing to move away from Dexter.
I heard the sirens in the distance and I felt that dangerous hope I’d always been afraid of.
“They’re coming to save your daddy,” I whispered into our son’s hair, fighting the urge to set him down and check Dexter’s pulse.
I had faith that he wasn’t ready to die just as much as I wasn’t ready to let him go.
Noa
I didn’t knowif I wanted to be cremated or buried. It felt like talking about those things meant speaking them into existence. I wasn’t ready to come to terms with my end but death had come to my doorstep, whether I was ready or not. In the last few weeks, I’d spent more time discussing the dead than I wanted to. Whether I was talking to the police or the therapist I’d started seeing, I wasn’t ready to do what I was about to. But he deserved for me to say goodbye.
I’d missed his funeral.
He would’ve called me an asshole for it.
I walked up to his grave as my phone rang.
“How’re you feeling?” I asked, eyeing Ralph’s tombstone nervously, as if something beneath me would reach up and grab me.
“Better.” Dexter was silent for a moment. “Tell my brother I said goodbye.”
I nodded, tears in my eyes. It had been a week and a half, but it was still hard to believe we’d never see him again. He was laid into the foundation of the story of me and Dexter.
“I’ll tell him you love him, too.” I let my tear slide down my face as I stared at the fresh dirt.
