“I’m all for leaving this place. Being in a cemetery at midnight messes with my mojo. I swear to you Jaxson, if I see a ghost, I’m leaving you right here. I’m too good-looking to become a zombie.”
“You can’t become a zombie,” I whisper.
“See, I told you it would work. She can’t resist setting me straight.”
“Unless you’re infected by the cat parasite, Toxoplasma Gondii,” I say as my mind returns to its haven filled with facts.
“Say what?” Sebastian shrieks. “Woman, don’t say things like that until I’m out of this place. OMG, I need to bathe.”
I block out Sebastian’s rambling and turn my face into Jaxson’s chest.
I start to process the facts, one after the other.
In medical school, most of the students had a DNR. A survey in our class showed that eighty percent wanted less aggressive end-of-life care.
It didn’t bother me back then what they all wanted.
Now that I’ve lost Mom because of a DNR, I wonder what they knew that I didn’t.
Chapter 15
JAXSON
I place Leigh gently on the bed and remove her shoes before I lie down next to her.
My heart breaks when I look into her eyes. I’m not sure what happened. Her dad called Sebastian and told him that Leigh left his place in a state. If he didn’t tell us where to find her, she would still be lying on her mother’s grave.
I reach for the piece of crumpled paper in her hands and pull it slowly from her fingers.
I open it and when I see that it’s a do not resuscitate order, it all makes sense.
“When I closed Marcus up, it hit me that I could’ve saved her. Knowing that…”
She curls into a small bundle against my chest. I wrap my arms around her and hold her tightly, waiting for her to let it all out.
“Why would she sign a DNR?”
I close my eyes wondering if she’ll ever heal from the loss of her mother.
“Dad showed me the file. He could’ve saved her. Her spine was also injured. She might have been paralyzed, but she would’ve been alive.”
“Doc,” I pull her back so she’ll look at me. “I didn’t know your mom, but do you think she would’ve coped with being paralyzed? She didn’t sign the DNR because she didn’t love you. She signed it because she wanted to have a say in how she died.”
“I wouldn’t have cared if she were paralyzed.”
“Put yourself in her shoes. We get married, and we have a little girl who looks just like you. She’s fucking brilliant and has an amazing future ahead of her. What would you want for her?”
I can see that she’s starting to think about what I just said, so I continue.
“Your mom had a full life, Doc. Even if her spine wasn’t damaged, it was still her choice to make. You choose to not sign a DNR for your own reasons. It was her choice to make. She had her reasons, and her reasons made sense to her.”
“I just wish I knew her reasons,” she whispers.
“Do they really matter? I know you have this need to understand everything in lif
e, but Doc, that’s not always possible. What matters is the time you had with her. What matters is that she loved you. You’re so consumed with how she died, that you’re forgetting to remember how she lived.”
Her eyes widen and her lips part as the realization hits.