Brando’s voice cut through my thoughts, a jumble of words standing out:Temperature. Water. In too long. Rope. Cut to release her from cement blocks. Hypothermia. No pulse. Pregnant.
The words slipped into my mind, pushing out everything else, poisoning my soul, as the men discussed my wife and her current state of life.
No life.
She had no life.
All that she had left to do on this earth assaulted me. All that she had missed out on stabbed me like a thousand knives. All the days and nights she suffered. She’d told me that she’d never touched true peace until we were married. For the first time in her life, she could sleep, she could rest, and it wasn’t only physical. The devil on her heels was too far behind to catch her—her shoes finally fit and kept her steady.
She had struggled so damn much with life. Struggled to change from surviving to living. And she was gone. My butterfly was gone after getting her wings.
As the men drew closer, I pulled her closer, not realizing I had her pressed against my chest, rocking her.
I refused to give her up.
I refused to allow them to take her from me. I’d rip their hands off with my teeth.
She was so cold. I could feel the iciness of the water seeping into my shirt. Her skin felt even colder, as though all of her blood had been drained.
Our son. He had no life if she didn’t.
My all gone in the matter of minutes.
An unforeseen circumstance. A man out for revenge.
My own revenge had metherewhen she needed mehere.
“Nephew.” Tito leaned down, looking me in the eye. “Give her to me. I will take care of her. Trust me.” He hit his heart.
I allowed the EMTs to take her, while Tito directed them every step of the way.
“I am the doctor! You listento me!”
Tito kept saying that there was a chance her pulse was too low to detect. If she warmed up enough, there was a chance she could still live.
Chance. Chance. Chance.My wife’s life,mine, depended on a fuckingchance.
The EMTs didn’t argue, but they’d already pronounced her dead in their heads.
They watched me warily, one of them eying my tattoo, as I kept up with them to the waiting ambulance. I refused to leave her. They hooked her up to monitors once inside and…nothing. Nothing but a flat line, and the sound of a machine alarm.
Controlled chaos ensued.
Tito barked out orders like a solider on a battlefield. They were doing chest compressions while they used another warming blanket to try to get her temperature up.
“Nothing,” one of the EMTs said, checking the monitors and then looking at Tito. “Still no pulse.”
“We keep going!” Tito snapped. “Mariposa. Come on, butterfly. Come on. Breathe for me.”
I looked away, my newly beating heart dying a thousand separate deaths at the sight of it. The sound of the machine going off in panic because it couldn’t detect life seemed to echo the unrest in my soul.
“Mariposa,” Tito whispered.
The sound of his voice ripped the last shred of hope from my chest.
“Tell me,” I said. I refused to look at him, because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I met his pitiful stare. The tone of his voice confirmed my worst nightmare. My butterfly was gone.
“Farfalla,” Tito said a little louder. A second or two went by. “I have it!” he almost shouted. “A pulse!”
