Between Heaven and Earth

by Michele Paige Holmes

  “I’m sorry, Devon, so sorry. I’d take the words back if I could. I’d take you back.” Her tears wet his shirt as Cassie lay beside him, holding on, feeling his heart. She paused. Was it her imagination, or was Devon’s heart rate increasing? She lifted her head slightly to glance at his monitor. The steady blip, blip, blip continued, yet the needle had moved, creating a zigzag of mini peaks over the last several seconds.

  Was it because she was lying beside him? Slowly Cassie loosened their hands, then sat up and turned around on the bed so she was still seated beside him.

  “For all this time you’ve been here, my second wish hasn’t overridden my first. You’re not spending any money, and you’re not with us either. I’d take a whole lot of debt over what we’ve got now. I imagine you would, too.” She watched the monitor carefully, but the lines were back to their usual pattern.

  “So I want to ask your forgiveness, for my anger, for not trying harder to understand your point of view as well.” It was a fault that her mom had pointed out several times throughout Cassie’s life. She tended to be so focused on the future and goals and plans that sometimes she forgot to live in the present or take notice of others and what was happening around her. Seven years ago, she’d been doing that in her marriage, trying to compensate for the loss of achieving her goal of motherhood on her timetable by throwing all of her energy into getting licensed and opening her own therapy practice. Because the sooner she did that, the sooner she’d have clients, and the sooner she and Devon would have had the money they needed to pursue being parents.

  She could see that clearly now, almost as if she were looking at a movie of her old self, making mistake after mistake in pursuit of a worthy goal. What she and Devon had each forgotten was that they had been a team in that goal and that their original dream had been to spend their lives together.

  There was so much to be sorry for. Why did hindsight always have to be so painfully clear?

  She placed Devon’s hand between her two. “We’re not together now. Noah doesn’t know his father, and Pearl says that you’re only here in this bed still because of me.” Cassie’s eyes began watering again. “So I need you to know—” She pressed her lips together and looked up at the ceiling. “That it’s all right if you want to go. Noah and I will be okay. We’ve been okay. Of course it would be better if you were with us, but if that’s not possible, if this is as with us as you can be”— Cassie swept a hand across the bed— “then you should go. Be in a better place.”

  She released Devon’s hand and brought both of hers up to cover her face. I did it. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes, then spilled over. Had she done the right thing? Had what she said even mattered? She had an uncanny feeling that tonight it did.

  The heart monitor gave an unfamiliar bleep, and Cassie’s eyes flew open. A peak, taller than the previous ones she’d seen earlier, marked the screen.

  “Devon?” She looked down at him and found him looking back.

  “Devon,” she breathed his name this time, hardly daring to believe that his eyes were not only open— unusual at this time of night— but seemed to be focused directly on her. They didn’t track her movements as she adjusted her position on the bed to lean closer to him, but neither did they seem to be looking past her or unseeing as they usually were. She held his hand again.

  “Some part of you understands. I know it.” She continued to whisper, terrified she’d break whatever spell they were under. “I love you, Devon, and I want you to get better. I want you home with us, being my husband and Noah’s father. But—” Her voice broke. “If you can’t come home, then you need to leave this place because more than I want you with us, I want you to be happy— and free.”

  At her last word, Devon’s eyes slid closed. Panicked, Cassie looked to the monitor, but his heartbeat remained steady. She hadn’t killed him. Her relief felt short-lived. She’d meant what she said. She didn’t want Devon trapped in his body in this bed another six years, even another six months, if there was a better option.

  “I love you,” she said once more. “Always. No matter what. Forever.”

  Cassie kissed him, then cried some more.

  Cassie’s phone rang just as she was fitting the key in the lock of her apartment. On the way home, she’d called her mom and asked her to keep Noah overnight— something she never did— but she’d felt worried enough that her head pounded, she was genuinely sick to her stomach, and just needed to be alone.

  Before she even took the phone from her purse, she knew. When the lit screen flashed Sierra Care, Cassie simply sank to floor, sitting on the top step with her knees hunched close to her chest as she answered.

  “Hello.”

  “Cassie, I’m so sorry. Devon’s heart—” Lynn stopped mid-sentence, and Cassie imagined her struggling to convey this news about a patient she’d cared for for nearly seven years.

  “What?” Cassie asked, feeling oddly numb. She needed to hear Lynn say it even though she knew the truth already. “What happened?”

  “It was his heart, Cassie. He’s gone.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Cassie managed before she disconnected the call. She sat another minute, head in her hands, beneath the motion detector light Matt had installed last year. Lynn hadn’t said that Devon was dead. Just gone. To a better place. Like Pearl had said he would be. What have I done? Cassie felt her own heart rate climb. There was no sense of relief as she’d half-expected, but a note of finality that rang through her mind. Devon was gone. He’d left them. He was never coming home. She and Noah were really on their own.

  Always. No matter what. Forever.

  “Devon’s heart rate started experiencing some unusual fluctuations about an hour ago,” the on-call doctor explained.

  When I was here. Cassie shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, the same one she’d sat on with Pearl just a few hours earlier.

  “Shortly after you left, his alarm went off,” Lynn added. She and Doctor Lewis had been waiting in the lobby when Cassie arrived, ready to intercept her and prepare her before she saw Devon. It was Sierra Care protocol; she’d seen this same scenario numerous times before with other patients’ families. But never me, she’d always thought confidently. That will never be me. Devon was going to get well and come home.

  “In a matter of seconds, his heart escalated to over four hundred beats per minute,” Lynn explained. “I was the first nurse to respond to his alarm, and it was almost like— like his heart was trying to burst right out of his chest.”

  “You’d signed a DNR,” Dr. Lewis reminded Cassie gently. “As such, no measures were taken to restart your husband’s heart.”

  “I understand.” With the wadded up tissue in her hand, Cassie dabbed at a tear leaking down the side of her face.

  “I have to believe that was the right call in this circumstance,” Dr. Lewis continued. “Patients can sometimes be brought back from cardiac arrest, but in Devon’s already weakened condition, it was not likely, and any attempts to revive him would have been extreme. I wouldn’t wish those on my loved one.”

  “Thank you,” Cassie said, truly appreciative of his words. She was grateful that Devon’s chest hadn’t been cracked open and shocks administered. He’d been through enough already and for so long. “May I see him?”

  “Of course.” Lynn stood. “I’ll walk with you.”

  Cassie nodded, grateful for Lynn’s support. She’d been more than a nurse all these years. She’d been a friend as well. Dr. Lewis bade them goodbye, and Cassie walked the hallways to Devon’s room for the last time.

  “Would you like me to come in with you?” Lynn asked when they reached his door.

  “I’ll be all right, thanks.” Cassie entered the room and closed the door behind her. Devon looked the same as he always did, lying still in his bed, but the room felt different. The monitor was blank, and there was no rise and fall of the blanket above his chest.

  Fear clutched her own chest. He’s really gone. She grasped at something to be
thankful for, to steady herself so she wouldn’t fall to pieces. I’m glad it was quick. She prayed it hadn’t been painful. She hadn’t wanted Devon to suffer and could never have made the choice to have his feeding tube taken out.

  As she moved closer to the bed, the differences became more apparent. Devon’s eyelids sometimes twitched when he slept, but now they were perfectly still. His color was poor. She touched his hand and found it cold. The room felt empty, devoid of the life it had sheltered for nearly seven years.

  Behind her, the door opened, and she turned to find her mom standing there.

  “Oh, sweetheart.” Her mom stepped forward and opened her arms. Cassie rushed into them.

  “He’s gone, Mom. Devon’s gone.”

  “I know.” She hugged Cassie tightly. “I knew as soon as you asked me to keep Noah overnight.”

  Cassie pulled back. “Is he here?”

  Mom shook her head. “I asked a friend to stay with him.” She gathered Cassie close again.

  Cassie soaked up the comfort of her embrace, grateful that her mom had known to come. When she’d called her earlier, Devon had been fine, but mother’s intuition must have been at work.

  When she felt able to breathe again, Cassie stepped from her mom’s arms and wiped her eyes. She looked over at Devon’s bed, at his lifeless body one last time. This wasn’t how she wanted to remember him or how she wanted Noah to either. She made the decision that he wouldn’t see his father this way.

  The reality of funeral arrangements and insurance documents and a cemetery plot suddenly loomed before her. Why hadn’t she planned any of this earlier, or at least thought about it?

  I didn’t think it would come to this. But it had, and the closure or peace she’d heard others speak of was nowhere to be found. Instead she only felt as the room did. Empty.

  Cassie smiled grimly and shook the hand of yet another police officer.

  “Your husband was a fine man. I enjoyed working with him.”

  “Thank you.” She kept her responses short and as sincere as possible. Based on the attendees and their expressions of condolence today, Devon had been a department favorite. Why then, she wondered, had none of these people come to see him in the previous years? At the least, it left her questioning their sincerity, though she did feel grateful so many had come to honor him at last.

  When she was starting to feel she couldn’t endure another greeting, it was time for her to take her seat and the funeral to start. She made her way alone to the front row, already filled with her mom and Noah, and Devon’s sister and her husband.

  It was a brief, simple service. Devon would have approved, Cassie thought as she stared at his casket and the spray of flowers covering it. He wasn’t one for long meetings, and this one was necessarily short, Annie being the only speaker from the family, giving his life sketch. In a haze of numbness, Cassie listened to the words but didn’t really absorb them. No matter, she’d already asked for a copy for Noah to read when he was older.

  Her mom prompted her when it was time to rise and leave the building. They followed Devon’s casket outside and were ushered into a black limo. The drive through the city was punctuated by those paying respect to Devon. This tribute meant more to her. These were people who hadn’t worked with him, hadn’t known him but recognized his loss and sacrifice.

  “Look at all those fire trucks, Mom.” Noah pointed at a half-dozen clustered together.

  Cassie swallowed the lump in her throat. “Good people,” she managed, “showing us they care.”

  Noah turned from the window, looked up at her, and clasped her hand. “Don’t cry, Mom. Dad’s happier now. We’ll be all right, too.”

  “I know.” After all, she’d promised Devon they would.

  “Police, family, and Sacramento residents paid their respects today as a procession honoring Officer Devon Webb made its way from the funeral home to the Auburn Cemetery.”

  Matt grabbed the remote off the arm of the couch and turned the television volume up.

  “Officers, paramedics, and firefighters lined the motorcade route, saluting the vehicle carrying fallen Officer Webb as it passed by.” The camera panned from the police escort to the sides of the street, lined with public service vehicles and the uniformed men and women beside them.

  Matt leaned forward. “About time he got some recognition.”

  “Webb, who sustained a bullet wound to the head during a domestic violence call nearly seven years earlier, leaves behind a wife and six-year-old son.” The camera left the motorcade and zoomed in on Noah and Cassie exiting the car behind the hearse at the cemetery. Matt felt a tug at his heart as he watched Noah with his arm around Cassie, as if he was trying to be a man and support his mom.

  “Webb had been residing at a care facility in Auburn. Up next—”

  Matt turned off the TV. Up next. Just like that the world moved on. Less than one minute of airtime honoring Devon Webb’s life and sacrifice and only a two-second mention of the family he left behind. If only moving on was so easy.

  Give her some time, Janet had said when Matt asked about Cassie. He intended to do just that, though he’d wanted more than anything to be by her side at the cemetery today. Instead, he’d lingered a safe distance away, offering silent support but not wanting to upset her with his presence. If she’d wanted him there, she would have asked, but she hadn’t, and that was okay. Sometimes friends just needed some space, too. He’d give her as much as she wanted, at least until the end of summer, another two months away. By then it would be the beginning of another school year and a few other things, he hoped.

  Cassie ran her finger down the soccer schedule, then stopped at the team listed next to theirs on today’s date. “We’re playing the Rhinos.”

  Noah snorted, then burst into a fit of giggles as he placed his hand on his forehead, one finger pointing out. “Do you think they’ll have horns?” He began charging around the living room.

  “Doubtful,” Cassie said. “Especially since that could puncture the ball during a head shot.” Noah continued his Rhino imitation, and she wondered how they’d ever survived in their smaller apartment for so many years. Their new living room was three times as big, and Noah regularly ran laps around it, scantily furnished as it still was. Maybe it was his way of making up for all those years crammed into a bedroom with her.

  She scanned the next page of the city soccer packet for the name of the Rhinos’ coach. A few of the parents who’d coached last year had returned this season, and it was always good if she remembered their names ahead of time.

  Her hand stilled, her fingernail resting just below Kramer, Matthew listed next to the Rhinos. Pleasant anticipation mixed furiously with a sudden attack of anxiety. How was she supposed to coach with Matt there? She hadn’t seen him since the end of May, hadn’t spoken to him since the beginning of June, when he’d facilitated a call from Oregon between his boys and Noah.

  During that call she’d learned— inadvertently through Austin— that Matt was dating again. And while she’d been happy for him, she’d had to work hard to suppress her true feelings of jealousy and sadness.

  She’d hoped he might call once or twice since then, but she probably shouldn’t have been surprised that he hadn’t, not when she’d so clearly told him that they couldn’t continue their friendship. More than a few times she’d thought about calling him, but what was she supposed to say?

  Hi, Matt. It’s Cassie. My husband died, so… So she hadn’t called. Still, it felt like yesterday that they’d gone to San Francisco and about a week since the holiday they’d enjoyed at his home in Oregon.

  We could start where we left off. Maybe. If he wasn’t involved with someone else. And if she could handle it.

  Sure, she was single now, but that didn’t mean she could just move on. The relief everyone seemed to expect her to feel at Devon’s death simply hadn’t come. Instead, she’d spent the summer feeling overwhelmed first with funeral arrangements and insurance policies, then it was going thro
ugh his belongings, deciding what to save and what to get rid of as she and Noah prepared to move.

  When Devon’s uniforms no longer hung in the closet, and she’d boxed up those few things of his she’d decided to save, the finality of his death had sunk in, hitting her so hard that she’d sent Noah to stay with her mom for the week and had hardly gotten out of bed for five days.

  If she’d thought selling Devon’s car was difficult, it was nothing compared to leaving the apartment that had been their only home. When the last of their belongings were moved out and she’d returned, alone, to clean, she’d sat on the top step outside and cried for nearly a full hour.

  She’d known it was time to move on, to focus on what would be best for Noah, but leaving the only home she’d ever known as a married woman felt like ripping a piece of her heart out. Along with the void in her life left by the absence of visits to the care center, she’d lost the place she felt safest at and all the comfort and familiarity that old apartment offered.

  Noah, at least, seemed happier here. She would be, too, someday, when the numbness she’d embraced wore off.

  Someday she might be ready for a relationship with Matt, too, but she wasn’t sure that day was here. Everything still felt too new and raw, and she had to put herself back together again first.

  “Let’s go, Mom.” Noah tugged on her hand, reminding Cassie of the time and the game that awaited. Matthew Kramer as the opposing coach or not, she had to go. She couldn’t let Noah down. Just as when Devon had first been injured, it was Noah keeping her afloat. So long as she had him to focus on and care for, she’d be fine.