[ WP ] `` You have 24 hours . No more , no less . ''

I had done death before. Lots of death. Lots of talking about death, lots of explaining death, and even feeling a little death of my own. As a nurse in an Emergency Room, I see a lot of sad things. But not like today. Today I felt a new sad. Dr. Irving ’ s diagnosis was able to find a corner of my brain that would have been better left undiscovered. Maybe. 
 
 The first person I told was my fiancee, Grace. Well, I can hardly call it “ telling ” her. She read it. In my eyes and on my face. The redness around my eyes and dried streaks on my cheeks had done all the telling for me. I had sheepishly left the exam room for the waiting area feeling as though a thousand pounds of heart had plummeted from my chest to my stomach. I saw her first, before she knew. I peered through the small window in the door and saw her with her hands folded in her lap and her purse lying by her feet. She was still hopeful, but growing tired. Her chestnut colored eyes were looking out the window. Maybe it was because she wasn ’ t interested in the magazine pile on the coffee table or maybe she did not want to answer the texts from her mother or our neighbors. Maybe it was just because she was tired from staying up the last few nights and she just wanted rest. She was looking out the window and enjoying the gorgeous July sunshine light up the busy street and green lawn in front of the office. 
 
 I grabbed the cold and sterile metal doorknob with a deep breath and walked towards her. I couldn ’ t do this here. I could hardly think of the words, let alone say them. Not here, not in front of all the others that are just here for shots or for check-ups. She pushed her hair behind her ear and grabbed my hand firmly. She knew. She knew everything that Dr. Irving had spent the last 25 minutes explaining to me because she knew it was the last thing that she or I wanted to hear that day. She guided me past the front desk and out the front door as the lump in my throat grew to a boulder. 
 
 I made it to the car before I lost it. I was trying to pull my seatbelt and the safety latch kept stopping the belt. I threw it in frustration against the glass and it made a loud clank. For a moment, I just let it build. The smell of a hot car interior and the sound of a squeaky fan belt were all that I could find in my senses. I just felt lost and empty like never before, until everything boiled over. 
 
 Tears poured from my eyes until they hurt. My ears burned and itched from the blood coursing to my head. My nose ran and my sleeves became tissues. Grace held me. She just leaned over the console and held me. I had not cried like this before. I ’ d been to funerals, I ’ d seen people taken long before their time. I ’ d been at four bedsides of four grandparents when four doctors told me and the loved ones that there was nothing else they could do. Now here I was in a parking lot on a sunny Tuesday at 29 years old and had just been told that this chapter of my life was on its last page. And that page had twenty four hours to be filled before my ink dried up and the story was over. And it was the deepest sadness I had ever felt. 
 
 I owed that day to someone. Someone who came into my life only because I chose to. Did things my way. Always showed me love and held my head, and never looked back even when I started to think about it. All for nothing in return. I owed that day to the one that showed my new highs and lows of what it means to have a relationship. I owed that day to someone who deserves everything in the world and tomorrow was going to have it all taken away. 
 
 The cold, wet nose found my elbow resting on the arm rest. Rocket, or Ro, was sprawled across the back of our hatchback. He let the rays of sun peering through the rear glass catch his back, but he still made the effort pick his tired head up to say hello, like he always did. Rocket was not the dog he was when I scooped him up out of my storm gutter 6 years ago. He was not as fast as his name would suggest anymore. He wasn ’ t as good at balancing things on his nose or catching the popcorn that we tossed to him anymore. He spent more days laying in the entrance of our apartment than chasing his tennis ball or chewing on his favorite chair leg now. His high-fives were lower, his barks were weaker, and his tail dragged on the floor, picking up half of the hair that fell off the rest of him. He was broken and old, and I would have given everything for another 25 hours with him, instead of 24. 
 
 The wet nose kept prodding until it had finally had enough and sent out a tongue to search for a response. I couldn ’ t do it. I couldn ’ t turn my neck to look back in the hatch because then it was real. Then I would see my dog, my boy, in the back of a hatchback in the middle of a vet parking lot on a hot day in July that would be his last day on Earth. But I did. My hand found the spot on his head like it fit into my little league glove. I met his eyes and said, 
 
 “ The park or the running path, Ro? 
 
... 
 
 You ’ re right, it ’ s a park kind of day. ”
