Mantis (K19 Security Solutions 4)

Her mother shook her head. “Non.”

“Manon,” her father began, pulling a chair over to sit near her mother. “It is important to your maman that we do whatever we can to help you heal.”

“What about you?”

“It may be too late for me,” her mother answered, squeezing Alegria’s fingers.

“You can fight this. You can beat it.”

“Manon,” her father murmured again, shaking his head.

“You can’t just give up,” she insisted, looking into her mother’s eyes.

“I’m not giving up.” Her mother sighed and then looked at her father. “Pierre, may I talk with our daughter alone, s’il vous plait?”

He nodded and walked out of the room.

“The disease is advanced, Manon. The doctors said they would do everything they could to keep me comfortable.” Her mother took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

Alegria shook her head and wiped away her own tears.

“My biggest regret is that I have not been a better mother to you. I know it’s too late…”

“No. It isn’t,” Alegria cried. “The cancer…there are treatments…”

“Not the cancer, ma fille. I know I can never make the time we missed up to you.”

“There is nothing to make up, Maman.”

Her mother smiled and nodded. “There is too much, but for whatever time I have left, I want to try.”

“You can’t worry about me. You have to focus on yourself.”

“I have spent all of my life, and most of yours, focused on myself. Now I want to focus on you.”

Alegria heard a knock on the door. “Can you give us a few more minutes?” she asked the nurse walking in.

“I need to get you hooked back up to the monitors. It’ll only take a minute.”

“It’s okay,” said her mother. “Do as she asks.”

Alegria wheeled over to the bed, and the nurse lowered it.

“Can you manage, or should I call for someone to help?”

“I can manage.” Alegria could move her legs, but that didn’t mean she had enough strength to use them to support herself. Instead she used her arms to shift from the wheelchair to the bed.

Once she settled, the nurse began reattaching the leads from the monitors to her body.

“Where did my mother go?” Alegria asked when the nurse moved out of her line of sight and she could see the empty chair.

“I don’t know,” the nurse answered. “She was just here a second ago.”

Alegria closed her eyes, rested her head against the pillow, and pulled her phone out of the pocket of her hospital gown. She expected it to be dead, but instead, it was fully charged. She punched in her passcode, and saw that her screen background had been changed. Instead of a photo of an F15 in flight, there was one of her with her mother when she was a baby. Alegria had no idea how her parents had figured out the code to get into her cell, but it didn’t matter. She held it close to her heart, wishing her mother would come back so she could hold her close instead.

—:—

Mantis had been back less than an hour when his phone buzzed. “It’s Doc,” he told her and put it on speaker.