Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2 — The Compassionate Release
Two more years slipped away.
Noah was sixteen.
He had a driver's permit.
He had a girlfriend named Maya who liked to bake cookies in our kitchen.
He was broad, athletic, and fiercely protective of the people he cared about.
Life was beautiful.
Life was mundane.
Then the phone rang.
It was a Tuesday afternoon in early spring.
I was at my desk, reviewing blueprints for a county drainage project.
The caller ID showed an out-of-state number. Colorado.
I answered.
"Daniel Mercer?" a woman's voice asked.
"Speaking."
"My name is Sarah Higgins. I am a victim advocate working with the Colorado Department of Corrections."
My hand tightened around the phone.
"What is this about?"
"It is regarding inmate Elaine Mercer."
My mother.
"What about her?"
"Mr. Mercer, I am calling to inform you that Elaine Mercer has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer."
I stopped breathing.
I stared at the blueprints on my desk, but the lines blurred into meaningless blue ink.
"She has been given less than three months to live," the advocate continued softly.
"Her legal counsel has filed a petition for compassionate medical release."
"They are asking the parole board to allow her to spend her final days in a secure hospice facility outside of the prison walls."
I didn't say anything.
"As a registered victim of her crimes," the advocate said, "you and your son have the right to submit an impact statement."
"You can support the release, oppose it, or decline to participate."
"The hearing is in three weeks."
I looked out the window of my office.
I could see the ocean in the distance.
Cold. Gray. Unforgiving.
"She wants to die in comfort," I said, my voice sounding completely detached from my body.
"Yes, sir. That is the basis of the petition."
"Thank you for notifying me," I said.
I hung up the phone.
I drove to the beach.
I parked the car and walked out onto the wet sand.
The wind whipped against my face, stinging my cheeks.
I closed my eyes and let the sound of the crashing waves drown out the noise in my head.
My mother was dying.
The woman who had taught me how to tie my shoes.
The woman who had baked my birthday cakes.
The woman who had nailed a note to a pine tree, climbed into a warm car, and left me and her grandson to die of thirst.
I searched my heart for pity.
I searched for the innate, biological grief that a son is supposed to feel when his mother is at the end of her life.
I found nothing.
It was as empty as the clearing she had left us in.
When I got home, Noah was sitting at the kitchen island, eating an apple and reading a textbook.
I sat down across from him.
"I got a phone call today," I said.
Noah looked up. He read my face instantly.
"From who?"
"The state of Colorado."
He set the apple down.
"Your grandmother is very sick," I told him.
"She has cancer. They say she has less than three months to live."
Noah didn't flinch.
"She applied for compassionate release. She wants to leave the prison and go to a hospice."
Noah sat in silence for a long time.
He looked at his hands.
He traced the knuckles where scars still lingered from scraping against rocks when he was too weak to stand.
"Are they asking if we care?" Noah asked.
"They are asking if we want to make a statement to the parole board."
"We can do it by video link."
"Or we can just ignore it."
I waited for him to decide.
He was sixteen. He was old enough to carry his own weight in this.
"Dad," Noah said slowly.
"When you carried me on the eighth day..."
"When my lips were bleeding and I couldn't open my eyes..."
"Did she show us compassion?"
"No, Noah. She didn't."
"Did she care how we were going to die?"
"No."
Noah looked me directly in the eyes.
The boy was gone. A man sat across from me.
"Then we are going to log into that video call," Noah said.
"And we are going to look her in the face."
"Not for revenge, Dad. I don't care about revenge."
"I just want her to know that her actions are permanent."
"She doesn't get to erase us just because she's scared of the dark."
I nodded.
"Okay," I said. "We will speak to the board."
We didn't talk about it again that night.
May you like
We ate dinner. We washed the dishes.
But the air in the house felt heavier, thick with the approaching collision of the past and the present.
