I’ve thought about Mercy a lot in relation to my wondering about the soul. Mercy Lane was taught that she was just meat, but it takes more than cutting off her breasts to make a woman a man. What drives a runner, puking, to the finish line? What makes you love a child you haven’t laid eyes on yet? What makes you saw the breasts off your own daughter?
When I close my eyes and remember Matt and Alexa and Mom and Dad, when that overwhelming surge of sadness and love and joy and grief runs through me, is that just a chemical reaction? Do cells feel love? Or is something far, far more beautiful involved?
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this: I have looked into the eyes of Mercy Lane, and I have looked into the eyes of my husband, and I found something very different behind them both.
It’s this certainty that’s brought me here now. If we’re all just meat, if I really believed that, I’d feel no onus to keep my promise to Leo.
The machines hum and whisper. His chest rises and falls.
I’ve agonized about Leo and the choice I made. I’ve asked myself the hard questions, and I’ve wept and doubted. I’ve examined myself without filters, in the brightest internal light. It’s a process that’s humbled me, that’s given me answers but little peace.
I know now that if I hadn’t been pregnant, I would have chosen to give myself over to Mercy. I would have been willing to let my mind die so that Leo could stay Leo. I became a hunter of monsters because I want others to live. I’m driven by a duty to protect them, and I’ve been compelled by that instinct since I was very young. I don’t know where it came from—God, the soul, genetics—but I am certain of its existence. Mercy’s puzzle asked me to choose between Leo and myself, but in reality I only ever chose between him and my child.
Knowing this has calmed me, but it doesn’t help with the guilt. Neither does the truth that it would have been Leo, whatever I decided. I am here, and he is there; it’s a scale that will never be balanced.
I stand up and walk over to Leo’s bedside. I reach out a hand to touch his forehead. It’s dry and warm. The body lives.
“I’m so sorry, Leo,” I whisper.
It doesn’t matter that I would have taken his place under different circumstances. It doesn’t matter that Mercy was just playing a game. I chose, thinking a choice was needed. There is a world where he died so my child could live. I lean forward and I kiss his cheek. The machines hum lowly. One tear falls. “Thank you.”
Then I keep my promise and I send him gently into the darkness, hoping the stories are all true, that, for the good souls, the dark turns into light.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CODY MCFADYEN is the internationally bestselling author of Shadow Man, The Face of Death, and The Darker Side. The Face of Death was #5 on Amazon.com’s Best Mystery/Thriller Books of 2007 list. McFadyen lives in Colorado.