Million Dollar Baby (complete)

The Speech

BPOV

"He did not!" my mother squealed.

"Oh, yes he did," Gabe laughed at her reaction. "You should've seen him, Nae-Nae. He was all," Gabe tucked his chin to his chest and spread his shoulders so that his arms hung to his side like a man whose muscles were too big to lay straight. Lowering his voice to sound all Clint Eastwood, he mocked my father. "That's my wife, boy, and I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna' sit by and let some pimply faced orderly, who's just barely reached puberty and still jacked up on teenage hormones give her a sponge bath! I'm the only man that touches those goodies! Leave the sponge and the tub, and walk away slowly, son, before someone gets hurt."

My mother was full-on laughing by the time Gabe was finished with his less than accurate impersonation, and it was such a wonderful sound to hear...miraculous even. I hadn't heard her laugh like that in so long I'd nearly forgotten what it sounded like. Of course had my father heard Gabe's mockery, he wouldn't have found it quite so humorous. Good thing he was at house getting things situated for my mother's return.

It had been ten days since her transplant. So far, so good. All her colour was back, she was sitting up, laughing, eating, smiling...living. The scar on her chest was an angry red in colour, but it, too, had healed significantly, and she only hurt minutely each time she had to cough...or at least, that's what she claimed. Either way, that sparkle was back in her eye and she was soaking up every single bit of information that she could about how to maintain her health so that her body didn't reject her new heart.

The only source of worry I could find, was her concern for the family of the young lady that gave her another chance to live. She wanted to thank them properly, as we all did, as well as offer her condolences, but Colin said it was the family's choice not to have their information disclosed. Upon his suggestion, I sat down with my mother and we wrote them a letter that he agreed to deliver, hoping they would one day find peace with their loss. I'd also hoped my mother would find peace with her gain, but she was a sentimental person and I knew the idea that someone else had to die in order for her to live would haunt her until her dying day...and hopefully, that would be a long way down the road.

"Well, it wasn't exactly like that," Alice chimed in.

"It was exactly like that," Gabe argued.

"My father, the police chief of Forks-"

"Ex police chief," Gabe corrected me.

I gave him the evil eye and continued, "Charlie does not say goodies."

"Um, yes, he does," my mother interrupted with a devilish grin.

"Oh! Ew! Mom!" I shrieked. I did not need those mental images, and I started contemplating hijacking the janitor's closet to see if there was some Ajax, or bleach, or whatever in the hell it was that these hospitals used to keep everything so damn sterile to scrub my brain. It was definitely going to take something with some industrial strength; that was for damn sure.

"Oh, please, Bella. How do you think you got here?" she scoffed. "I assure you, it wasn't by Immaculate Conception." Then she got this dreamy look in her eye like she was reminiscing. "We sure did have a lot of fun making you. The things your father can do with his-"

"Do not finish that sentence!" I demanded, cutting her off. "Old people doing it is so gross!"

"Hey, we weren't old when we did it," she laughed. "No way in hell would I have been able to contort my body like that over the back seat of his El Camino if I were all Geritol and Bengay." I cringed again at the mental picture...my dad's pasty white ass plastered to the side of a steamy window, and what my mother's face must have looked like as she....EW!