We drove 2 hours and I worked the entire way.
We helped over 50 Vietnamese complete applications.
We answered every single question.
I ordered a kids meal from Checkers, so I wouldn’t feel so guilty for eating fast food.
Everyone talked in the van, and I took my post in my “office” on the back seat just like every night before.
Exhaustion is not an option for any of us; we just have to keep going.
I can’t remember the last time I had a “girl’s night” or slept in on Saturday.
I didn’t look up from emails but I knew we had exited on College Drive from the Orange glow of the Hooters sign.
Suddenly we hit something hard, and I looked up as gasps filled the van and two or three “what was that’s?”
I turned instantly; behind us in the right lane of the road was a cat half crawling-half walking and its tail flailing violently.
I yelled at our driver to stop or turn around. I threw off my heels and dug in my purse for my gun, but it wasn’t there. I couldn’t remember if it was in my car or on my nightstand.
I was furious that not only was I without it, but I couldn’t force myself to remember where it was.
The van came to a stop and I told everyone not to look.
I ran. In familiar form, my weeks without running body began a slow sprint as I ran hard enough to get there but slow enough to leap over mud and water that would cause my bare feet to slip on the concrete sidewalk.
My breathing pattern set and I knew I had run about 300 yards before I reached it.
Still awake, eyes glassing over and making desperate attempts to move; I picked up the warm and flailing animal in its last moments of life.
I jogged along the fence line of the school, still not knowing what I was going to do, but knowing what I had to.
One hunk lay broken off from the overflow of concrete around a fence post and I reached for it wincing at what I was about to do.
“The quickest way…the quickest way…” I forced myself to process.
I covered his face and stretched his head gently away from his legs, lengthening his neck as much as possible.
Only one blow and I made it count because I knew I could never take a second.
I began to pray as the breath left his body and I cried.
I stood and felt a wave of nausea as I turned and fell into full sprint back to the van.
I flung the door open to four heads facing downward and said, “Let’s go, I don’t want to talk about it.”
I shook the entire ride home.
I could barely see the road when I began driving my own car home and kept trying to blink the blur away.
I cried.
I cried into Belle, in my bed, in my bath water.
It has been two days and I am still telling myself that it is okay to feel horrible, broken and even “wrong” when doing “the right thing.”
