“Why?”

“So you knew before you did it.”

Hassan kept kneading the bag of blue goo. Mom’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head for a minute, and I thought she’d pass out, but she didn’t.

“Almost there,” Ed said, looking at the bag of Mom’s blood. The flow had slowed down.

The only sound was Hassan’s heavy breathing as he rubbed the plastic sides of the bag of goo. And whimpering, soft, like a dying kitten, coming from Mom.

A faint blue glow sparkled in the IV leading from Mom’s elbow.

“Okay, stop,” Ed said. “It’s all in her blood now.”

Hassan pulled the IVs out. Mom let out a crackling sigh.

Daddy pulled me forward. Looking down at Mom reminded me of looking down at Grandma last year at the church, when we all said goodbye and Mom said she was in a better place, but all she meant was that she was dead.

“How is it?” I asked.

“Not bad,” Mom lied. At least she could still speak.

“Can I touch her?” I asked Ed. He shrugged, so I reached out, gripped the fingers of her left hand. They were already ice cold. She didn’t squeeze back.

“Can we get on with it?” Ed asked. He shook a big eyedropper in his hand.

Daddy and I stepped back, but not so far that Mom would think we’d left her in that icy coffin alone. Ed pulled Mom’s eyes open. His fingers were big, calloused, and they looked like rough-hewn logs spreading apart my mom’s paper-thin eyelids. A drop of yellow liquid fell on each green eye. Ed did it quickly—drop, drop—then he sort of pushed her eyes shut. She didn’t open them again.

I guess I looked shocked, because, this time, when Ed glanced up at me, he actually stopped working long enough to give me a comforting smile. “Keeps her from going blind,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Mom said from her shoebox coffin. Even though her eyes were sealed shut, I could hear the tears in her voice.