A friend once told me "it's not what we are that defines us, but rather what we do to be what we are that defines us as a person". Believe it or not, we live in a world that's selfish, cold and cruel.
I was known as Officer Jansen of the Mississippi Police force. This story is a story of love, of selflessness and of sacrifice.
I was given a call one day at the office on the 17th of March 1993; the call came in from the local hospital. The nurse on the line told me that my then girlfriend had fainted in our apartment and had hit her head on the kitchen stove.
I hung up the phone and rushed straight to the hospital to inspect the extent of my girl's injuries. To my despair, the doctors told me that she had suffered severe blood loss due to the prolonged opening of her wound and that she would be in a coma for some time.
That night, when I returned home, I felt that emptiness that usually came with an empty heart...longing for a love that would never return. For those of you who do not know, my girl and I were dating in secret for the past seven years of our life. Her parents didn't want her to marry a guy whom she would have to stay up at night worrying whether or not he will return...or whether or not he will celebrate their child's birthday together.
In the end, the both of us eloped to Mississippi where we lived a happy life for almost four years now. It was just me, her, our kid - Aston, and our pet dog "Beagle". Although it wasn't a mansion that we lived in, we were contented with living in a little cottage by the sea.
A few weeks after my wife was checked into the hospital, the doctors there detected some anomalies in her blood and concurred that she had a problem in her liver...which meant that she needed a liver transplant.
Naturally, when she married me, it was against her parents' wishes and therefore, getting either of them to donate an organ for their outcast daughter was out of the question. So, I volunteered myself to be tested as a perspective organ donor.
The good news was, my liver was compatible with my wife's and that meant that I could let her live. But the bad news was - it would be at the cost of my life.
After all, we had promised each other..."to cherish and to hold, to love and honour, in sickness and in health, from this day on, till death do us part". What kind of man would I be if I just left her here to battle this by herself without helping her out.
It was on the morning of the 21st of June 1993 that I pulled my rookie along with me to the hospital to visit my wife. When we got there, I pulled my gun on one of my wife's attending doctor and fired a round into the air. This time I warned my rookie that I would kill the doctor if he didn't stop me.
Being the rookie he was, he actually ended up calling for SWAT backup just to disarm me. When the big guns arrived, I fired a shot into the air and gave them the same warning, all the while using the doctor as my shield.
After a thirty minute standoff, I decided to put an end to it. I whispered into the doctor's ear - "remember, use my liver for Elanore...and never tell her or my son what happened to me". After saying those words, I threw the doctor aside and rushed towards the sea of rifles aimed at me with my gun still in hand.
It didn't take long for the SWAT team to recognise that the doctor was out of harm's way and opened fire on me.
After all the smoke died down, I was looking down at my own body and I saw the doctor rushing towards me while two SWAT officers trying to restrain him.
In the end, my liver was transplanted to my wife and she now lives a fulfilling life with our son Aston.
