toppled on its back.
“Jack?”
When he looked over, Bonnie was standing a few feet from his bed holding something in her hand.
“The police dropped this off yesterday.” She held it up. It was the bag with Jack’s prescription meds. “They found it in the van. It was very unfortunate that Lizzie had to go back out that night. If she hadn’t, she’d obviously be alive today.”
“I told her not to go.”
“But she did. For you,” she replied.
The tears started to slide down her cheeks as she hurried from the room.
8
The room was small but clean. That wasn’t the problem. Jack had slept for months inside a shack with ten other infantrymen in the middle of a desert, where it was either too frigid or too hot. What Jack didn’t like here were the sounds. Folks during their last days of life did not make pleasant noises. Coughs, gagging, painful cries—but mostly it was the moaning. It never ceased. Then there was the squeak of the gurney wheels as the body of someone who had passed was taken away, the room freshened up for the next terminal case on the waiting list.
Most patients here were elderly. Yet Jack wasn’t the youngest person. There was a boy with final-stage leukemia two doors down. When Jack was being wheeled to his room he’d seen the little body in the bed: hairless head, vacant eyes, tubes all over him, barely breathing, just waiting for it to be over. His family would come every day; his mother was often here all the time. They would put on happy expressions when they were with him and then start bawling as soon as they left his side. Jack had witnessed this as they passed his doorway. All hunched over, weeping into their cupped hands. They were just waiting, too, for it to be over. And at the same time dreading when it would be.
Jack reached under his pillow and pulled out the calendar. January eleventh. He crossed it off. He had been here for five days. The average length of stay here, he’d heard, was three weeks. Without Lizzie, it would be three weeks too long.
He again reached under his pillow and pulled out the six now-crumpled envelopes with his letters to Lizzie inside them. He’d had Sammy bring them here from the house before it was listed for sale. He held them in his hands. The paper was splotched with his tears because he pulled them out and wept over them several times a day. What else did he have to do with his time? These letters now constituted a weight around his heart for a simple reason: Lizzie would never read them, never know what he was feeling in his last days of life. At the same time, it was the only thing allowing him to die with peace, with a measure of dignity. He put the letters away and just lay there, listening for the squeaks of the final gurney ride for another patient. They came with alarming regularity. Soon, he knew it would be his body on that stretcher.
He turned his head when the kids came in, followed by Fred. He was surprised to see Cecilia stroll in with her walker and portable oxygen tank resting in a burgundy sling. It was hard for her to go outside in the cold weather, yet she had done so for Jack. Jackie immediately climbed up on his dad’s lap, while Cory sat on the bed. Arms folded defiantly over her chest, Mikki stood by the door, as far away from everyone as she could be. She had on faded jeans with the knees torn out, heavy boots, a sleeveless unzipped parka, and a black long-sleeve T-shirt that said, REMEMBER DARFUR. Her hair was now orange. The color contrasted sharply with the dark circles under her eyes.
Cory had been saying something that only now Jack focused on. His son said, “But, Dad, you’ll be here and we’ll be way out there.”
“That’s the way Dad apparently wants it,” said Mikki sharply.
Jack turned to look at her. Father’s and daughter’s gazes locked until she finally looked away, with an eye roll tacked on.
Cory moved closer to him. “Look, I think the best thing we can do, Dad, is stay here with you. It just makes sense.”
Jackie, who was struggling with potty training, slid to the side of the bed and got down holding his privates.
“Gramps,” said Mikki, “Jackie has to go. And I’m not taking him this time.”
Fred saw what Jackie was doing and scuttled him off to the bathroom down the hall.
As soon as he was gone, Jack said, “You have to go, Cor.” He didn’t look at Mikki when he added, “You all do.”
“But we won’t be together, Dad,” said Cory. “We’ll never see each other.”
Cecilia, who’d been listening to all this, quietly spoke up. “I give you my word, Cory, that you will see your brother and sister early and often.”
Mikki came forward. Her sullen look was gone, replaced with a defiant one. “Okay, but what about Dad? He just stays here alone? That’s not fair.”
Jack said, “I’ll be with you. And your mom will too, in spirit,” he added a little lamely.
“Mom is dead. She can’t be with anyone,” snapped Mikki.
“Mikki,” said Cecilia reproachfully. “That’s not necessary.”
“Well, it’s true. We don’t need to be lied to. It’s bad enough that I have to go and live with them in Arizona.”
Tears filled Cory’s eyes, and he started to sob quietly. Jack pulled him closer.
Jackie and Fred came back in, and the visit lasted another half hour. Cecilia was the last to leave. She looked back at Jack. “You’ll never be alone, Jack. We all carry each other in our hearts.”
Those words were nice, and heartfelt, he knew, but Jack Armstrong had never felt so alone as he did right now. He had a question, though.
“Cecilia?”
She turned back, perhaps surprised by the sudden urgency in his voice. “Yes, Jack?”
Jack gathered his breath and said, “Lizzie told me she wanted to take the kids to the Palace next summer.”
Cecilia moved closer to him. “She told you that?” she asked. “The Palace? My God. After all this time.”
“I know. But maybe… maybe the kids could go there sometime?”
Cecilia gripped his hand. “I’ll see to it, Jack. I promise.”
9
They all came in to visit Jack for the last time. They would be flying out later that day to their new homes. Bonnie was there, as was Fred. Cory and Jackie crowded around their father, hugging, kissing, and talking all at once to him.
Jack was lying in bed, dressed in a fresh gown. His face and body were gaunt; the machines keeping him comfortable until he passed were going full blast. He looked at each of his kids for what he knew would be the final time. He’d already instructed Bonnie to have him cremated. “No funeral,” he’d told her. “I’m not putting the kids through that again.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I get there, Dad,” said Cory, who wouldn’t look away from his father.
“Me too!” chimed in Jackie.
Jack took several deep breaths as he prepared to do what had to be done. His kids would be gone forever in a few minutes, and he was determined to make these last moments as memorable and happy as possible.
“Got something for you,” said Jack. He’d had Sammy bring the three boxes to him. He slowly took them from the cabinet next to his bed and handed one to Cory and one to Jackie. He held the last one and gazed at Mikki. “For you.”
“What is it?” she asked, trying to seem disinterested, though he could tell her curiosity was piqued.
“Come see.”
She sighed, strolled over, and took the box from her father.
“Open them,” said Jack.
Cory and Jackie opened the boxes and looked down at the piece of metal with the purple ribbon attached.
Mikki’s was different.
Fred said to her, “That’s a Bronze Star. That’s for heroism in combat. Your dad was a real hero. The other ones are Purple Hearts for being… well, hurt in battle,” he finished, looking awkwardly at Cory and Jackie.
Jack said, “Open the box and think of me. Always be with you that way.”
Even Bonnie seemed genuinely moved by this gesture, and she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. But Jack wasn’t looking at h
er. He was watching his daughter. She touched the medal carefully, and her mouth started to tremble. When she looked up and saw her dad watching her, she closed the box and quickly stuck it in her bag.
Cecilia was the last to leave. She sat next to him and patted his hand with her wrinkled one.
“How do you feel, Jack, really?”
“About dying or saying good-bye to my kids for the last time?” he said weakly.
“I mean, do you feel like you want to let go?”
Jack turned to face her. The confusion, and even anger, seeping into his features was met by a radiant calm in hers.
“I’m in hospice, Cee. I’m dead.”
“Not yet you’re not.”
Jack looked away, sucked down a tortured breath. “Matter of time. Hours.”
“Do you want to let go?” she asked again.
“Yes. I do.”
“Okay, honey, okay.”
After Cecilia left, Jack lay there in the bed. His last ties to his family had been severed. It was over. He didn’t need to pull out the calendar. There would be no more dates to cross off. His hand moved to the call button. It was time now. He had prearranged this with the doctor. The machines keeping him alive would be turned off. He was done. It was time to go. All he wanted now was to see Lizzie. He conjured her face up in his mind’s eye. “It’s time, Lizzie,” he said. “It’s time.” The sense of relief was palpable.
However, his hand moved away from the button when Mikki came back into the room and held up the medal. “I just wanted to say that… that this was pretty cool.”
Father and daughter gazed awkwardly at each other, as though they were two long-lost friends reunited by chance. There was something in her eyes that Jack had not seen there for a long time.
“Mikki?” he said, his voice cracking.
She ran across the room and hugged him. Her breath burned against his cold neck, warming him, sending packets of energy, of strength, to all corners of his body. He squeezed back, as hard as his depleted energy would allow.
She said, “I love you so much. So much.”
Her body shook with the pain, the trauma of a child soon to be orphaned.
When she stood, Mikki kept her gaze away from him. When she spoke, her voice was husky. “Good-bye, Daddy.”
She turned and rushed from the room.
“Good-bye, Michelle,” Jack mumbled to the empty room.
10
Jack lay there for hours, until day evaporated to night. The clock ticked, and he didn’t move. His breathing was steady, buoyed by the machine that replenished his lungs, keeping him alive. Something was burning in his chest that he could not exactly identify or even precisely locate. His thoughts were focused on his last embrace with his daughter, her unspoken plea for him not to leave her. With the end of his life, with his last breath, the Armstrong children would be without parents. His finger had hovered over the nurse’s call button all day, ready to summon the doctor, to let it be over. But he never pushed it.
As the clock ticked, the burn in Jack’s chest continued to grow. It wasn’t painful; indeed, it warmed his throat, his arms, his legs, his feet, his hands. His eyes became teary and then dried; became teary and then dried again. Sobs came and went. And still his mind focused only on his daughter. That last embrace. That last silent plea.
The nurses came and went. He was fed with liquid, shot like a bullet into his body. The clock ticked, the air continued to pour into him. At precisely midnight Jack started feeling odd. His lungs were straining, as they had been when Jackie had pulled the line out of the converter at home.
This might be it, Jack thought, button or no button; not even the machines could keep him alive any longer. He had wondered what the moment would actually feel like. Wedged in a mass of burning metal in Iraq after being blown up in his Humvee, he had wondered that too: whether his last moments on earth would be thousands of miles away from Lizzie and his kids. What it would feel like. What would be waiting for him.
Who would not be scared? Terrified even? The last journey. The one everyone took alone. Without the comfort of a companion. And, unless one had faith, without the reassurance that something awaited him at the end.
He took another deep breath, and then another. His lungs were definitely weakening. He could not drive enough oxygen into them to sustain life. He reached up and fiddled with the line in his nose. That’s when he realized what the problem was. There was no airflow. He clicked on the bed light and turned to the wall. There was the problem; the line had come loose from the wall juncture. The pressure cuff had not come off, however, or he would’ve heard the air escaping into the room. He was about to press the call button but decided to see if he could push the line back in himself.
That’s when it struck him.
How long have I been breathing on my own?
He glanced at the vitals monitor. The alarm hadn’t gone off, though it should have. But as he gazed at the oxygen levels, he realized why the buzzer hadn’t sounded. His oxygen levels hadn’t dropped.
How was that possible?
He managed to push the line back in and took several deep breaths. Then he pulled the line out of his nose and breathed on his own for as long as he could. Ten minutes later, his lungs started to labor. Then he put the line back in.
What the hell is going on?
Over the next two hours, he kept pulling the line out and breathing on his own until he was up to fifteen minutes. His lungs normally felt like sacks of wet cement. Now they felt halfway normal.
At three a.m. he sat up in bed and then did the unthinkable. He released the side rail and swung around so his feet dangled over the sides of the bed. He inched forward until his toes touched the cold tile floor. Every part of him straining with the effort, little by little, Jack pushed himself up until most of his weight was supported by his legs. He could hold himself up for only a few seconds before collapsing back onto the sheets. Panting with the exertion, pain searing his weakened lungs, he repeated the movement twice more. Every muscle in his body was spasming from the strain.
Yet as the sweat cooled on his forehead, Jack smiled—for good reason.
He had just stood on his own power for the first time in months.
The next morning, after the hospice nurse had come through on her rounds, he edged to the side of the bed again, and his toes touched the floor. But then his hands slipped on the bedcovers and he crumpled to the floor. At first he panicked, his hand clawing for the call button, which was well out of reach. Then he calmed. The same methodical, practical nature that had carried him safely through Iraq and Afghanistan came back to him.
He grabbed the edge of the bed, tightened his grip, and pulled. His emaciated body slipped, slithered, and jerked until he was fully back on the bed. He lay there in quiet triumph, hard-earned sweat staining his hospice gown.
That night he half walked and half crawled to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in months. It was not a pretty sight. He looked eighty-four instead of thirty-four. A sense of hopelessness settled over him. He was fooling himself. But as he continued to gaze in the mirror, a familiar voice sounded in his head.
You can do this, Jack.
He looked around frantically, but he was all alone.
You can do this, honey.
It was Lizzie. It couldn’t be, of course, but it was.
He closed his eyes. “Can I?” he asked.
Yes, she said. You have to, Jack. For the children.
Jack crawled back to his bed and lay there. Had Lizzie really spoken to him? He didn’t know. Part of him knew it was impossible. But what was happening to him seemed impossible too. He closed his eyes, conjured her image in his mind, and smiled.
The next night he heard the squeak of the gurney. The patient next door to him would suffer no longer. The person was in a better place. Jack had seen the minister walk down the hallway, Bible in hand. A better place. But Jack was no longer thinking about dying. For the first time since
his death sentence had been pronounced,