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 her. 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.