His skin felt paper-thin. Cold.
“I’m sorry, Cecilia,” he said, voice rough. “I’m an old man. I don’t have the energy to fight her the way I used to.”
My throat tightened. “It’s fine, Colonel,” I whispered.
“It’s not,” he replied. He nodded toward the dining room, where laughter swelled again. “You cooked that meal. You feed them. Not just with food, but with what you give up to keep things running.”
He squeezed my hand gently. “You are my true daughter.”
That night, in the dim kitchen light, surrounded by the smell of dish soap and leftover gravy, he made me promise I wouldn’t leave him alone with them.
“Don’t leave me with these people,” he’d said quietly. “They’re waiting. I can feel it.”
I kept that promise.
For three months, I lived inside the fluorescent world of Walter Reed while Andrew’s health faded. I took unpaid leave. I slept in a vinyl chair that smelled like industrial disinfectant. I learned the rhythm of the hospital floor: carts rolling, nurses’ shoes squeaking, the soft beep of monitors punctuating the night.
I helped him with things he never wanted anyone to see. I stayed when he couldn’t sleep. I held his hand when pain made him restless, when memories made his eyes glassy and far away.
Samantha called once from Aspen, video bright and perfect, ski slopes behind her like a postcard. She asked if he could “expedite things,” because the daily cost was “astronomical.”
Justin visited once.
He stood in the doorway with a cologne-soaked handkerchief pressed to his nose, eyes flicking around the room like he couldn’t stand to look too closely.
“God,” he’d muttered. “How can you handle the smell.”
I said nothing. I just adjusted Andrew’s blanket and stayed.
It was in those last days that Andrew gave me his real orders.
One night around three in the morning, his hand clamped around my wrist. His grip was surprising, his fingers digging just enough to wake me fully. His eyes, usually clouded by medication, were suddenly clear and burning with urgency.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and a tear tracked down his cheek into gray stubble. “I raised monsters.”
I swallowed hard. “Sir—”
He pulled me closer with a strength that didn’t belong in his body anymore. “Listen. When I’m gone, they will move fast. They will try to take everything. They will say anything. They will crush anyone in their way.”
His breath rattled, but his focus stayed sharp. “I prepared something for you. I hid it well.”
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