Final Days Read online

  FINAL DAYS

  C.L. QUINN

  Published Nov 2013

  Blak Kat Publishing

  All Rights Reserved

  Once in every life, love should leave you without a choice…

  Once in every life, it should take your breath away.

  “Once upon a time” should happen once in every life.

  Song Lyric by Billy Mann and Leslie Satcher

  In memory of Duncan, “I love you to the moon and back.”

  Readers who came from Darkened Days, be aware this book begins with Alisa’s story a short time before she meets Koen in Book Four, and includes their first meeting from that book.

  Prologue

  What a rush! Adrenaline high on steroids!

  Alisa had never jumped out of a plane before. Never expected to. But…what the hell! If her subject, a triple amputee, braved it, so could she!

  Alisa caught Peter’s eyes as he scanned the open sky. Their smiles lit up that brilliant cerulean blue that stretched from horizon to horizon. She shot him the double thumbs up. He shot back a thumb up with his right hand, the only one he had left after his recent tour in the Middle East. They were doing tandem jumps with two professional skydivers who made everything look so easy. From the moment they arrived, she and Peter had felt complete trust that these big men would get them into the sky and back on the ground safely. Still, stepping out of the plane had been terrifying.

  She looked to the horizon, which seemed like it extended to the ends of the earth. Well, it did…it was just so incredible to be able to see the sky like that. She was glad she let Peter convince her to come with him.

  What an amazing man. Even with the loss of both legs above the knee and his entire left arm, his spirit of joy and hope was unbelievable. That’s why she’d flown here to Wyoming to interview him. He deserved to have his day, because he was the essence of a hero. A lovely soul, he told her he was a lucky man to get to fight to protect people, and to get to come home from that war when so many of his friends did not.

  She didn’t know if she could do that. So joyfully pick up a life shattered on the battlefield. A body so broken, nothing you did before would work now. He even had a head injury that affected his ability to learn new things. He’d laughed when she brought that up and told her, with his slow drawl, that he’d learned enough already. The other stuff would just get in the way. Brave. Forgiving. An angel on earth. The best of what it meant to be human. She was half in love with the sweet young man.

  Back on the ground, finally free of the straps and cables, she hurried over to hug Peter, now comfortable and safe in his wheelchair.

  “I cannot believe I let you talk me into that! And thank God you did! That was spectacular!”

  “Wasn’t it? I always knew I wanted to fly. You made a pretty bird, Alisa.”

  “Thank you. I thought you were quite the dashing bird yourself.”

  “Missing my tail feathers, though.”

  She shook her head with a soft smile.

  “Didn’t stop you from flying, did it?”

  “No, ma’am. I never expect to let it do so, either. Life goes so quick, not enough time to see the whole of that sky. I don’t plan to let this little problem stop me.”

  Little problem. Wow. Alisa brushed moisture from her eyes. If all people could see the world from this young man’s eyes, everyone would be so much happier.

  “You’re remarkable, Pete. I’ve never met anyone like you. Thank you for teaching me what matters. I won’t ever forget.”

  “It’s just up to each of us to find the joy. No matter what life gives us. Sometimes it’s hard, but it usually can be found. We’re not alone. Look at me today. I wanted to jump out of an airplane. A strong man was here to help me and a beautiful woman flew with me. My life has never looked better. That’s not luck or providence. That’s choice.”

  Alisa couldn’t help herself, she hugged him again.

  Fifteen years ago when she was a young, inexperienced reporter, she’d forced her boss Percy to take her on. Even at 18, just out of high school, she had known it was what she wanted to do. She had walked in off the street in downtown Chicago, blew past his secretary, and convinced Percy, editor of the paper for only three months at that time, that she would be his top reporter someday.

  Percy had not been disappointed.

  Since then, she’d traveled around the world, met people who were considered important and powerful, and done high impact interviews with them. Yet she’d come back home after all those “important” people to do what she knew would be one of the greatest interviews of her career with an injured soldier who still believed in his choice to enlist and serve his country.

  Two nights later, in her apartment, eight stories above the city of Chicago, with a bottle of white wine and four cardboard boxes of Chinese takeout, she wrote Pete’s story. It took her late into the night, but that was always the time she did her best work. As she typed the final words, the sun began to peek over the horizon. Her windows faced east, so she walked out onto her balcony as the magenta sky gave way to honeyed peach and then bright white.

  Alisa loved this life. It had brought her joy and satisfaction beyond anything she’d ever expected. The man who took a chance on that untried young woman, her boss Percy, had become family. There was no one on earth she trusted more than that man. She knew he felt exactly the same way by the way he worried about her every time she went overseas on assignment, which was often. She knew how lucky she’d been and never took anything for granted.

  Pete was right. Choices made your life. She was grateful hers had led her here.

  One

  The diagnosis finally came down. The symptoms had been so slight for such a long time and she’d just been so busy. Who had time to worry about a muscle twitch or clumsiness when the story had to be told? When there were planes to catch and seas to sail? When a young woman had the entire world stretched out before her.

  She had what seemed like forever to discover it, find bold adventures, exciting places and people to meet. Ride the waves and change the world. Fall in love. She had to be there to tell the stories.

  Too busy to stop for some tests in a hospital in Chicago on a brief layover set up by her boss.

  Busybody. Interfering where he shouldn’t. Pain in the ass. Yeah, she knew he loved her like the daughter he never had. She loved him back, like the father she’d never known. And she knew something was terribly wrong. He just made her admit it.

  The symptoms were getting worse. There were times her legs just didn’t want to obey...lately she stumbled a lot. And although she wanted to say it was just clumsiness, the truth was, she’d never been clumsy.

  No. Percy was right. She needed to keep those appointments.

  They lasted two weeks, the various doctor visits and out-patient tests in the hospital. Then a diagnosis that shocked her and Percy, who sat by her side when Dr. Patel called her in to share the results.

  ALS. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. More popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

  She hadn’t reacted. What was there to say? Degenerative. She would lose her ability to do anything physical at all. A devastating disease. Terminal. A thief.

  Eventually, she looked directly into the doctor’s kind eyes.

  “You’re sure?” was all she asked, only vaguely aware of Percy taking her hand. She couldn’t really feel it.

  Dr. Patel nodded.

  “I’m sorry, but yes. We do have options.”

  “It’s terminal. Right? And soon? Truth now, doctor, thank you. I’m a reporter, I deal in the truth. Please don’t think it’s okay to soften the blow. There’s nothing soft here. I’m used to cold, hard reality, and I’d rather know exactly what I face.”

  Somewhere in the back of her mind she
was amazed that she sounded so reasonable. And wow, she was taking this well. Wasn’t she? It’s not everyday someone gets a death sentence. Percy’s hand tightened on hers. She was grateful. It gave her something to focus on while her world tilted radically, threatening to throw her off.

  Alisa cleared her throat.

  “So, not just sore muscles. Bottom line. Bottom line, Doc. How long before…” She stopped. Then looked at Percy, who had shiny eyes and quivering lips. Sad for her. For him. Oh, she hated pity. They would all treat her that way. She couldn’t stand that. When was the next flight to Bangkok?

  “How long do you have?” Dr. Patel finished her sentence. She thought how he must have to do this too often. What a shit job! Telling people they are going to die.

  “Yes.”

  “We don’t focus on that, Alisa. It’s impossible to answer anyway. Our job now is to keep you as well as we can for as long as possible. Some people live quite a few years after diagnosis.”

  Though not as a fully functioning person, Alisa thought. Not as a woman able to live her life. She realized Dr. Patel was still speaking.

  “You are my mission now. My job is to help you any way I can to have a longer quality of life. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you it was just sore muscles.”

  “It’s okay,” Alisa said quietly. What else was there to say?

  He explained some new medications that helped to delay symptoms, some more tests, appointments with other doctors. Only part of her tried to listen, but it wasn’t important. Not now. Now there was just the realization, slowly making its way to her. Just a mantra repeating in her head. It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.

  Eventually Percy thanked the doctor, set up a round of appointments for her, and then led her out into a brilliant shiny morning that seemed cruelly offensive to Alisa now. She fished out her overlarge sunglasses that cost a week’s pay, but she loved them and was willing to pay the price. Now, they felt like a piece of crap in her hands as she slid them over her eyes.

  Percy led her to his heavy old Chrysler, a traditional reliable vehicle for a traditional reliable man.

  After she’d belted in, he glanced at her staring straight ahead.

  “Alisa, sweetheart, I’d give anything to change this. I’d take it myself if I could.”

  He made her laugh.

  “You old goat. You would, too. I love you for that, but… This can’t be changed. You told me a year ago to see a doctor, but I didn’t listen. Well, I guess it wouldn’t have changed this diagnosis anyway. And since there isn’t much they can do, well, timing doesn’t matter. Gave me an extra year of glorious ignorance.”

  She paused and continued to stare straight out the windshield for several more minutes. Then finally turned to look at him.

  “I’m living a day in only one of perhaps about a thousand left, if we assume the average of three years for a patient with ALS. When Dr. Patel mentioned the unlikely possibility two weeks ago, I looked it up anyway. That’s what I’ve seen on the internet. Prognosis. Degenerative. Loss of muscle function, including eventually the ability to eat and speak. Followed by death. Within an average of three to five years following diagnosis. I’ll just have to have Nurse Hallie put this in her big book of boo-boos.”

  Percy’s head swung around. “What?”

  She sighed. “It’s a children’s show. Called Doc McStuffins. About a little girl who plays doctor. Her nurse is a purple hippo named Hallie, and that’s one of her lines.”

  Alisa’s voice cracked then and she dropped her head to wipe away tears that made it to her eyes in spite of her best efforts.

  “Um…” A long pause. “This is a really big boo-boo, Percy.”

  “God, I know, sweetie. You know how much I love you, don’t you?”

  She looked up at him with those huge blue eyes that had won him from the first moment he met her.

  “As big as the moon?”

  “Bigger. I remember that scrawny girl that walked into my office fifteen years ago and demanded I give her an entry level position because she was going to be my star reporter someday. I will never forget her. And you did it, too, Alisa. You were the best damned reporter I ever worked with.”

  “Oh, shit, Perce. Don’t slip into past tense. I’m still the best damn reporter you’ve ever worked with.”

  He finally smiled. “Always, sweetie. Always.”

  TWO

  Sitting on the balcony in the dark, the lights of the city she loved stared at her from every direction. She wished she could see the stars better from where she was, but that was the price you paid for living in the big city. It was worth it, but now, for some desperate reason, she wanted to see those stars. She needed to seek…what? Permanence? A promise that tomorrow the sun would rise and each night the canopy of starry patterns would slowly spin in the same way they had done for millennia.

  Yeah. Permanence. Because she didn’t have any sense of that now. If things went the way they likely would, she would be counting the days left in her life in numbers so small, it seemed impossible to believe.

  Damn it!

  Alisa stood and went to the chrome railing, a bottle of Crown Royal held loosely in her hand, and searched the smoky sky. Only half full, she sipped directly from the crown-shaped bottle because a glass seemed redundant and she liked the feel of the odd shape.

  Clouds tonight. Even if she could have seen the stars in the city, they weren’t visible right now. She felt so abandoned. Alone in this great big universe. Because…

  Shaking her head at the suddenness of how her life had changed, she leaned forward.

  “I’m dying,” she whispered, to the universe that didn’t seem to care anymore. Words that were impossibly alien and completely unreal.

  “I’m dying,” she said, louder, as if she might forget.

  With shaky hands she took a sip of the whisky. It just seemed such a normal thing to do. So did standing there leaning over the balcony yelling at the sky.

  “But there are so many things I have yet to do. I want to buy a house in the country. I want to plant corn and sit on a porch and watch it grow. I want a damn puppy! I don’t know if I ever wanted children, but damn you for taking that possibility away!”

  What? Who was she yelling at? The universe? God? Her sixth grade teacher?

  Alisa backed away and dropped into the expensive lounge chair Percy had bought her for her birthday before either of them had any idea it would possibly be her last.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to forget Dr. Patel’s face when he came into the exam room. Only she never would, because that was the moment she knew her life was changed forever. When her world tilted on its axis and rolled out of orbit. Never to be fixed. Broken. Like her future. She laughed bitterly as she remembered a line from a song by Queen. Who wants to live forever? And stopped laughing when she whispered out loud on that big balcony, “I do.”

  Everything about this world fascinated her. The land, the sky, the seas, the people. The beautiful variety of life on air or land. And below, in the still not fully charted deep waters. New creatures mankind had never seen likely still lurked in the inhospitable places people hadn’t explored yet.

  Alisa wanted to be there for that. For space journeys that lay ahead for mankind, designed by minds so much greater than hers.

  As a reporter, she’d seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. And the sublime. Crawled waist deep in the thick of war. Watched hunger, hate, love, despair and hope all over the globe. And altruism beyond all belief. She’d gone as low as possible to the Mariana’s Trench in the Atlantic, where extreme life existed in extreme conditions. Where the bowels of the earth belched 500 degree waters up into the sea at a level so deep it would crush a man without the proper vehicle. And as high as most people would ever go when she jumped out of a plane recently with Peter.

  She took a long sip. Now the whiskey was working well and everything was a little out of focus. And really pretty. The lights of the city looked like little Tinkerbells all around her, twink
ling in the darkness. The air was warm tonight because it was the last week of July, but autumn waited just around the corner.

  Her favorite time of year would come soon, September and October, when summer heat gave way to crisp night air, the smell of wood burning in stoves, and leaves rustling high on the trees.

  This might be the last autumn in which she would be able to walk through the tall cottonwoods as they dropped huge crunchy leaves from great heights. The last time she’d go to the ocean wrapped in a thick fisherman’s sweater to watch the geese migrate or see New England’s brilliant displays as its trees burst into flaming colors found nowhere else on earth.

  In spite of the alcohol she’d imbibed, her mind touched on why she was here, alone, getting drunk, and it was sobering. Her beautiful life was nearly finished.

  She hadn’t cried yet. It didn’t seem time. So much more to cry about later when she could no longer walk. Or lift her hand. Or write. She took a long, deep breath. Or swallow.

  There were so many things she wanted to do before it was too late. Ride a thoroughbred Arabian horse. And a dirty road-weary Harley. Maybe an elephant. Pet a tiger.

  She wanted to fly again, too. In a glider, quiet, on the wind like a bird. Or with that wing suit. God, that would be awesome. She had little to lose now, and she decided right there she was going to do it. All of it.

  The ultimate goodbye tour. A magnificent journey. See all the places she’d loved in her life first. Linger in London, party in Paris, snorkel in New Zealand. One place she’d never been yet was Dubai, and it was on her unexpected bucket list. Architectural genius’s had created buildings of the future, man-made islands, and magic on the sand. She needed to see it before it was too late.

  Thirty-three years old. And she had a bucket list. How was that ever right?

  Alisa hung over the edge of the balcony, very drunk, the bottle of whiskey gone now. Yes, she realized it was dangerous, knew she was unsteady, and it was a long way down if she went over. But it didn’t bother her. From now on, her motto was “No brakes.” Go all out, all in. Make every moment count. And if something happened while she was climbing a mountain, or jumping off one, then what a rush and what a way to go.