Chapter 5 - The Colonel's Voice
The ambulance ride through the rain-slicked streets of Northwest Washington was silent except for the rhythmic whoosh of the high-flow ventilator and the distant wail of the escort sirens.
Two motorcycle officers from the United States Park Police ran interference at every intersection, clearing the avenues from Connecticut down to Wisconsin, throwing red and blue reflections across the wet asphalt.
I sat on the narrow bench beside the stretcher, holding Dad’s left hand.
His color was returning. The gray pallor had retreated, replaced by the faint, pink flush of capillary refill. The monitor above his head showed his oxygen saturation climbing: 84%... 89%... 94%.
"Claire," he murmured through the transparent plastic mask.
"I’m here, Dad. Don't talk. Save the breath."
He shook his head, his fingers squeezing mine with surprising firmness. He reached up with his free hand and pushed the edge of the mask down to his chin.
"Twenty-five years," he whispered, his eyes swimming with tears that did not fall. "Claire... twenty-five years. You were twenty-two. Your first ship. What was it? The frigate?"
"The Stephen W. Groves, Dad. FFG-29."
"You... you ate ramen," he choked out, a ragged sob escaping his throat. "Mercer told me. In the church... three weeks ago, Harris showed me the bank slips. You lived on six hundred dollars a month so I could have the injections."
"You built me, Dad," I said, leaning down until my forehead touched his knuckles. "You taught me how to read a chart. You taught me that an officer takes care of her people before she sits down to eat. You were my people."
"I failed you," he said.
The words were heavy, each one torn from the deepest part of his chest.
"When Gloria told you not to come back... I was weak, Claire. The lungs... the doctors said I had five years. I was terrified of dying in a state ward. I let her run the house because I didn't have the strength to fight her and the disease at the same time."
"You didn't know what they were doing, Dad."
"I should have known," he said, his voice hardening with an old, soldierly discipline. "A commander is responsible for everything his unit does or fails to do. That’s the code, isn't it? I saw the new cars. I saw the country club receipts. When I asked Gloria, she told me Evan was doing well on Wall Street. She told me Natalie was managing her investments. I wanted to believe them. I wanted to believe my children were good people."
He looked toward the small, reinforced window of the rear doors, where the headlights of the NCIS pursuit vehicle followed twenty feet behind our bumper.
"Where are they taking them?" he asked.
"Evan is being booked at the federal courthouse in Greenbelt," I said. "Gloria and Natalie are being questioned at the field office. Because of the amount—over a million dollars—the United States Attorney has already filed an emergency motion to freeze every asset associated with the LLC. The house in Bethesda. The bank accounts. The car leases."
Dad closed his eyes. A single tear leaked out, running down the deep crevice beside his nose.
"Let it go," he whispered.
I looked at him. "Dad?"
"Let the house go," he said, opening his eyes again. They were clear now, stripped of the fog that had dulled them for five years. "There is no home there, Claire. There has not been a home there since your mother decided that money was more important than honor. I want to die in a veterans' hospital with clean sheets and honest people."
"You’re not dying, Colonel," the flight surgeon sitting across from us said with a gentle smile. "Your lung capacity is diminished, sir, but the scarring hasn't hit the lower lobes yet. With the new antifibrotic regimen we have at Bethesda—the one your daughter’s foundation has been funding through the Naval Medical Research Center—we can stop the progression tomorrow morning."
Dad turned his head slowly to look at me.
"Your foundation?" he asked.
I swallowed hard, looking down at the white fabric of my trousers.
"The money didn't just go to Harris, Dad," I said softly. "When the chaplain told me eight years ago that the family was claiming the treatments were ineffective, I knew something was wrong. I couldn't prove it without an audit that would have destroyed your pension, so I started funneling research grants into the Navy’s pulmonary program. The clinical trial they’re putting you into tomorrow? It’s named the Thomas Whitmore Protocol."
My father didn't speak.
May you like
He pulled the plastic oxygen mask back over his mouth, closed his eyes, and held my hand so tight that the gold rings on my fingers bit into the bone.
Outside, the sirens dropped their tone as we turned into the grand, gate-lined drive of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The great stone tower, illuminated in white spotlights against the dark Maryland sky, rose above us like a fortress.
