WALLY LEFT ME IN THE HALL outside Ord’s room to suck it up. I got my game face on and stepped toward the door.
Dialogue I recognized, from a remastered holo of the last reel of a century-old flatscreen, trickled through the open door, out into the hallway. It was an Ord favorite. John Wayne, who played a U.S. Marine sergeant, was saying something about never feeling better in his life. As I recall, he said this during a lull in battle, while lighting up a cigarette, which shows you how times change. Bang. There was a shot, and the sergeant was dead. The end. Maybe times didn’t change.
I froze, then sagged against the doorjamb and recomposed myself, while I listened to music play over the end credits.
Silence.
I rapped on the doorjamb. “Sergeant Major?”
“Come! And close the door behind you, trainee!” It was an exchange Ord and I had shared decades ago, when I was the worst trainee he ever had, and he was to me, well, what he had been for as long as I had known him.
I stepped into the room, around the gauzy screen that shielded the rest of the hospital from his wrath.
Ord lay on top of his sheets, cranked up to the angle of a poolside chaise. His arms and legs toothpicked out of a hospital smock, without his uniform the pale and fragile limbs of an old man.
He smiled at me as midmorning sun angled across his torso. Now that I knew, the hollows in his cheeks seemed so obvious. He said, “Thought I might enjoy a vacation at taxpayer expense, sir!”
I nodded. “About time, Sergeant Major. Mind if I join you?”
He wrinkled his forehead. “Sir, our paperwork-”
“Is being handled by Staff Sergeant Tierney and Brigadier Hawkins. You have a problem with either of those gentlemen’s capacity?”
He stiffened. “Certainly not, sir.”
Lunch was better than Meals, Utility, Dessicated. Barely. We watched Sands of Iwo Jima again, together. By the time the sergeant died again, late-afternoon shadows shrouded the room.
I said, “I talked to Colonel Wallace.”
“I presumed as much, sir. If the general needs anything over the next week or two, I should still be able-”
I raised my palm. “What I need, Sergeant Major, is to come back again for the day, tomorrow. Maybe every day for a while. You okay with that?”
He tucked his chin against his chest. “If the general can spare the time.”
“I can lay my hands on Sergeant York by tomorrow. Not colorized. Vintage.”
He smiled. “I’d enjoy that, sir.”
I got up at three to handle morning reports, met staff an hour earlier than usual, and arrived in Ord’s hospital room before lunch. By that time, Wally’s vampires had him tubed up, so he was sucking whole blood like Bela Lugosi.
After Sergeant York, he cleared his throat. “Sir, Adjutant General’s Corps stopped by today before you got here. For my DR-663 CONUS Option Interview.”
I shook my head. “English, Sergeant Major?”
“Disposal of remains, sir. Next of kin of personnel deceased outside the Continental United States have the option of repatriation of remains to CONUS at government expense by first available transport.”
I pressed my lips together. “Damn generous of the government, isn’t it, Sergeant Major?”
“Sir, I identified you as next of kin-”
I shook my head. “I-”
“-and if it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d as soon not make the trip.”
I blinked, swallowed, then stretched a smile. “Always trying to save the taxpayers a buck, Sergeant Major?”
“Sir, it’s more that I’d like you to be there. And I’m told the Marini do military funerals up quite nicely.”
I mumbled, “Anything. Anything you want.”
“My will’s in my footlocker, upper right corner of the pull-up shelf. It’s up-to-date. Everything goes to the Noncommissioned Officers’ Orphan’s Fund.” He slid folded papers across his nightstand toward me. “GI life-insurance policy. Enough to get me buried, buy a round for everybody at the NCO Club, and-”
I hid my forehead behind my palm, then ran my hand across my hair. “Stop!”
Silence.
“Please. Sergeant Major, you don’t need to worry about that stuff. It will be taken care of. I swear.” I breathed deep. “Do you want to talk about-I dunno-anything?”
He nodded. “There is something. One item of personalty I want to pass outside the will.” He rolled on his side, then reached into his nightstand’s drawer. He drew out a leather-holstered pistol.
I smiled. “Ah. The forty-five.” Weapons had always been a busman’s holiday for Ord, the only “personalty” he valued that hadn’t been issued to him by the government.
The pistol he cradled, in a hand that seemed to have withered even since the preceding day, was his own M1911 Colt automatic. The design was pushing two centuries old. Too heavy, too hard to fire accurately, but Ord wasn’t the only careerist who continued to carry a service.45 into combat as his sidearm. Ord’s was an aftermarket blue steel version that he had souped up with custom-carved grips and hand balancing. And one unique modification made the pistol worth what it cost-a scratch along the receiver where the steel of Ord’s.45 had stopped a bullet bound for his heart.
He drew the pistol from its holster and turned it in his hands. “Saw me through the Second Afghan, sir. Saw you through the Armada business.”
I bowed as I sat, diplomat style. “A loan I was honored to receive. And lucky to repay.”
He gazed at the ceiling, then closed his eyes, nodding as he recited postings and battles. “The Relief of Ganymede. Sudan. Kazakhstan. Peru. Tibet. Headwaters of the Marin. Emerald River. The Tressen Barrens Offensive. Second Mousetrap…”
I eyed the insurance policy flimsy on the nightstand, and a coal-black, ancient trough of a scar on his forearm, a badge of some forgotten heroics, then sighed. “You didn’t get much for that life, Sergeant Major.”
Ord opened his eyes and smiled. “On the contrary, sir. Churchill said all we make by what we get is a living. We make a life by what we give.”
By delegating things I shouldn’t have, cutting out catnaps, and pounding ’Phets like I hadn’t since I was a teenager during finals, I managed to spend most of Ord’s waking hours with him. Our blood matched, so I gave him a pint, then lied to a different nurse about it so that she took another pint a day later. I wheedled a medic for precombat blood boosters, to fool my body into making more red cells, so I could be transfused again, though the medic told me they wouldn’t grow until it was too late.
No matter. Over the next nine days, the bug silently ate Ord alive, from the inside out.
On the tenth day, I sat with him for the last time.
His eyes had sunk into pits in his face. He dragged fingers across gray stubble on hollow cheeks and croaked. “They won’t shave me, sir. It’s driving me crazy.”
In thirty years, Ord had never admitted discomfort to a living soul, so far as I knew.
“I’ll speak to the nurse.” A lie. If he bled out one nick’s worth, there would be nothing left.
He said, “You’re going to outlive me.”
My throat swelled so I couldn’t speak. I waved my hand. “Ahhh.”
“I’m glad. No man should bury his son.”
He had slipped away from reality. I whispered, “Sergeant Major, I’m not-”
“Yes. The way Jude is yours. I’m as proud of you as you are of him.”
“Proud? I never got things right.”
“But you always tried.”
I laid my hand on his arm.
His lips moved. “You’re on your own now, Jason.”
Six minutes later, his skin was cold beneath my fingers.