Half-Past Dawn

CHAPTER 17

As Jack stared at his arm, pondering the fateful words, he couldn’t help shaking his head at the irony. So often in life, we hear predictions about tomorrow’s weather, next week’s championship game, or who will win the Oscar, and more often than not, those predictions, while not coming to pass, do have a shadow of truth. Through either random chance, analytical review, pure statistical odds, or just plain dumb luck, the modern-day soothsayers sometimes hit the mark, not always on target but with a semblance of accuracy.

In ancient Greece, it was the oracle of Delphi, the Middle Ages had Nostradamus, the early twentieth century had Rasputin, and for the last hundred or so years, there were astrologists, tarot card readers, and palmists, who preyed on the weak who were in search of hope and some way to make sense of their lives.

And with the tattoo, the mehndi piece of artwork on his arm, there was a semblance of truth to the prediction. The truth was just as dire; it was just that the timing and the cause of death were wrong.

Jack had had a nagging pain in his hip, something he ascribed to when he got hit by a pitch in a baseball game back in May between the DA’s and the mayor’s offices. While uncomfortable, it was nothing more than an inconvenience that would occasionally send a sharp pain through his body. He was actually proud of the injury, thinking it was like a war wound, as Deputy Mayor Brian McDonald’s pitches were known to reach ninety miles an hour. While the curve ball cut its arc quicker than Jack had anticipated, knocking him to the ground, he was able to walk to first despite the pain and the oohs and ahs of the sympathetic crowd.

But ten days ago, when he finally mentioned it to his doctor and friend Ryan McCourt, he had him come in for an X-ray just to be sure there was no permanent damage.

When Ryan got the X-ray back, with Jack sitting in the embarrassing half-gown on the table, he examined it on the light wall for all of two seconds before ripping it down. As he turned to Jack, a grave shadow fell over his face.

Within ten minutes, Jack was being run through an MRI machine for a full-body scan. Blood was drawn, urine requested. He was poked and prodded as a team of doctors came forth discussing the results.

Ryan sat him down and suggested that he call and ask Mia to come meet them. But Jack would have none of that. He suspected where this was going the moment he saw his friend’s face looking at the first X-ray.

Jack told him just to give him the news. He could deal with the treatment and would much prefer to have some time to formulate how he would break it to Mia and the girls that Daddy was sick but not to worry, that they had medicine and he would soon be on the mend.

But as Ryan sat down across from him, laying his hand on Jack’s shoulder, he couldn’t hold back his emotions.

Ryan told him that it was cancer and that it had long since spread, taking hold in his liver, his pancreas, and, worst of all, his brain. The disease had yet to manifest itself outwardly, but the most troubling tumor was pressing on an area of his cerebral cortex and could possibly affect his memory, cause him to hallucinate and become delusional, or interfere with a host of other higher brain functions.

Feeling as if he had been hit by a train, Jack walked out of Ryan’s office.

That was ten days ago. Since then, he had reformulated time and again how he would tell Mia, how he would find the words of assurance and hope that everything would be all right, even though he knew it wouldn’t. He had arranged for the girls to go to his mom’s for a week and had every intention of telling Mia of his prognosis when they arrived home. But when he took her in his arms, as she whispered in his ear about how much she had missed his touch, how much she needed him, his heart broke. The news could wait. They needed this time together. He made subtle hints about her staying focused in the moment, about turning off the phone and the BlackBerrys, finding uninterrupted comfort in the here and now, for he knew there would be no next year, next summer, next Christmas.

He had put up a facade not only to Mia but also to his friends, those at work, his campaign, even his mother. He had seen the devastation on her face when she thought he had died that morning and knew she couldn’t handle news like that again.

Jack had no idea how to tell the world that he was dying. He was so good at dealing with other people’s pain and suffering, being the voice of wisdom and reason. He had always been the shoulder to cry on, but now he did not want to reverse that role.

The doctors said they could begin chemo and radiation, but it would only forestall death, not prevent it or cure him. And it would, without question, destroy the quality of life he currently held on to. Jack wasn’t about to become a burden, to have his wife look after him every day as he withered, slowly losing his mental faculties.

Ryan advised him that he should stop work and that the growth of the small tumor in his brain might be slowed with some radical treatment so he could at least have some more of what little life he had remaining.

Wrapped up in conviction rates, trial victories, and landmark settlements, Jack had forgotten to live, to embrace the simple pleasures around him, thinking himself immortal. What scared him deep down was that he had never imagined himself dying so young, dying in such a way. Modern medicine, with all of its treatments, prolonging life no matter the quality, eking out the last breath from a mindless, useless husk before allowing the soul to be surrendered to the hereafter, didn’t seem modern at all. Jack couldn’t help wondering if that was progress or regression in the evolving history of man.

In so many cultures, there were good deaths. Death on the battlefield, the greatest honor in the Viking world, to be carried off to Valhalla by the Valkyries with a sword thrust through your chest; a samurai dying in the heat of battle, giving his life in defending the empire of his deity the emperor; the soldier giving his life to save his comrades.

But Ryan’s MRI and diagnosis made it clear: that wouldn’t be the case for Jack. There would be no sword in hand, no supreme sacrifice in the name of God, no glorious death on the battlefield. And so, as he pondered the words of the fateful tattoo on his arm, Jack wondered what death had in store for him. Would it be a good death or simply an uneventful, powerless demise that he had no way of preventing?

And, he thought, if there was any truth to the markings, he was running out of time.

With Mia gone, with her life in danger, finding her and saving her were paramount. Getting her back was not just about how much he loved her but how much the girls would need her once he was gone. Whether he was to die tomorrow or six months from now, everything was about saving the only parent his children would have.

Jack would do whatever it took to get Mia back, he would face whoever had attacked them on that bridge, and if he died in saving her, if he gave his life so she would live. It would all be worth it, it would be a good death.