Final Days (2 page)

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 w
hisky.  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, twinkling in the darkness.  The air was warm tonight because it was the last week of July, but autumn waited just around the corner.

H
er 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-t
hree 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.

In her inebriated state, the thought brought comfort from her dire future.

A death sentence.  No time off for good behavior.  No stay of execution.

She flung her arms out.
From now on, she lived life with every breath she took, all in.

“All in!” s
he called out to the universe.

“All in!”
she repeated with impact.

Dropping back on
to the tiled floor of the balcony, she curled up, pulling her arms and legs in close, grateful everything still worked.

Tomorrow she would book a flight to London.

THREE

The party went all night.  Her friends didn’t need much of a reason to plan a party.  Just that their favorite American friend had shown up unexpectedly two nights ago was reason enough.

Cecil, Roscoe, Patrice and Alisa had been inseparable
when they’d begun their reporting careers together.  Percy had sent Alisa after he hired her fifteen years ago to London, the lone American amongst a team of four.   They had become colleagues and friends instantly. 

They had
gone to war together.  Laughed and cried and recorded heartwarming and heartbreaking stories…together.

This
is what she came to London to do.  To see them for what might be the last time.  To laugh with them again, and talk about outrageous things they’d done together. 

Cecil and Roscoe were the wildest characters she had ever known.  Practical jokers, they were known for incredibly elaborate, expensive, and intrusive gags on friends and shocked co-workers.  Alisa loved them like brothers.

And Patrice.  Loud, aggressive, sometimes overwhelmingly obnoxious Patrice.  Who’d had a crush on Alisa from that first day they’d all bunched together into a small booth in a diner on the west side to muse about how they were going to change the world.  Youth was so wonderfully arrogant and optimistic.  They had gotten drunk and giggled all night, walking back to their tiny flat, drunk and stumbling, holding each other up.  And promised that they always would.

Now, at this farewell party that no one but Alisa knew was the last one, she gave Patrice a long hug, in which the gruff Patrice held her too tightly, because Alisa had always known she had the biggest and softest heart of all.  Once, years ago, Alisa had found her crying in the corner of their hotel room
after they had interviewed the mother of a child killed in Afghanistan.

And now, Patrice sensed something was wrong.

When she pulled back, Patrice held Alisa’s face in her hands.

“What’s going on, mate?” she asked.

“Nothing.  It’s all good, my friend.  Thank you for this lovely party.”

Patrice smiled again, and although she knew something
was
wrong, she didn’t pry further.

“Okay, then.  But you talk to me, if you need to, eh?”

“Absolutely.  Now, I think we need to join the boys in that drinking game.  Can’t let the men win, right?”

“
Oi,
no!  A travesty right enough!”

So
she ended a long night with her closest friends, having decided that she would leave them with these wonderful memories.

Alisa had always been the first one to turn in at night…a good eight hours
too important to sacrifice.  Not now.  She closed the party along with Cecil, Roscoe, and Patrice by monkey-stepping down the boulevard in front of their flat.  She couldn’t imagine a more perfect way to end their time together.

By the time she had to rise the next morning to catch a plane to Scotland, she’d had about three hours sleep. 

Before she went out the door, she left a special gift for each of them on her borrowed bed.  And a five thousand dollar check for one of the young women at the party who’d told them all that her six-year old daughter wanted to take ballet lessons, but she couldn’t afford them.  On the bottom of the check, Alisa had written a brief phrase. 
Let her dance!
  What?  It wasn’t like she was going to need that retirement account she had set up ten years ago!

Alisa laughed all the way to the Isle of Man
, her memories of so many crazy stunts with this crew of exceptional reporters.  They had done a lot of good, helped a lot of people, with their stories.  That was what a good reporter did.  They would have marvelous careers ahead of them, and she was sorry she wouldn’t be there to see it.  She’d always pictured the four of them someday sitting on the porch of a stately pillared home, old and complaining, telling war stories of their “glory” days.  Well, when they did, she hoped they would remember she was right there with them.

On her
bucket list, she wanted to stand on the ragged cliffs almost at the top of the world at land’s end.

Alisa rolled h
er head to look out the window of the plane.  She was exhausted, but in a good way.  As tired as she was, she could not sleep while her flight carried her across countryside so beautiful, she could not let herself miss one second.  Plenty of time to sleep later.

Her flight landed in Scotland on time, which wasn’t common, and she lifted her bag up carefully as she left the plane.  Her hands were weaker now, and sometimes her grasp wasn’t strong enough to support anything with much weight.  The symptoms of her condition were becoming more frequent.  If they could just hold off another six months, she would finish this journey.

It was so beautiful.  The winds were strong, violent at times and very cool, but she found it enervating and life affirming.  At this very moment, perched on the cliffs of one of the Shetland Islands, northernmost of the Scottish isles, she felt more alive than she ever had. 

Nothing matched the raw
ness of these ragged cliffs that cut the edge of land before the furious dark sea went on forever.  Straight down and inhospitable, the top of the sharp-edged cliffs made a rough seat as she sat alone with only a single seabird calling to her.

And the first tears began, slowly, then faster. 
An awful moment as she let herself finally accept that this was real, there was nothing going to change the future.  She
was
dying and it would be soon.  The loss, the awful loss, of the years she would not get.  The moments of happiness and sorrow she’d never know.  No chance now to have a family that she was never sure she wanted.  No great epic love.  She’d never get to look in a mirror and lament over increasing wrinkles and sagging jowls.

No point in planting a tree
, she’d never see it grown.  She had never had a pet.  Her mother had not been a kind woman and she’d hated animals, so there had never even been a fish in Alisa’s childhood.  But she’d always hoped someday to get a puppy or kitten, because her heart told her, even as a little girl, she would love it to pieces.

As much as she’d realized she’d
wanted to be there for the major human events, like the day a rocket left for Mars, or maybe finally the cure for cancer, it was the little moments of a life that she would never get, that she regretted most.

She thought of the little storage container she kept outside the city that held some family heirlooms, antique furniture she’d kept for the day she bought a little house in the country.  There was no point in keeping it now.

Alisa pulled her thick cable-knit sweater around her and slipped the collar up to cover her ears.  She was shivering now, the brutal northern wind off the wild sea almost an assault.  No matter.  It was good to feel it, to revel in the experience, because soon she would never feel cold again.  Never experience the warmth of a soft sweater against cool skin.  She wouldn’t know it, of course.  Death was the end of life and all things attached to it.

Suddenly, perched
at the top of the world overlooking the ragged edge of Scotland, her bucket list turned into things she would miss.

Star-filled skies.
  The full moon, Saturn’s stunning rings, Jupiter and those amazing Galilean moons.  Sexy high-heeled shoes.  The new season of a favorite TV show.  Warm chocolate chip cookies.  Waking up on the first day of spring to the sun and soft breezes to wander outside in bare feet with hot coffee, ready to say goodbye to winter for a little while.  Cicadas in late summer.  And the kitten she never got to have.

So much to lose.
  Life.  Precious.  More so when it’s stolen so soon.

Now, wrapped tight in the heavy sweater, Alisa just let herself breathe.  And enjoy this very moment.  That’s all
it was now.  Moments left, to find joy in every one of them.  Her job was easy now.  Live.  Love.  Breathe.

She was on a journey.  The final one
, because the symptoms were advancing quickly now.  Travel around the world one last time.  Enjoy every breath.  Say goodbye.

Pushing up, Alisa took one last lingering look at the angry sea.  She nodded before she turned away.  Goodbye Scotland.  Check.  Off the list.  She would not see this shoreline again.