Chapter 12 - THE CALL FROM FORT CARSON
The Army wanted me at Fort Carson for an urgent assignment.
Not deployment.
A temporary command responsibility.
Still, the timing felt cruel.
I read the orders twice.
Sophie watched from the stairs.
“You have to go.”
“I can request compassionate leave.”
“You already took emergency leave.”
“I can ask for more.”
“Do you want to?”
I hated the question.
“Yes.”
She studied me.
“Because of me?”
“Because I want to.”
That was new.
I called my commanding general.
I expected resistance.
Instead, he said, “Parker, take seventy-two hours.”
“Sir—”
“That wasn’t a negotiation.”
“Yes, sir.”
When I hung up, Sophie smirked.
“You got ordered to have feelings.”
“Apparently.”
The next two days were ordinary.
Medication alarms.
Short walks.
Bad television.
Rachel brought groceries and continued disliking me with impressive consistency.
Mom came over and cried in the kitchen where Sophie could not see.
Then Sophie’s phone rang.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
She listened.
“Are you sure?”
I stood.
She held up one finger.
The molecular testing had found a marker.
Not necessarily catastrophic.
But enough that Dr. Morris wanted another scan.
Soon.
Very soon.
The next morning, Sophie drank contrast solution and complained it tasted like melted plastic.
I sat beside her.
At noon, we waited for imaging.
At 3:10, Dr. Morris entered.
There was a spot near Sophie’s liver.
Small.
Unclear.
Could be benign.
Could be something else.
They needed a biopsy.
Sophie stared at the scan.
I waited for her to cry.
She did not.
She asked one question.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
That night, she stood in the kitchen in socks and my old Army sweatshirt.
Exactly like the morning she had shown me the first pregnancy test.
She looked at me.
“I can’t do this again.”
I stepped closer.
“Yes, you can.”
Her face hardened.
“I said I can’t.”
So I stopped.
Then corrected myself.
“Okay.”
She blinked.
I pulled out a chair.
“Then tonight you don’t.”
She sat down.
May you like
And for once, I did not tell her how to survive.
