The Alpha King Call Boy
Chapter 216

Fiona

"I just realized something-his doctor never called me back. When I was there at the nursing home, I left a message for him. The nurse said he'd call me." Alexander frowned down at me. "Why don't you call him right now?"

I had just finished telling my husband about my idea for moving Grandfather here to the palace, creating a hospital suite in one of the many empty rooms and hiring medical staff. Alex's slightly narrowed eyes had seemed a bit skeptical at first, but of course he told me that if I decided I wanted to do such a thing, he would of course support me and do all he could to help.

He offered to take the baby, so we unspooled her from the wrap around my chest and I handed her off. Then we started walking back to the West Wing together, Alex holding Lexi and me calling the nursing home on speakerphone.

A nurse or receptionist of some sort answered the line. When I introduced myself and requested to speak with my grandfather's doctor, she got a nervous hitch to her voice and promised to go and find him right away.

I was on hold for about twenty seconds, listening to a crackly recording of an old, saxophone-heavy song from the eighties. Finally the line clicked, saving us from the obnoxious hold music.

"Hello, Fiona?" came a gruff, hurried voice that I recognized from long-past conversations.

"Yes, hello Doctor. I believe you may already know why 1 am calling?"

"Yes, yes. I am very sorry not to have called you sooner, Fiona.

Really, so terribly sorry. It has been quite busy here this week, I'm afraid-"

"Please, don't worry about it." I remembered the sweat on the tired brow of the nurse with whom I'd recently spoken. I knew that the staff at the nursing home worked hard. "I only hope you can give me an update now, if you have a few minutes to talk?" "Of course," he answered eagerly. "Of course."

And then he filled me in on the recent deterioration of my grandfather's condition. It sounded pretty bad. Grandfather was having trouble eating and drinking, and had lost a lot of weight over the past couple weeks.

Then lasked the doctor about my idea for moving Grandfather to the palace. He hemmed and hawed a bit, then told me that it sounded reasonable, and that he understood why it would be beneficial for us to have more time together. But his tone was overall subtly discouraging, and he agreed with me when I suggested that the move could potentially be disorienting and upsetting for the confused old man.

"I must warn you," the doctor said as we were wrapping up our conversation. "The next time you see your grandfather, you may be in for a bit of a shock. You ought to brace yourself for the dramatic change in his appearance. While we are able to provide him with fluids and some nutrients intravenously, we are struggling to get him to intake enough calories. He has become rather frail. I'm afraid such a problem is quite common with patients nearing the end." The end.

"Is he well enough to have a visitor?"

"Yes, yes," the doctor answered slowly. "You are welcome here any day, Fiona. Perhaps it would be best for you to call ahead, though, so my staff can confirm that it is... a good time... before you make the drive." I nodded. As if the doctor could see me.

And then I blurted out a question that I really wanted to ask, before fear of knowing the answer could stop me. "You said he is near to the end. How near, do you think? How much longer does he have?"

"Hm," the doctor grumbled, procrastinating. "Well. Tam sure you know that I cannot give you a precise answer. That is one of the things about this disease that can be so painful for families... living with the uncertainty," "Yes, but what is his prognosis?" I asked bossily. " Best and worst case scenarios."

The doctor coughed, then finally answered, "Best case, one year.

Worst case well, I think you already know. He has already been sick for a long time, Fiona."

After dinner, Alex and I left the baby with Nina and headed to a room near his study, where we were meeting with a consultant.

Brandon attended the meeting as well. He offered me a kindly smile and a handshake when we entered. I saw Alex narrow his eyes at his chief of staff, probably thinking he wished the man wasn't making an attempt to touch me. I made a snap decision to accept the handshake.

Brandon wasn't a very strong broadcaster. (Or perhaps he was simply an unemotional individual-or both.) As I expected, it was actually pleasant to shake his warm hand. I picked up hardly any feelings from him at all when we touched.

I liked Brandon, mostly because he was a true professional, and very good at his job. He made my and Alex's lives much easier than they would be without him. And he was easy to talk to - he didn't mince words and wasn't afraid to speak his mind.

The other man in the room was a short, red-haired stranger with round, red-framed glasses, He did not dare such an informal greeting. He bowed deeply when Brandon introduced me and Alex to him. From this small, shaky man I received an immediate sense of timid, anxious energy.

Brandon showed Alexander the NDA that he'd just had the man sign. It swore the weapons expert to hold confidential all that was discussed in this meeting.

Perhaps that was why he was so nervous.

The meeting began with a presentation that the expert had prepared at Alexander's request. He showed us dozens of images of all kinds of new and innovative weapons, explaining their capabilities and how they were to be handled. The presentation ended with a review of several explosive devices, which the man already knew was the primary category that Alex wished to discuss.

After the presentation, Alexander asked the big question.

"Those last devices that you showed us - the small grenades you say are strong enough to blast through stone - what would happen if you detonated one of those in a sandstone canyon? The kind with the red rocks?"

The small man's light brown eyes went narrow behind his thick glasses, then darted all around the room. He looked from Alex to Brandon to me, then back to Alex again.

"I don't know, he said slowly. "No one in the history of our world has ever detonated explosives on lithified sandstone. Those canyons are ancient landforms..."

"But what if they did?" Alex asked, trying to sound casually hypothetical.

"There is just no telling," the man answered quietly. "No telling what could happen if explosives were used in such a place. Nothing good, though. That much I know, The repercussions could be... well... catastrophic. Wh-why... why would anyone ever dare to find out?" His big, unblinking eyes made another frantic trip around the room.

He found no answers in any of our gazes. Only three unrelentingly stoic and serious stares that made him even more nervous than he was before.