A second ago, he had closed his eyes, thinking maybe — just maybe — it was all over. His body struck the hospital floor with such sudden finality that, for a second, the nurses hesitated to call it.
Just moments earlier, he had been giving a televised statement about preserving "American dignity." Now that same mouth hung slack, the words caught in his throat, stilled forever. The long years of power, of polished leather shoes and limousines, of a lifetime spent deciding who deserved what — all of it culminated in this.
The cold marble tiles pressed against his cheek as he slipped away, his vision darkening, until it wasn't.
Somewhere beneath the panic, his father's gravel-rough voice surfaced without invitation. It carried him back to a weathered porch in Ohio decades earlier.
Instilling order doesn't give you an excuse to be cruel, John. Order is what lets the good people sleep at night.
At the time, he was nine years old. Back then, he had believed every word without question, the way boys believe their fathers. He had spent sixty-one years building a life around that sentence, brick by careful brick, and never once, not at the podium, not in the mirror, not even now, dying, had he asked himself who got left outside the house he built.
Regret surged like cold water through his veins. If only I had a couple more years.If only those useless treatments had worked, like that overpaid doctor promised.
For a man who once sat at the peak of power, death came without applause. Only this sterile quiet, this blank screen.
So this is it. This… is death?