I know its a short chapter, but I will have more later. Please enjoy and review. Not related to any of my other stories and not really based on any one of the seasons.
Five Years Later
Chapter 1
Mike was officially retired from the Navy. He just couldn't do it anymore. He had several deployments after the trip to Arctic and the Pandemic. Asia, the Med, the Indian Ocean, and shore duty. He helped restructure the government and the Navy after fiasco after fiasco. He had been promoted to Admiral and had been awarded with the Congressional Medal of Honor. He wanted as far from that life as he could get.
He had hired numerous private investigators and worked on finding his family himself. Just before he resigned his commission, he had found out that Christine had died, about the same time he was dealing with the Immunes. The death certificate alluded that she died in childbirth, which made no sense. She had made no mention of a pregnancy when Mike talked to her while he was still in the Arctic. As angry as she was, she would have told him.
What was even more confusing was that the death certificate didn't tell him what had happened to the baby that she had died having or what had happened to his girls. He had no doubt that the baby was his, he just didn't know if the baby or his girls were even alive and the trail had gone completely cold. Hospital records were sketchy at best and had no record of the baby or what his or her name was.
He resigned his commission and bought a small farm, sight unseen a couple hours from St. Louis. The realtor had told him the farmhouse needed work, which didn't bother Mike. He was fairly handy and it would give him something to concentrate on. As much as he loved his friends, he was tired of being upbeat around them. They had all found their families, or at the very least found out that their families had died. They could grieve. He couldn't. Grief meant admitting that his kids were dead, and he couldn't do that.
He packed his apartment up, only taking his clothes and pictures of his family and the crew. Not even bothering with the junky furniture he had. Said his goodbyes to Tom, Sasha, Meylan, Andrea, Russ and assorted other crew. He promised to stay in touch but everyone knew he wouldn't. Tom had pretty well accepted that the next call that he would get regarding Mike would be to tell him that he either drank himself to death or committed suicide. He just couldn't prevent it from happening. Mike was by no means an alcoholic and could get by just fine when he was on deployment, but when he was at his apartment; he had to have the whiskey to even sleep.
Tom helped him load up his truck and watched him drive away. He and Mike had been friends for years, and seen more action then either cared to admit but he couldn't help him with this. No one could. Tom had tried investigating it on his own. Looking at children placed into the system around the time of Christine's death but there was nothing listed for Grace or Hannah, Mike's daughters and they didn't even know rather the baby that Christine had died having lived or died, let alone a gender or name. It was like the baby, Hannah and Grace just disappeared into thin air and no one knew where to look for them.
Mike got to the farm after dark and was glad there was at least a couch to sleep on. The place was a lot bigger than he needed. It had four good sized bedrooms, but he would never use three of them. It wasn't like his kids were going to suddenly appear. Grace was fourteen when he left for the Arctic and so she would be nineteen now. He imagined her going to college and becoming the nurse that she dreamed of being when she was younger. Hannah had been nine and was such a happy child. He could imagine her charming all the boys. He hoped wherever they ended up, they had someone to love and protect them. He didn't ever imagine the baby, because if he or she didn't survive; he didn't want to be too attached to it.
After drinking several shots of whiskey just to feel somewhat sleepy he lay down and listened to the crickets. They lulled him to sleep. The house would need a lot of work and the farm was in disrepair. He needed to go to the nearby town the next day to get some groceries and a bed for himself. He didn't care about any other furniture.