Chapter Four
2022
It was one of the most heart wrenching days of Alexis Castle's life. When she had gotten the call from her dad that Gramms had been taken to the emergency room, it hit her like a sledgehammer from behind. According to the attending physician, she had suffered a massive stroke caused by an undiagnosed embolism. She had looked so small and frail in the hospital bed in the I.C.U., having been in a coma since the paramedics arrived. Rick Webb, her grandfather, who had always been a larger than life figure to her, looked more like an empty shell of himself as he sat at her bedside holding her hand with tears running down his cheeks. He had been the one to find her, collapsed at their home, a few blocks from her dad's loft.
Three days later.
A decision had to be made. Alexis saw the hesitation on her grandfather's face clearly. The certainty of the decision was tearing him up inside. He had not left her side for three days, waiting for a prognosis. He'd held onto slim hope as every available test was run, and seeing those hopes dashed as each one came up negative.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Webb," the doctor told him, "her brain was deprived of oxygen for too long, and there seems to be no brain activity that we can detect. The only thing keeping her alive at this point is the life support apparatus."
"She wouldn't want to live like this, dad." she heard her father tell him with a heavy heart, with Kate supporting him. Johanna was outside, being kept distracted by Javi, Lanie and Kevin.
The doctor in her head, and the granddaughter in her heart warred with one another, but deep down she knew her father spoke the truth. This was not life, it was just existence which was not good enough for Martha Rogers Webb. Not by a long shot. Anyone who ever knew her, could see that.
"I know, son," Webb said, his voice hollow and devoid of hope, "I know."
After signing the appropriate forms, the doctor turned off the life support equipment and respectfully left the room. As her heart stopped beating, and the monitor flat-lined, Rick Webb took her hand, brushed a lock of hair from her face and quietly began to sing:
"The minstrel fell, but the foe-man's chain could not bear that proud soul under."
His voice broke, but he continued,
"The harp he loved never sang again..."
The words brought him no comfort, and caught in his throat, but Alexis picked up where he left off,
"...as he tore it's chords a-sunder."
After which her father, Kate, and Smith joined her
"He said no chain shall sully thee, oh soul of love and bravery.
Oh soul of love and bravery
Your songs were meant for the pure and free
They shall never sound in slavery!"
This one death, had done what three tours in Vietnam, and forty two years in counter-espionage and black ops could never accomplish. Richard Webb had finally been broken.
He joined her in death less than a month later. Lanie Esposito, Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York personally conducted the autopsy. Though she checked the box marked "natural causes," deep down, she knew that he had simply died of a broken heart.
He was buried next to Martha in a plot not twenty paces from that of Johanna Beckett with full military honors.
Out in the harbor a US Navy Warship fired an 11 gun salute befitting his rank.
A Navy Commander, knelt before her dad, handed him the neatly folded flag from Webb's coffin and said, "On behalf of the President of the United States and the Chief of Naval Operations, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your father's service to this Country and a grateful Navy." Then rose and saluted.
Little Johanna cringed in shock as the five man honor guard fired their three volleys into the air, and clung to her mother's leg for comfort as the lone Marine in the distance played taps on his bugle.
Upon returning to the loft, Rick had shut himself into his study and refused to come out, not even as Kate banged on the door in tears. He could think of only one way to truly immortalize the father he had only known for ten years. For the first time in nearly a year, he sat with his laptop and began to write. He didn't come out for nearly two days, though Kate did pick the lock on the door, and came in to make sure he ate and kissed Johanna good night.
When he was done, a new Richard Castle book series was born. The first was entitled "Nemesis Rising."
