ENTRY
OTACON: June 21st 2014. It's...I actually don't know what time it is. Dave doesn't have a clock in his room. It's gotta be really early, though. Around two in the morning. Dave's asleep. He's been pretty out of it since we arrived in Alaska last week. I brought everything for the book with me but all I can do is sit next to him and check his pulse every few moments.
When I told Dave I'd be with him until the end, I never actually thought about what the end would look like. It was this shapeless, almost abstract event that I knew had to happen eventually...I just never had an image of it. Even when I'd talk to Mei Ling before missions about taking care of Sunny if anything happened to us, it was just part of the prep. The idea of our mortality wasn't behind it at all. Well, not his mortality anyway.
When I met Dave on Shadow Moses, I almost didn't think he was human. We had known each other a whole hour before he single-handedly took out a Hind D without so much as blinking. For years, I couldn't figure out whether he was reckless or just suicidal because there is a difference. After learning about FOXDIE's effects, it was like he felt his fate pushing him...so he pushed back and purposely took these missions where his survival rate dropped into the negatives. It was scarier than Hell but seeing him constantly do this and live to tell about it eroded even my fears of him dying from anything.
Even after we realized what was happening to him-the arthritis, the wrinkling of his skin, the graying of his hair, the hardening of his arteries-I always talked about it like it was a cold that would just go away. He was a forty year old man who was aging like he was seventy and I never considered death an outcome. That's how wrapped up I was in my own damn delusions.
But what I'm seeing now...this is real. I'm helplessly watching him slip away.
(beat; choking up)
Where are my delusions when I need them?
