Chapter 36: The Truth about Bitter Ends VI

"It's excessive to have my medications switched," said Cecilia, flipping through a copy of her grandfather's favorite novel—a crime story with a haunted detective reeling from the recent passing of his wife. "I gave you my word and that should be enough."

"I agree, it should, but how many times before have you given me your word and betrayed my trust," answered Silas. "I will admit that it is excessive, but I am doing it for your own good. I don't want this to be another Graham."

Another Graham.

Comparing Roy to Graham started to annoy her because of how often it came to the surface, especially after the Fuhrer spoke the same words to her at his party. She initially feared the possibility of Roy following in Graham's footsteps and attempting to turn her over for exploitation to reap a benefit for himself. Time changed her mind. She believed in Roy to the point that she knew he would not do anything that would bring her harm.

He wouldn't hurt her. He and Graham were like the differences between night and day.

Graham.

She met him while bussing tables at the restaurant where she worked. It was the middle of flu season and a handful of their staff had called in sick, including the only busboy on the night shift. She caught Graham watching her as she wiped circles over the surface of a table she'd finished clearing and stole a glance of his face, noting he was handsome.

He wasn't in uniform that evening when she approached his side asking if he wanted her to top his coffee off and she found out much later that he was a military man.

Graham nodded and very awkwardly added, "My date stood me up."

Her heart fluttered at the sudden advantage she possessed because whatever woman he planned to meet decided not to show up. She inwardly asked herself to relax and retained a cool expression.

She laughed lightly. "You'd be surprised how often that happens here. The club meeting gets here a little before nine if you'd like to join."

"Does it?" he asked, brown eyes going wide.

"No," she said, amused. "I'm joking."

"Oh!" And he laughed with an embarrassed flush coloring his cheeks. "That was—that was a great joke."

She refilled his coffee and walked back into the kitchen.

One of her co-workers, who had been serving tables and seen her chatting it up with Graham, teased her about the handsome loner in the couple's booth. The entire time she was helping in the back washing dishes, she thought about that man, knowing that she would not see him again as it was almost closing time when she left the kitchen to help the two servers wipe the tables down.

She found him sitting in the same place she'd left him. She approached him, fighting back a smile.

"Sorry to say, but we're about to close up," she told him.

"Oh, right, of course." He reached for his coat beside him, sliding out of his seat. She stepped aside to allow him to get out unobstructed and noticed he was about a foot taller than she, his body muscled underneath his dress shirt. He left money on the table to pay his bill. He turned back to her as he was leaving, surprising her. "Miss Sarah—"

She waved her hands in front of herself, knowing he got that name from the nametag pinned to her shirt. "My name isn't Sarah."

"It isn't?"

"It's Rhea."

"I'm Graham."

She smiled. "Nice to meet you."

He repeated the words. "Thank you for topping me off. The coffee."

"No problem."

Graham would henceforth drop by the restaurant on his own at least once every week and because she worked in the kitchen as a cook's assistant, she had several members of the restaurant's staff delivering messages between them.

The man she met that day, the one that courted her for weeks before finally asking her on a formal date, the one who loved her and promised to marry her—she didn't think he'd betray her.

But…when she sat him down and told her story from start to finish, he held her tremulous form in his arms rubbing circles on her back. A day later, Silas appeared at her doorway, blond hair askew and the dress shirt underneath his coat stained in blood. She had never seen Silas as angry as he had been that day when he vehemently questioned her sanity.

"He went straight to the Fuhrer's office, Caitriona!"

She recalled the weight of her heart increase and shouted, "What did you do to him?"

"I did what needed to be done," Silas stated, silencing her.

She tried to run past him as if she knew where she would have to go to see Graham one last time, but Silas blocked her path even as she pummeled him, screeching incoherently, crying without the promise of conclusion. She felt the pain of Graham's loss and the cruelty of her father, but the consequences of Graham's decision, she felt those a week later bleeding out in a cold alleyway wishing for a quick death.

"Why is it always Graham?" asked Cecilia, chasing the memory of him from her mind.

Silas approached the side of her bed, putting his hand over the back of her head to draw her close enough to kiss the top of her head. "I'm sorry it sounds like I am constantly throwing that in your face, but those were trying times. Graham was a mistake and I warned you about your involvement with him."

"Roy would never do what Graham did, you know that."

"Even so, you cannot be together, Cath."

"I understand that."

"I worry that you truly don't." Silas released her. "Please accept that this is the best course of action and that I am sorry that it is." He handed her that morning's antibiotics. "Drink up and get some rest."

She stared down at the medicine. "I'm not going to give up on him."

Silas sighed. "Don't be stubborn."

"I'll go away with you. I'll do whatever it takes to be safe," she assured, "but I'm not going to give up on Roy. I can wait. I can be patient. There will be a time when I'll be able to live a normal life. I believe that." She lowered her eyes. "I have to."

"And if he gives up on you? If he falls in love with someone else and starts a family?"

"I'll be happy for him."

"And what if your feelings change?"

"I don't know, but this is how I feel now...I don't know about the future. I don't know if being apart will make my feelings go away, but I know, right now, that I'm in love with him. Just as you said."

Silas nodded.

He stayed for another half hour before keeping his conversation going with the doctor in charge outside her room's door. It wouldn't be long before she was discharged.

Her time was running out.

Cecilia entertained a simple plan to say goodbye to Roy without Silas's knowledge. Silas won over the whole staff taking care of her and all of them happily accommodated his requests. It took her a few days to memorize the routines and schedules of the nurses who administered her medication, particularly the painkillers that put her to sleep.

Silas visited at specific hours. Wyatt dropped in less because he wasn't able to leave his practice, but he called in advance to let her know if she should expect him since she regained consciousness.

Cecilia recalled the frequency of Roy's visits as if they were memories from a distant past being filtered through a thick fog in her mind. Bits and pieces of them would reemerge in her head as the haze left her brain and she would lay in bed assembling them like a puzzle.

Roy arrived at her hospital room minutes after the strongest of her medications was administrated. The time it took for him to walk from the entrance of the hospital to her room was enough for the morphine to take effect. Her lids were too heavy to pull back and her mouth felt as if it was glued shut. She tried hard, on several occasions, to give Roy some indication that she was okay, conscious for the first several minutes of his stay, hung on every word before she plummeted into a seemingly bottomless sleep.

She had become a part of his daily routine. Every day, she listened to Roy talk. She felt the heat of his body sink into her hand from the tips of his fingers. She longed to see his face and watch his lips move as he spoke words that bounced off the walls of her mind like soft echoes.

He often talked about his day, but the details were skimp when it came to the classified work, but he spoke about his interactions with his subordinates. He unburdened himself to her as if it were enough to bridge the gap between them and his sincerity amplified her own longing to connect.

"I wanted to tell you these things under different circumstances," she'd heard him say that during his last visit. She recalled the long pause and the feathery touch of his fingers on the inside of her palm. "I…Ceci—Caitriona—I don't know what to call you. So, tell me."

She wanted to tell him that the sound of her name leaving his lips warmed her heart. She wished she could hold his hand in hers and kiss his lips as she said goodbye. She never planned to tell him to wait for her because her future had never been certain and making long-term plans had been useless, but she hated the idea of telling herself not to either.

The uncertainty of the future frightened her more than ever.

Cecilia pushed it from her mind. She checked the clock on the wall. Silas and her doctor parted ways. Her father slipped into her room one last time to take his jacket from the couch and kiss her goodbye.

The nurse wouldn't enter her bedroom until another half hour, allowing her a sufficient amount of time to rummage through the pack she asked her grandfather to bring from their home in Central city. She tugged free the journal she'd kept as a young girl and set it on the bed before storing the bag in the small closet.

She waited for the nurse to enter the room on the dot with a tiny bottle of the clear painkiller and a new syringe in the pockets of her green uniform. The nurse smiled as she approached Cecilia's IV drop, taking one of the transparent tubes in her hand for a passing second, making certain that everything was in order.

"Excuse me," started Cecilia, observing the nurse as she ripped the syringe from its packaging. "Would it be possible for you to hold onto something for me?"

"I don't see why not," answered the nurse.

Cecilia presented her with the journal and the copy of her grandfather's favorite book.

The nurse hesitated. "Your journal? But won't you need it?"

"I haven't written anything in it for some time," she replied.

"Are you certain? I thought I saw you writing in it when I came inside yesterday."

"My grammar at ten was atrocious. I couldn't resist revising it."

"Oh, that's right, I heard you're a writer from your father," said the nurse. "Do you have any books published?"

Cecilia laughed. "No, that'd be horrifying. I'm a terrible writer."

"No need to be modest." The nurse injected a dose of medicine into her drip and Cecilia leaned back against her pillows. The nurse took the items from Cecilia's hands gently. "Just hold onto it?"

"Yes." The effects of the drug washed over her quick. "My boyfriend will come looking for them. The book is his."

"Okay, sweetheart."

She closed her eyes and succumbed to the medication. This was as much as she could do.

Cecilia ached as she stood next to her hospital bed staring at the stained dress that she wore for the Fuhrer's party. She shut her small suitcase as soon as her grandfather entered the room to grab her luggage from the bed.

"Ready?" he asked.

She checked the hour, but Roy would be at his office. "What about Roy?"

"Silas will handle it."

"How?"

"You know how, Cat."

She dreaded thinking about it, but she couldn't stop it from pervading her brain. If only the circumstances were different. If only she wasn't who she was.

Cecilia followed Wyatt out of the room into a corridor where a pair of hired bodyguards waited for them. There were more of them outside, walking with them to the car. They opened the back doors for them. Her grandfather went around to the other side. He was seated when she took a sudden step back, her body betraying the command of her brain in one last attempt to run, but she bumped into the hard chest of the man standing behind her.

The pain radiated through her body long after they had left the front of the hospital.

She stared out the window, watching the buildings blur into dulled colors and give way to nature as their driver took them to their private townhouse.

"We haven't discussed your future," started Wyatt. "Would you like to complete your medical training? You have some years to go, but you're capable."

"I don't know what the right path to take is."

"Do you remember how badly you wanted to practice? It happened after Arisha."

"Becoming a doctor was Arisha's dream, not mine."

"Even so, you loved it."

"We can't always get what we want no matter how much we love it."

Wyatt smiled. "That's right, we can't, but have you truly given up?"

She made herself comfortable in her seat, adjusting the pillows provided for her comfort against the door and rested her head on one. Her vision blurred with tears.

"This is too cruel."

"It truly is," said Wyatt. "We can't always have what we want."

Her fingers twitched as his hand fell atop hers and she turned in his direction. "Will Silas speak to him?"

"There won't be any need. He will learn your fate when he goes back to the hospital."

"And then that's it?" Her eyes started to water. "Nothing more?"

"Nothing more. You understand that your identities as Cecilia Warren and Odessa Franklin were both compromised. As such, Cecilia and Odessa must die."

"Yes." She sniffled. "Even so, I can't forgive him. Silas."

"You understand that he is doing this to protect you."

"I understand, but he has done this through lies. He has lied to me for so long and I still accepted that I had to let Cecilia and Odessa die. I only wanted one thing and he denied it. I only wanted to say goodbye to Roy, but he took that from me."

She turned her face away, focusing on the scenes outside the moving vehicle.

"That didn't stop you."

"What?"

Wyatt smiled. "The detective book. Quite an interesting book to leave behind for him, isn't it?"

"Will you tell Silas?"

"What is done is done."

He offered her hand a gentle squeeze, but her heart ached, slowly breaking to pieces