"Have you eaten today?"

I rolled my head towards Marv. He knew I hadn't eaten today. If I'm honest, I'm not even sure I ate yesterday. Something about chemotherapy turns the stomach enough that eating is more of a chore than anything.

"Of course I've eaten today." Before I'd finished my statement, a sandwich in a baggie hit me in the back of the head.

"You're a poor liar, Corbin. You may think of me as nothing more than your live-in friend, but I take my responsibility as your caregiver as a serious assignment." Marv was a good guy and, probably, the only friend I made worth keeping in my entire time in service.

"I can't eat this sandwich, well, I mean; I COULD eat the sandwich. But it won't stay down. Nothing stays down for at least two days after treatment."

I could see the crow's feet next to his eyes come into full view at my statement. This was not the first time we've had this argument.

"Besides, bud, pretty sure you just abused your charge with a sandwich, what would the VA say?"

The snort that came out of his mouth would have made a large bull jealous "You and I both know the only reason you pushed this caregiver role on me is so you could force the Army to look at my service record. You've got enough money lying around that you could pay for every single Doctor visit you've had in the last 7 months without even seeing a percentage drop."

Can't say the man is wrong. I'd spent every penny I had on my 2011 deployment on bitcoin, not sure of the exact amount, but somewhere in the ballpark of sixty-thousand US dollars at 2 bucks apiece. I cashed out in 2019 when I was diagnosed with liver cancer and medically retired from the military. I'm not sure what the exact number is, but for someone who grew up in a single-parent home who could barely keep up with bills, anything over 400 million is an astronomical amount.

I'd immediately opened a case against the Army for Marv. He was pushed out after an incident in Afghanistan involving Marv killing a couple of Afghani males he caught having their way with a child. I'm not exactly sure what he did to them, I've never asked, but I know the reports I read included the words 'tortured for multiple hours' and 'pulped human remains,' so I'm 100% sure I don't actually want to know.

I bought the best lawyer a couple million can, and she spent most of a year ripping apart every defense they had against what he'd done. Forcing them to change his discharge from dishonorable to 'General – Under honorable conditions,' Which isn't what I wanted but is what my multi-million dollar lawyer said was the best possible outcome. It's all irrelevant either way, Marv doesn't know it yet, but every penny I have goes to him when I kick the bucket, even the four-hundred thousand SGLI that I kept out of spite.

"You ever wonder what happened to some of those guys you were with?" I usually wouldn't ask him questions like this, but the combination of crippling pain, lightheadedness, and hunger had me outside myself.

"I still talk to most of them. I spent 6 years on a team with those jocks, I might have gone a little off the reservation, but all of them were in my corner. Ya know, minus the Colonel." It was more than I'd hoped to get out of him. Special Forces guys were notoriously close-lipped. Even if they were your battle buddy in training.

I'd always considered SOF as a career, but it never really called me like it did Marv; it was all he talked about through basic and our first tour. He spent 2 years as a Cavalry Scout with me, then jumped ship to be a special forces medic. I decided to go Warrant officer and fly a Helicopter. In a twist of fate, I ended up in a SOAR squadron attached to his group.

Marv wasn't my only friend from the military, but he was the best one. Nobody I served with knew how loaded I was. Most of the people I knew in the service wished me well when they heard about the cancer, not Marv, though.

Marv showed up. I came home from one of my out-processing appointments to find him in his shitty little 2008 Tacoma demanding to know if I was taking care of myself, then immediately calling me on my bullshit. Everybody else let me wallow in my self-loathing, but Marv wouldn't; Marv would demand answers and explanations. I'm not saying I was a bad person, but I can't think of a single person who deserves a friend that committed.

"Eat the sandwich, flyboy. I didn't get on a plane to Australia to NOT see the Sydney opera house. I'll march you through the front door with a horse feedbag on, don't test me on this." One of the best parts of Marv is that he grew up just as poor as I did, not that that usually is a good thing, but once I got through to him how flush I was and got it through his head that HE would spend just as much on me he became much more open to the idea of just spending money.

"Check-roge big sarge."

I am, obviously, I think, not thinking on myself right now. It's easy to get lost in my head about other people when you have an expiration date. I tried not to label myself with it, but the last month has been hellish for me. The Doctor I saw yesterday to get my treatment had informed me that he couldn't recommend me continuing. He'd told me in that blunt way that Doctors have that I'd have a month on the outside, but it was looking a lot shorter than that.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I'd basically been flirting with organ failure for the last two months, and getting this previous batch of chemo was either going to net me an extra couple of weeks or put me in the ground by the end of it.

I was going to wake up tomorrow, transfer every asset I own to his name, then drive out to meet the aboriginals I had been studying up on, if that didn't pan out, I’m not entirely sure what my plan was. I thought I was a hard motherfucker having firefights over wadi's or flying meters off the ground in the middle of the night in a combat zone. Still, nothing is more terrifying than slowly slipping away like I was.

I'd spent the better part of the last year looking for cures and answers 'outside of modern medicine, which is to say that I've seen every witch doctor that I could find that had even an iota of viable credit. I really thought if I was going to find anything, it would be in Asia, but none of that panned out. I'd looked every fraud from western Europe to the Hokkaido region in the eye as they told me their magic worked, just not on me.

Having had enough of the pity party, I cleaned myself up and started to get ready for tonight. It's not every day you get to party like it's your last day.

---_________________________________________________________________________________---

When my alarm vibrated at six twenty the following day, I couldn't help but feel a sense of anticipation; this was my last shot. It was a hell of a long shot, but it was all I had left.

Throwing on some comfy clothes, I slid the letter I'd written and revised to Marv at least 30 times, explaining to him how I never deserved a friend like him and how sorry I was that I couldn't reciprocate his unrequited love under his door. Pretty sure Marv was as straight as they get, but I wanted to keep him on his toes.

I’d wanted to save him the 6 hours round trip of seeing looking at a rock in a cave, but I can’t deny that part of me was actually looking to have a few hours alone. It was very rare that he didn’t walk into a room if I’d been quiet for more than 20 minutes to check on me. As I turned around from grabbing a coffee and breakfast sandwich at the continental breakfast, I almost ran straight into Marv.

“Get your gear and get to the lincoln. We’re on a schedule.” I’d have to say he looked less angry than I thought but sadder than I’d like.

The trip to the outback was not nearly as uncomfortable as I thought it was going to be. I felt a deep shame in what I’d tried to do, and even more for trying to pull it past Marv. He kept the conversation light, though. We reminisced about basic training and some of the missions I flew him and his team on during the deployment we had together. There wasn’t more than silence the entire two-hour drive out to meet the guide who would take us to the tribesman.

Luckily the translator I’d hired beat us there and was already talking to someone who looked like they were the elder.

“Eh, mate Yer a bit later than I ‘spected. S’alright though, these fine gents have already said they will take ye on yer’ stroll, so long as the elder here see’s what he needs teh see from yeh.” I’m not entirely sure if he was trying to tone down his accent because he thought we’d have a hard time understanding it or if he just had a weird cadence.

The elder was already in my space, lifting my shirt and poking around my arms and legs before the translator finished speaking. I’d endured some incredibly invasive procedures in the last year, but having a village elder put his fingers in my mouth and stare at the underside of my eyelids for a couple of minutes might have been closer to the top than you’d think.

Apparently done with his inspection, he turned to the translator and spit out a few sentences I couldn't understand. “He says yeh can go’on in mate.”

When Marv started to follow us, the elder turned and said something to the translator. “Just you, mate. He says the cave’s sacred ground or sammat.”

I could see Marv struggling. I tried a compromise. “What if he comes with us but stays at the mouth?”

After a few back and forths, it was settled. Marv could come to the mouth of the cave, which was fine. From what we had researched, the entirety of what I was going in for was in easy view from there. Something about the whole thing felt different than the other times. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was a…gravity to the situation. I put it down to this being my last shot. There wasn’t any talking all the way to the cave where we stopped. The elder very pointedly drew a line in front of the cave with his heel pointed at Marv and then pointed at it again.

“I guess that’s the limit, huh?” Marv sounded like I felt. He could feel something was different but didn’t want to acknowledge it. “I feel like an idiot for saying this, Corbin, but I’ll be here, brother. If you touch that thing you’ve been researching and you’re a brand new healed man, I’ll be here. If you touch it and all you get is one of those weird semi you get around ruins, I’ll still be here.”

Gonna have to make sure I get that letter out from under his pillow when I get back, or shit might get weird. “Thanks for being with me man, you’re a better friend than I could have asked for.”

I felt like I should have said more, but the elder tutted at me and pointed inside. “Guess that’s my cue. I’ll be back in a minute, bud.”

Walking into the cave was the least surreal thing I’d done. I went to mammoth cave as a friend, and it was a lot like that; a large cavern with a few holes in the top that let in enough light to walk around and explore. Not that I did any of that, my eyes were locked on the obelisk at the rear of the cave.

It was sticking out of the ground at an angle to the right, with shrubs and dust covering it. I’m not sure exactly how big it was, but it looked to be about the size of one of the toppled stones at the stone henge. The closer I got to it, the more nervous I was. It took me what felt like an eternity to reach the side of the stone. After I got there, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.

Was I supposed to touch it? I’d lick the rock clean if that’s what was required. I must have stood there for longer than was strictly necessary because the elder made a whistling noise and waved at me a few times. It took me a minute to realize he wasn’t waving. He was pantomiming putting my hand on the stone.

Oh.