Weekend Freewrite -- 10/12/19 -- Single Prompt: take care

Officer Amanda Gentry of Big Loft, VA's police force had seen a lot in her position of administrative nurse – while officers did not tend to get shot close to headquarters, it was a high-stress job, and folks having blood pressure spikes and heart trouble and the occasional food poisoning incident was not uncommon.

Still, since Captain Henry Fitzhugh Lee had come along and started exposing the corruption in the department, things had been even more interesting. People who had wanted to be whistleblowers but just weren't in the position had stopped coming in as much. Folks that the whistle would have been blown on had been coming in dead.

Commissioner Pendleton, in his short career as commissioner… so terrified he had not lived to even put Captain Lee on leave … Nurse Gentry had found him on the floor, Captain Lee doggedly doing CPR, but it being everlastingly too late. Massive heart attacks were often like that.

Commissioner Tate, on his way down to fire said captain … got surprised by said captain in the stairwell, had missed a step, and gone through the plate glass window and two stories down to his death – massive head trauma, nothing even possible to be done.

And yet, the captain whose old Army nickname – the Angel of Death – had followed him to his new job was now in the nurse's office, the burden that he had lifted from many others squarely affecting his well being. One could not be a deadly man without paying what often was a deadly price. To exteriors, Captain Lee was a stunning specimen of a man, but internally, the high-stress life-and-death life he had lived was extracting that price.

Nurse Gentry's tin of old-time fruit candies were sufficient help for low blood sugar – the captain's dark eyes lit up again as his blood sugar returned to normal levels. When she was sure he was lucid, Nurse Gentry advised him:

“Listen to me, Captain Lee. You are blessed in that you have that Special Forces background and know how to get your body to respond at a high level – wherever you went in your mind, your vitals responded with one of the greatest examples of natural bio-feedback I have ever seen.

“Yet without that, you'd be in the hospital now, perhaps not to come out alive. You're running your resources to the edge – you've got a ton of muscle, and you're tall, so your caloric needs, particularly protein, are very high, and so is your need for sufficient water and electrolyte balance. You're running at the limits, all the time – and you're 45. You're running out of time to keep getting away with it, Captain.

“I know a lot of men like you, and I think I know what's wrong. You really need more people in your life to tell you to take care, Captain. Take care. You have been through what all of us have been recently. You're not a machine. You're a man, and from what I hear, there is a kind, caring heart under your warrior's exterior. Take care, Captain. Get around people that love you and will remind you daily, for whom you know you have a duty to think twice before pushing yourself to the edge – or past it, if you keep doing what you are doing.”

“Easier said than done, ma'am,” Captain Lee said with a gentle smile.

“Do you want to see a full span of years, Captain Lee? If you do, you're smart. Figure it out, sir!”