I don't think I'm ready yet, sir.
Nobody's ever ready.  Hell, when I was still a naval officer, about the time I actually learned how to do the job, it was time to leave.  That's the way life is, Jack.
Ryan thought that one over as he surveyed the room.  Admiral Greer was getting his nourishment through clear plastic tubes.  A blue-green gadget that looked like a splint kept the needles in his arm, but he could see where previous IV lines had infiltrated and left ugly bruises.  That was always a bad sign.  Next to the IV bottle was a smaller one, piggybacked with the D5W.  That was the medication he was being given, the chemotherapy.  It was a fancy name for poison, and poison was exactly what it was, a biocide that was supposed to kill the cancer a little faster than it killed the patient.  He didn't know what this one was, some acronym or other that designated a compound developed at the National Institutes of Health instead of the Army's Chemical Warfare Center.  Or maybe, Jack thought, they cooperated on such concoctions.  Certainly Greer looked as though he were the victim of some dreadful, vicious experiment!