Lockwood Creek Book One
Cardiologist, Adam Matthews heart stop beating the day he lost his wife...his Emma.
Withdrawing from every day living, he threw himself into what he knew best, his work. But one drunken night changes everything. But can h...
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~ ~ Dr. Adam Matthews ~ ~
March
Jesus. It was times like these I stupidly wished I'd taken up smoking. I rubbed my forehead, staring past the trees in the distance, eyes heading up to see white clouds slowly dispersing and hints of blue-sky peeking through.
It was going to be another beautiful day. But not for me, today I'd woken up with with a coldness in my bones that I couldn't shift. Would today be her last day? Was today the day my world plunged into perpetual misery?
"Hey, Adam."
I didn't shift my attention from the view, just slid my hands into my pockets. I had left the room quick sharp, needing a minute to breathe when Dr Chris Chambers had come in to check on Emma's stats.
"Hematocrit 16, SMA 20... some levels are as we expected—" Chris paused. His voice was professional, but he didn't fool me. The defeat spoke volumes with every word uttered.
They'd all given up. "We're entering borrowed time now." He stood with me for a moment, shoulder to shoulder, both quiet in our thoughts. "The best we can do is keep her comfortable, Adam."
Shifting a clipboard chart to his other hand, he rested his free one on my shoulder, giving it a tight squeeze.
Chris had been my best friend since college and a colleague at Mercy Heights along side me for the last six years. He was fully aware this was killing me one slow day at a time. As Emma grew weaker. I grew tired. And the words he was repeating to me now, came second nature in our job, but I couldn't listen to them today. They were too damn close to home—too real.
And I wasn't ready for reality.
Loosening his grip, his hand shifted down, expelling air as he patted my back, twice. "Just be with her, Adam."
As if I would be anywhere else.
"Is Danny on his way?"
Danny was Emma's son from her first marriage. "Yeah, due any minute." I'd spoken to him earlier, catching him before he left for work.
"How's he coping?"
How was anyone supposed to handle it? "He's not. He won't talk to me about it." I'd tried, but like me he'd shut down, swallowing his pain, his anger at being little to no use in stopping what was coming.
"Emma's proud of him."
She was. She loved Danny. But I knew his way of dealing with this was to throw himself into his residency already in year three of five of anaesthesiology.
I heard Chris's pager beep as he fished it out of his pocket. "I'm needed. If you need anything, you know where I am."
Turning my head, I watched him walk away. I'd done that too, delivered the inevitable news to a heartbroken family and then walked away... on to the next patient.
