Chance Encounters

Prologue

Everyone has grand plans for their life and Charlie was no different. Everything was on track for her:
- She graduated medical school with honours
- She was coming up for tenure in the hospital she worked
- She brought a large home on the good side of town
- And, she had a big black Cadillac because the salesman told her it's what successful people drove

Charlie had achieved everything she had dreamt of but still she felt empty. She drove that Cadillac to a empty house and turned the television on just to hear the sound of something other than herself. She thought she would feel like she had accomplished something but she couldn't feel anything but loneliness.

She looked at the family portrait that hung above the fireplace. It was of a time where she hadn't achieved anything, yet she was happy. Mom, Dad, Gregory and young Charlie were all dressed to the nines and smiling for the photographer. She couldn't have been more than 10 years old and Gregory would have been 13.

None of them had known that this was the last family portrait they would ever take. Soon Gregory would complain constantly of a sore tummy and after a trip to the doctors he was rushed to the hospital. He never did come home. It wasn't until Charlie was older that she would come to understood just how aggressive pancreatic cancer was.

It almost felt like life was trying to determine just how much heartache and loss the girl could handle. After Gregory died, her mom found solace in the form of vodka. Eventually that wasn't enough and she made cocktails of Diazepam and Vicodin to accompany her liquid diet. She would take her young daughter to the doctors with her and have her lie so they would prescribe more of the pills.

Her dad was never home, he decided it was easier to sleep at his office than the home that held the reminders of his first born. He didn't see how her mom was spiralling because he was blind to anything but his own pain. His business began to suffer and eventually he chose to close the equestrian equipment factory because it was easier than having to focus on anything other than his pain.

Charlie remembered seeing the obituary for her mom and looking at her father as she crumbled the newspaper. June, beloved wife and mother, passed peacefully in her sleep. She would hardly call the pile of vomit her mother choked in peaceful but then again her dad wasn't the one to find her. Charlie was only a teenager but she wasn't stupid, she knew her mother had taken too much of the pills with her vodka.

Her dad hadn't even had the decency to look upset by the news. He had been despondent for years now so it wasn't surprising. Charlie watched him finish his whiskey and head outside to the barn where the horses stayed at night. She had sat at the table with the crinkled newspaper and the whistle of the kettle boiling, unable to get up and take it off the gas. It wasn't until she heard the single echoing gunshot ring out that she moved.

She knew before she even pushed the barn door open what she would find. The horses were going crazy, neighing and whinnying along with stomping their hooves. She didn't even have the emotions left to feel anything but hopelessness. Charlie pushed the wooden door open and found her fathers body laying on the hay pile. The yellow straw freckled with red splatters. She had simply closed the barn door and gone back inside to call 911.

Instead of letting life defeat her it had made her determined. She wanted to help others since she had felt powerless to help her family. At 16, she was able to prove to the courts that she was capable of being responsible for herself as she had been since she was 10 and her mom checked out.

After graduating high school she took her inheritance, the life insurance payments and sold some of the properties her parents had in Florida, Texas and Arizona. With her 4.5 GPA, she headed for the Golden State and spent the next four years at the University of California, San Francisco. She then spent another four years in residencies across the state. All to become Dr Charlotte Adams, M.D.

She toyed with the coin in her fingers as her mind drifted down memory lane. She always felt the need for a drink after thinking about her younger years. This coin reminded her of what kept her from that drink. It reminded her that she couldn't have just one drink, that one drink would lead to two drinks then three. She wouldn't stop until she couldn't lift the glass to her lips. She had come too far, fought too hard to get to where she was, she didn't want to lose it all.