Missing Chapters- Echoes Of The Heart
Chapter 1
She slipped her hand out from under the covers and grabbed the tall glass filled with leftover white wine. The nectar burned a numbing path down her throat and offered relief from the nonstop throbbing in her head. Another swallow dulled the emptiness of the bed.
A car engine revved in the early morn and with a loud sigh she threw the covers back, and stumbled towards the kitchen to make a pot of hot coffee. Several deep breaths stilled the whirling room, a leftover result of her nightly cocktails. The hangovers were getting harder to ignore without a little hair of the dog the next morning. She flipped the switch on the pot and laid her head down.
Cali rested her cheek against the cool Saltillo tile on the kitchen counter while she waited for the coffee. If she could let her body get used to being in an upright position, she'd be fine. She prayed the gurgling brew would keep its promise to clean out the fog taking up permanent residence in her brain.
Pushing up on her elbows, she opened the plantation shutters above her kitchen sink and was greeted with the red glow of the morning sky. She raised the window and a cool January breeze blew in. That, coupled with the aroma of strong coffee, helped her to function. As she reached some semblance of being sober, the phone on the wall shrilled causing the jackhammers to begin all over again.
"Good God, someone needs to be shot for this." The words, thick on her tongue as if it had forgotten how to form sounds of meaning.
"Hello."
"Are you coming in today? Your patients would like to know and so would I."
She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Monica."
"Yes. Monica. At the risk of sounding like your mother, when do you plan on coming back to work? You've been a no-show for two days this week, three last week, and two the week before."
"I'll be there tomorrow, I promise." Her stomach tightened. The familiar pull between doing what was right and doing what she was capable of ripped at her.
"Cali, you said that yesterday." A long breath in and out came through the receiver. "You look like crap when you're here and I know you're drinking way too much. It's going to destroy us."
"Monica. Shut up ." She slammed down the phone and was filled with remorse. Emotions and pain crowded in on her. She didn't know who she was anymore.
Cali had to get out of the house, the grief threatened to swallow her alive. She had to go for a run. In the months since Sean died in action, running had been her saving grace. She ran to live.
She drank to survive the living.
Somehow, she ran to keep him alive, too, and she always ended in the same place. She chugged more coffee, took a few ibuprofen, dressed, and escaped the place she called home.
Her heart and feet settled in a rhythm. The steady beat of her shoes against the pavement lulled her to a place where she found peace. Breathing became easy while she focused on the physical exertion. It had been a mild winter, not unusual for this far south in Texas. Sweat pooled on her lower back and her hair plastered itself to her scalp. Cali forced the toxins from her body through the physical exertion.
Miles slipped by until she arrived where she needed to be. He wasn't there. But it didn't matter. Cali wanted the lie. Wanted to believe sitting by his grave brought him closer to her.
The rickety iron gate groaned as she leaned on it, stretching a Charley horse out of her left calf. Mrs. Swenson beeped her horn in greeting as she drove past, startling Cali. As she waved at Mrs. Swenson, she recognized the look of pity.
It's the way they all looked at her.
The path to his grave was scored into her brain, fourteen graves straight ahead, turn right at Baby Kimmel's headstone, go twenty-three graves more and his would be on the right catching the shade of the old Sycamore planted by one of his family a hundred years ago. All the Montgomerys were there, from his great, great, great grandfather on down. Now he was with them too. Sean would have liked being under the umbrella of that big old tree. He had roots there, probably as big as the ones that belonged to the Sycamore. She had felt like such an outsider until he made her his. His love gave her a family and a home.
She pushed open the gate and walked through the tombstones. She skimmed her hand across Baby Kimmel's and turned. In the distance a lone figure knelt in the general vicinity of the Montgomery family's plot. She pulled up short holding onto the smooth gray marble of Baby's marker. A faint mist hugged the ground and the woman seemed to rise up out of the low-lying fog. Who was she? Cali came here almost every other day and no one interrupted her time with Sean. Resentment and panic pushed inside her. This time was sacred to her. No one should be here uninvited.
Her feet moved forward all the while her heart shouted for her to stop, turn around and leave as quickly as possible. That was ridiculous. She didn't recognize the woman and couldn't tell where she was kneeling from this distance. She ticked off the number of graves and her eyes moved quickly down the row counting by groups of two. Eighteen, twenty, twenty-two and twenty-three.
The woman was kneeling in front of Sean's grave. That odd feeling of fright cut her wind and made her legs weigh heavy, like thousand pound tree stumps. What the hell was wrong with her? She was probably an old friend of Sean's. Everyone loved him, his large frame wrapped up his even larger heart. It hadn't taken Cali two seconds to fall in love with him.
She could tell when the woman became aware of her presence. Her head slowly lifted from her position of prayer in front of Sean's grave. She turned in Cali's direction, and Cali was shaken to the core to see the same grief in the woman's eyes as she saw in the mirror every morning. For a split second, they shared a moment of communion.
The connection was broken when the lady set her hands in the spongy moss beginning to cover the turned earth over his coffin. She pushed herself to a standing position, and Cali registered her pregnancy when her coat splayed open. The woman was ready to pop.
"Cali Montgomery?" The woman brushed her hands together as bits of damp earth fell from her fingers.
Cali let out a breath she hadn't been aware of holding. Unable to articulate a sensible answer, she nodded.
The woman rubbed her now clean hands across her swollen belly and winced. "The baby kicks all the time now. She won't wait much longer."
"Who are you? How do you know me?" Cali croaked the words while she clenched her stomach to stop her insides from doing somersaults. She had no idea why fear rolled through her, but she trusted her gut. This woman was going to throw a grenade.
"My name is Kimberly Sorrenson, and I'm about to have Sean's baby."
The woman's slow, sultry, southern accent didn't do anything to lessen the explosion, sending shrapnel through every atom of Cali's being. "Wh...what? That can't be." She leaned against a large mausoleum erected on the other side of the path.
The lady smiled a sad smile. "I don't know how to be any clearer. Within the next couple of days, I'll give birth to Sean's baby girl."
"I don't believe you. I'm his wife."
"I know who you are. You obviously have no idea who I am. You dated Sean for five weeks, married for almost two months, widowed for six months. I'm about to give birth, you do the math. I think you're capable since you're a doctor."
Stunned, Cali's mind shoved thoughts together obliterating any coherent message. Unable to process the woman's words beyond the pain and confusion, she threw up. The contents of her tortured stomach emptied until there was nothing left and still the muscles spasmed to get rid of the nausea swimming through her veins. Cali rested her hands on her knees, bracing herself so not to collapse.
"Well, I expected anger and tears, but I didn't see this one coming." The woman's shoes came into Cali's line of sight. "Here." She shoved a tissue under her face. "Clean yourself up."
She took the wadded ball of tissue, wiped her face, raised her body and stared into a set of crystal blue eyes brimming with anger.
"Sean loved me and married me." Her pitch climbed in desperation.
"Oh, I'm aware. I've lived with that little bit of hell on earth for the last eight months. Sean and I dated for a long time. We were supposed to get married." Kimberly's breath hitched but she pushed through her speech. "We hit a rough patch and broke up. I knew it wouldn't last, it never did. But then he met you."
"I don't understand. Sean told me he wasn't dating anyone. He said he was waiting for the right woman to show up to make his life complete."
"Sweetheart, look at my stomach. Does it look like he did a whole lot of waiting? No. You were the new flavor. If you hadn't arrived, me and Sean would have been married. Instead, I'm here with you standing next to a pile of puke."
"What do you want from me?" The throbbing behind her eyes steadily increased as Sean's betrayal sunk in.
"I was curious." She shrugged. "And I wanted you to know the truth about your relationship with Sean. Now, you can move on and leave this town. You don't belong here, you never did."
"Did he know about the baby?" Cali's brain fought to catalog the information thrown at her from this woman. As the bits fell into place, rage forged her hurt into a weapon and she wanted to use it against this blonde hair, blue eyed piece of trash. There had to be some kind of explanation.
"I told him about her one night while we Skyped. He was hap..."
"Wait a minute, are you telling me you Skyped with him while he was overseas?"
"I talked to him the night before his last mission. He said he wanted the baby and would take care of us no matter what." The bravado in her voice faded as an errant tear fell onto her cheek. The woman wiped her hand across her face, drew her coat together over her swollen belly and flipped her collar up against the biting wind.
Cali abruptly turned and walked away.
No more.
Not one more word.
"Hey, wait up. I'm not finished. Wait." She could tell Kimberly attempted to run after her, but Cali's eyes were on the rickety gate leading out of this hellhole. She'd keep right on going too. That bitch was right. There was nothing for her here, everything she thought she found was borrowed from Sean. She wasn't even sure about his love now, let alone her place in his life.
Kimberly continued to shout after her. Cali put her fists up to her ears to deafen the women's words. Her walk became a slow jog until she reached the metal gate. Forced to lower her hands to deal with the rusty latch, it was a few seconds before she realized no noise came from behind her. She didn't dare turn around, but paused, waiting for the shouting to start up again.
A bird sitting on the hood of a red car chirped and tilted his head. Still no sounds from behind. Unable to stand the quiet, she looked back over her shoulder.
Kimberly had dropped to her knees and stared down at the ground. Even from this distance, Cali could tell something was very wrong.
"Hey. Are you all right?" This wasn't her problem, that woman could figure it out. "I'll call someone for you." She struggled with the corroded lock until it gave way. "Give me a number."
Kimberly continued to stare at the ground as she dropped her hand to the freshly mown grass. She turned her palm upwards and her mouth parted. "Cali?" She sank back on her heels and looked up. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she lifted her hand. It was covered in blood.
"Oh, dear God." She yanked open the gate and ran back to Kimberly. Blood pooled around her knees and crept out in an ever widening circle. She dropped beside the woman and pulled her cell phone from her running shorts. A few short rings and the 911 operator answered. "This is Dr. Cali Montgomery, I need an ambulance out at the Green Meadow cemetery. I have a full term pregnant woman bleeding profusely. It could be placenta previa, but I have no knowledge of her medical history."
A long moan came out of Kimberly as she collapsed onto her side. Shit. There was no time to wait for the ambulance. Kimberly was in labor and if it was placenta previa, both mother and baby could die. "Come on, Kimberly, we've got to get you to the hospital. We can't wait." Cali grabbed her under her arms, losing her grip as Kimberly's skin was now slicked in the blood she laid in. "Help me. We've got to get you in the car."
Together they struggled out of the gate. Kimberly gripped Cali's shoulders as another contraction ripped through her midsection. "When did the contractions start? They're only minutes apart."
"They started a few hours ago. Couldn't sleep. Needed to be out here with Sean."
Cali had nothing to say to that. She concentrated on inching closer to the only car in the lot. "We're here." She threw open the door and maneuvered her into the front seat.
"There's so much blood," Kimberly cried in earnest now. "I'm losing the baby. Don't let my baby die."
"No one is dying today, Kimberly. Look at me." Cali couldn't afford her becoming hysterical. "We can fix this. You'll have to have a C-section, but no one is dying. Do you understand?"
Kimberly nodded all the while twisting her skirt as if she could wring out the blood saturating the cloth. They only had minutes left before Cali would be made into a liar. She dug through the purse on the floorboard and pulled out the keys. Cranking over the engine, she peeled out of the parking lot as if the hounds of hell were biting at her back. There was no time to think about Sean, or the baby, or the fact that her life had been blown to bits once again. All that mattered was not letting mother or baby die on her watch.
Chapter 2
The ER waiting room filled with people related to Kimberly. Someone handed Cali a pair of scrubs which she couldn't wait to slip into. Blood covered her from head to toe and had crusted into an itchy blanket over her skin. She had done the right thing. Kimberly was minutes away from bleeding out and had already been given pints of red blood cells, plasma and platelets trying to get her stabilized. Cali slipped upstairs to the observation room over the OR and watched as surgeons fought to save the unconscious woman and her baby.
Sean's baby.
As they pulled the tiny being from her mother, Cali sucked in her breath. The nurses wiped the baby's face clean. There was no doubt in her mind this child was his. Her heart ached at seeing the face she loved so much and had grieved over the last five months. Her hand went up to the window wanting to touch the precious baby, touch something or someone who was a part of him. God, she missed him.
The door behind her swung open and she snatched her hand off the cool glass. "Dr. Montgomery, Dr. Chundru says he's stabilized Ms. Sorrenson, and the baby will be fine as well. Do you want to see the baby in the NICU?"
She thought about it for a brief moment and shook her head. "I'm glad both of them will be all right."
"It was a close call. The baby was showing signs of severe distress and the mother...well, you were there. If you hadn't been, the outcome would have been very different."
Sunshine pounded her as she stepped out of the hospital doors. Funny how life can be turned upside down and yet the sun still shone, people still laughed, and life went on as if nothing happened. Somewhere in the course of the last several hours, Cali knew what she needed to do.
The first stop she made was to her lawyer's office. He'd been taking care of Sean's will and service benefits. Several changes and finalizing business so she could leave were in order. Next was her office. That one was harder.
She walked through the doors and to the back where her partner stood, phone in one hand and chart in the other. As soon as she saw Cali, she begged off the call and lifted her hands in defeat. "You're quitting aren't you?"
"I'm so sorry Monica. I'm sorry about this morning." She glanced around the small practice they had built over the last three years. "I have to go. I can't stay here anymore. There's a baby."
"I know. I already heard." She sighed. "It's a small town, what can I say?"
A sob escaped Cali's chest before she could call it back. "I feel so broken and I don't know how to put it all back together. What do I do?"
Monica stepped forward and wrapped Cali into a hug. "Oh baby girl, if I could figure that one out, I'd wave a wand and it'd all be right again."
Leaning on her friend for support, Cali absorbed her quiet strength. "I know you've always had my back and I know I'm leaving you in the lurch, but I hope this helps." She handed Monica a note selling her half of the practice for one dollar. "My lawyer is drawing up the final paperwork. Once it's done, I'll be in contact and sign it over."
"You can't just give away your part of this practice."
Cali stopped her by a simple, "I can and I will."
"You know you can't run from your problems, they follow you no matter what you do. You have to resolve this."
"Oh yeah? Tell me how this can be resolved. I saved my dead husband's baby. Oh my God!"
"Then what about me? Have you thought about what this is going to do to me, to the practice?"
She wiped both hands down her face, resting her fingertips on her chin. "God's truth? I just don't care anymore."
Monica gasped and took a step backwards, the only clue to the verbal slap she'd received. "I don't know what to say to that."
"I'm sorry, it is what it is, and I don't know how to change."
"Don't know how, or don't want to?" Monica snapped. "Look, I can't pretend to understand what you're going through. You need counseling and a lot of support. Neither of which you'll find running away or in a bottle. Let me help you."
"I can't stay."
"Do you know where you're going?"
"No. Not yet, but I'll let you know when I get there." Cali turned to go.
"Leave a message. We don't have anything left to talk about."
Cali paused, but couldn't turn around. She deserved that and so much more.
The rest of the loose ends of her life took a few days to settle and she was bone weary. Sleep was sporadic at best. On the third day, her cargo rental loaded and hitched onto the back of her SUV, she drove out of her driveway just as the sun peeked over the horizon. The last thing she saw in her side mirror was the freshly planted For Sale sign swinging in the front yard. If she so much as took a deep breath, her body would splinter into a million pieces. How could she hurt this much without anything physically wrong?
She passed by the cemetery and all the questions she tried to keep at bay stormed through the barrier she'd erected to get herself gone. How long had he known about the baby and didn't tell her? Was he still seeing Kimberly before he deployed? Were they communicating the whole time? Was she a fling he regretted? The noise in her head was deafening. She slammed her palm against the steering wheel several times trying to make it go away. She pulled over onto the side of the highway and screamed as loud as she could.
Screamed over and over, shook the steering wheel, threw the notebook stuffed with papers against the side window and still it wasn't enough. Anything her hands came in contact with was thrown, sometimes more than once. Rage permeated everything. Her husband, the one person she believed would never leave, would never lie to her, did all that and more. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have let her guard down and bought into the whole picket fence, Cinderella line of crap?
As quickly as the rage and pain boiled up inside her, it was gone. Exhausted, her chest heaved in air as she leaned her head back against the seat. After a few minutes, or it could have been a few hours, she put her gear shift into drive, pulled out and left the town that had promised so much. She should have known fairy tales only applied to others.
She drove for hours and hours, pulling over for cat naps when her eyelids began to droop. The soft violets of twilight gave way to inky blackness giving Cali a sense of peace. Sipping wine at rest stops took the edge off, but she was careful not to surrender to the siren's call. She didn't want to kill anybody, but better, she had to escape and couldn't do that drunk. It was simple calculation of alcohol intake versus body weight.
Her car became a cocoon and it didn't matter which direction she headed. At thirty years old, she had never been above the Mason- Dixon line so north seemed like as good a direction as any. She reached for the heater as the temperatures continued to drop and pulled over at a local coffee shop to get another tall latte.
Finding both cup holders taken up with empty containers, she tossed them on the passenger floorboard. Trash from her late dinner also sailed down. Soy sauce and fried rice escaped their confines of Styrofoam, spilling onto plastic weather mats. The hours turned into days as she repeated the food, wine and sleep stops. States whizzed by her window with barely any acknowledgement.
The final morning peeked over the dashboard and her endurance was finished. The highway she was on ended in a state park butting up against one of the beautiful lakes in upstate New York. It was cold. Even with the heater going, she pulled her thick blanket off the backseat along with a party size bottle of wine and five mini vodka bottles.
She downed all of the vodka. After the burn, nothing but smooth warmth. She threw them to the side and grabbed the large one. "Come to mama." She unscrewed her bottle of liquid amnesia and poured it into one of the leftover coffee containers.
The wine, with the vodka, brought a delicious mellow Jello feel to her body. The painful edge hovering on the perimeter of her consciousness eased away. Deciding she liked this feeling, she poured another glass, saluted the gods of the universe, downed it and poured another. Turning the key in the ignition, she got a blast of warm air and music filled the interior. She'd probably run the battery down, but at this point, it was immaterial. Her brain was as fuzzy as the blanket piled around her and the music lulled her into a bitter sweet stupor.
Plaintive voices sang of love lost while she saluted the survivor of a broken heart. Tears and mascara ran down her cheeks as she slowly gave in to the alcohol near the bottom of the bottle. The oblivion of sleep stole over her, blotting out the coming day.
*****
Chapter 1
She slipped her hand out from under the covers and grabbed the tall glass filled with leftover white wine. The nectar burned a numbing path down her throat and offered relief from the nonstop throbbing in her head. Another swallow dulled the emptiness of the bed.
A car engine revved in the early morn and with a loud sigh she threw the covers back, and stumbled towards the kitchen to make a pot of hot coffee. Several deep breaths stilled the whirling room, a leftover result of her nightly cocktails. The hangovers were getting harder to ignore without a little hair of the dog the next morning. She flipped the switch on the pot and laid her head down.
Cali rested her cheek against the cool Saltillo tile on the kitchen counter while she waited for the coffee. If she could let her body get used to being in an upright position, she'd be fine. She prayed the gurgling brew would keep its promise to clean out the fog taking up permanent residence in her brain.
Pushing up on her elbows, she opened the plantation shutters above her kitchen sink and was greeted with the red glow of the morning sky. She raised the window and a cool January breeze blew in. That, coupled with the aroma of strong coffee, helped her to function. As she reached some semblance of being sober, the phone on the wall shrilled causing the jackhammers to begin all over again.
"Good God, someone needs to be shot for this." The words, thick on her tongue as if it had forgotten how to form sounds of meaning.
"Hello."
"Are you coming in today? Your patients would like to know and so would I."
She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Monica."
"Yes. Monica. At the risk of sounding like your mother, when do you plan on coming back to work? You've been a no-show for two days this week, three last week, and two the week before."
"I'll be there tomorrow, I promise." Her stomach tightened. The familiar pull between doing what was right and doing what she was capable of ripped at her.
"Cali, you said that yesterday." A long breath in and out came through the receiver. "You look like crap when you're here and I know you're drinking way too much. It's going to destroy us."
"Monica. Shut up ." She slammed down the phone and was filled with remorse. Emotions and pain crowded in on her. She didn't know who she was anymore.
Cali had to get out of the house, the grief threatened to swallow her alive. She had to go for a run. In the months since Sean died in action, running had been her saving grace. She ran to live.
She drank to survive the living.
Somehow, she ran to keep him alive, too, and she always ended in the same place. She chugged more coffee, took a few ibuprofen, dressed, and escaped the place she called home.
Her heart and feet settled in a rhythm. The steady beat of her shoes against the pavement lulled her to a place where she found peace. Breathing became easy while she focused on the physical exertion. It had been a mild winter, not unusual for this far south in Texas. Sweat pooled on her lower back and her hair plastered itself to her scalp. Cali forced the toxins from her body through the physical exertion.
Miles slipped by until she arrived where she needed to be. He wasn't there. But it didn't matter. Cali wanted the lie. Wanted to believe sitting by his grave brought him closer to her.
The rickety iron gate groaned as she leaned on it, stretching a Charley horse out of her left calf. Mrs. Swenson beeped her horn in greeting as she drove past, startling Cali. As she waved at Mrs. Swenson, she recognized the look of pity.
It's the way they all looked at her.
The path to his grave was scored into her brain, fourteen graves straight ahead, turn right at Baby Kimmel's headstone, go twenty-three graves more and his would be on the right catching the shade of the old Sycamore planted by one of his family a hundred years ago. All the Montgomerys were there, from his great, great, great grandfather on down. Now he was with them too. Sean would have liked being under the umbrella of that big old tree. He had roots there, probably as big as the ones that belonged to the Sycamore. She had felt like such an outsider until he made her his. His love gave her a family and a home.
She pushed open the gate and walked through the tombstones. She skimmed her hand across Baby Kimmel's and turned. In the distance a lone figure knelt in the general vicinity of the Montgomery family's plot. She pulled up short holding onto the smooth gray marble of Baby's marker. A faint mist hugged the ground and the woman seemed to rise up out of the low-lying fog. Who was she? Cali came here almost every other day and no one interrupted her time with Sean. Resentment and panic pushed inside her. This time was sacred to her. No one should be here uninvited.
Her feet moved forward all the while her heart shouted for her to stop, turn around and leave as quickly as possible. That was ridiculous. She didn't recognize the woman and couldn't tell where she was kneeling from this distance. She ticked off the number of graves and her eyes moved quickly down the row counting by groups of two. Eighteen, twenty, twenty-two and twenty-three.
The woman was kneeling in front of Sean's grave. That odd feeling of fright cut her wind and made her legs weigh heavy, like thousand pound tree stumps. What the hell was wrong with her? She was probably an old friend of Sean's. Everyone loved him, his large frame wrapped up his even larger heart. It hadn't taken Cali two seconds to fall in love with him.
She could tell when the woman became aware of her presence. Her head slowly lifted from her position of prayer in front of Sean's grave. She turned in Cali's direction, and Cali was shaken to the core to see the same grief in the woman's eyes as she saw in the mirror every morning. For a split second, they shared a moment of communion.
The connection was broken when the lady set her hands in the spongy moss beginning to cover the turned earth over his coffin. She pushed herself to a standing position, and Cali registered her pregnancy when her coat splayed open. The woman was ready to pop.
"Cali Montgomery?" The woman brushed her hands together as bits of damp earth fell from her fingers.
Cali let out a breath she hadn't been aware of holding. Unable to articulate a sensible answer, she nodded.
The woman rubbed her now clean hands across her swollen belly and winced. "The baby kicks all the time now. She won't wait much longer."
"Who are you? How do you know me?" Cali croaked the words while she clenched her stomach to stop her insides from doing somersaults. She had no idea why fear rolled through her, but she trusted her gut. This woman was going to throw a grenade.
"My name is Kimberly Sorrenson, and I'm about to have Sean's baby."
The woman's slow, sultry, southern accent didn't do anything to lessen the explosion, sending shrapnel through every atom of Cali's being. "Wh...what? That can't be." She leaned against a large mausoleum erected on the other side of the path.
The lady smiled a sad smile. "I don't know how to be any clearer. Within the next couple of days, I'll give birth to Sean's baby girl."
"I don't believe you. I'm his wife."
"I know who you are. You obviously have no idea who I am. You dated Sean for five weeks, married for almost two months, widowed for six months. I'm about to give birth, you do the math. I think you're capable since you're a doctor."
Stunned, Cali's mind shoved thoughts together obliterating any coherent message. Unable to process the woman's words beyond the pain and confusion, she threw up. The contents of her tortured stomach emptied until there was nothing left and still the muscles spasmed to get rid of the nausea swimming through her veins. Cali rested her hands on her knees, bracing herself so not to collapse.
"Well, I expected anger and tears, but I didn't see this one coming." The woman's shoes came into Cali's line of sight. "Here." She shoved a tissue under her face. "Clean yourself up."
She took the wadded ball of tissue, wiped her face, raised her body and stared into a set of crystal blue eyes brimming with anger.
"Sean loved me and married me." Her pitch climbed in desperation.
"Oh, I'm aware. I've lived with that little bit of hell on earth for the last eight months. Sean and I dated for a long time. We were supposed to get married." Kimberly's breath hitched but she pushed through her speech. "We hit a rough patch and broke up. I knew it wouldn't last, it never did. But then he met you."
"I don't understand. Sean told me he wasn't dating anyone. He said he was waiting for the right woman to show up to make his life complete."
"Sweetheart, look at my stomach. Does it look like he did a whole lot of waiting? No. You were the new flavor. If you hadn't arrived, me and Sean would have been married. Instead, I'm here with you standing next to a pile of puke."
"What do you want from me?" The throbbing behind her eyes steadily increased as Sean's betrayal sunk in.
"I was curious." She shrugged. "And I wanted you to know the truth about your relationship with Sean. Now, you can move on and leave this town. You don't belong here, you never did."
"Did he know about the baby?" Cali's brain fought to catalog the information thrown at her from this woman. As the bits fell into place, rage forged her hurt into a weapon and she wanted to use it against this blonde hair, blue eyed piece of trash. There had to be some kind of explanation.
"I told him about her one night while we Skyped. He was hap..."
"Wait a minute, are you telling me you Skyped with him while he was overseas?"
"I talked to him the night before his last mission. He said he wanted the baby and would take care of us no matter what." The bravado in her voice faded as an errant tear fell onto her cheek. The woman wiped her hand across her face, drew her coat together over her swollen belly and flipped her collar up against the biting wind.
Cali abruptly turned and walked away.
No more.
Not one more word.
"Hey, wait up. I'm not finished. Wait." She could tell Kimberly attempted to run after her, but Cali's eyes were on the rickety gate leading out of this hellhole. She'd keep right on going too. That bitch was right. There was nothing for her here, everything she thought she found was borrowed from Sean. She wasn't even sure about his love now, let alone her place in his life.
Kimberly continued to shout after her. Cali put her fists up to her ears to deafen the women's words. Her walk became a slow jog until she reached the metal gate. Forced to lower her hands to deal with the rusty latch, it was a few seconds before she realized no noise came from behind her. She didn't dare turn around, but paused, waiting for the shouting to start up again.
A bird sitting on the hood of a red car chirped and tilted his head. Still no sounds from behind. Unable to stand the quiet, she looked back over her shoulder.
Kimberly had dropped to her knees and stared down at the ground. Even from this distance, Cali could tell something was very wrong.
"Hey. Are you all right?" This wasn't her problem, that woman could figure it out. "I'll call someone for you." She struggled with the corroded lock until it gave way. "Give me a number."
Kimberly continued to stare at the ground as she dropped her hand to the freshly mown grass. She turned her palm upwards and her mouth parted. "Cali?" She sank back on her heels and looked up. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she lifted her hand. It was covered in blood.
"Oh, dear God." She yanked open the gate and ran back to Kimberly. Blood pooled around her knees and crept out in an ever widening circle. She dropped beside the woman and pulled her cell phone from her running shorts. A few short rings and the 911 operator answered. "This is Dr. Cali Montgomery, I need an ambulance out at the Green Meadow cemetery. I have a full term pregnant woman bleeding profusely. It could be placenta previa, but I have no knowledge of her medical history."
A long moan came out of Kimberly as she collapsed onto her side. Shit. There was no time to wait for the ambulance. Kimberly was in labor and if it was placenta previa, both mother and baby could die. "Come on, Kimberly, we've got to get you to the hospital. We can't wait." Cali grabbed her under her arms, losing her grip as Kimberly's skin was now slicked in the blood she laid in. "Help me. We've got to get you in the car."
Together they struggled out of the gate. Kimberly gripped Cali's shoulders as another contraction ripped through her midsection. "When did the contractions start? They're only minutes apart."
"They started a few hours ago. Couldn't sleep. Needed to be out here with Sean."
Cali had nothing to say to that. She concentrated on inching closer to the only car in the lot. "We're here." She threw open the door and maneuvered her into the front seat.
"There's so much blood," Kimberly cried in earnest now. "I'm losing the baby. Don't let my baby die."
"No one is dying today, Kimberly. Look at me." Cali couldn't afford her becoming hysterical. "We can fix this. You'll have to have a C-section, but no one is dying. Do you understand?"
Kimberly nodded all the while twisting her skirt as if she could wring out the blood saturating the cloth. They only had minutes left before Cali would be made into a liar. She dug through the purse on the floorboard and pulled out the keys. Cranking over the engine, she peeled out of the parking lot as if the hounds of hell were biting at her back. There was no time to think about Sean, or the baby, or the fact that her life had been blown to bits once again. All that mattered was not letting mother or baby die on her watch.
Chapter 2
The ER waiting room filled with people related to Kimberly. Someone handed Cali a pair of scrubs which she couldn't wait to slip into. Blood covered her from head to toe and had crusted into an itchy blanket over her skin. She had done the right thing. Kimberly was minutes away from bleeding out and had already been given pints of red blood cells, plasma and platelets trying to get her stabilized. Cali slipped upstairs to the observation room over the OR and watched as surgeons fought to save the unconscious woman and her baby.
Sean's baby.
As they pulled the tiny being from her mother, Cali sucked in her breath. The nurses wiped the baby's face clean. There was no doubt in her mind this child was his. Her heart ached at seeing the face she loved so much and had grieved over the last five months. Her hand went up to the window wanting to touch the precious baby, touch something or someone who was a part of him. God, she missed him.
The door behind her swung open and she snatched her hand off the cool glass. "Dr. Montgomery, Dr. Chundru says he's stabilized Ms. Sorrenson, and the baby will be fine as well. Do you want to see the baby in the NICU?"
She thought about it for a brief moment and shook her head. "I'm glad both of them will be all right."
"It was a close call. The baby was showing signs of severe distress and the mother...well, you were there. If you hadn't been, the outcome would have been very different."
Sunshine pounded her as she stepped out of the hospital doors. Funny how life can be turned upside down and yet the sun still shone, people still laughed, and life went on as if nothing happened. Somewhere in the course of the last several hours, Cali knew what she needed to do.
The first stop she made was to her lawyer's office. He'd been taking care of Sean's will and service benefits. Several changes and finalizing business so she could leave were in order. Next was her office. That one was harder.
She walked through the doors and to the back where her partner stood, phone in one hand and chart in the other. As soon as she saw Cali, she begged off the call and lifted her hands in defeat. "You're quitting aren't you?"
"I'm so sorry Monica. I'm sorry about this morning." She glanced around the small practice they had built over the last three years. "I have to go. I can't stay here anymore. There's a baby."
"I know. I already heard." She sighed. "It's a small town, what can I say?"
A sob escaped Cali's chest before she could call it back. "I feel so broken and I don't know how to put it all back together. What do I do?"
Monica stepped forward and wrapped Cali into a hug. "Oh baby girl, if I could figure that one out, I'd wave a wand and it'd all be right again."
Leaning on her friend for support, Cali absorbed her quiet strength. "I know you've always had my back and I know I'm leaving you in the lurch, but I hope this helps." She handed Monica a note selling her half of the practice for one dollar. "My lawyer is drawing up the final paperwork. Once it's done, I'll be in contact and sign it over."
"You can't just give away your part of this practice."
Cali stopped her by a simple, "I can and I will."
"You know you can't run from your problems, they follow you no matter what you do. You have to resolve this."
"Oh yeah? Tell me how this can be resolved. I saved my dead husband's baby. Oh my God!"
"Then what about me? Have you thought about what this is going to do to me, to the practice?"
She wiped both hands down her face, resting her fingertips on her chin. "God's truth? I just don't care anymore."
Monica gasped and took a step backwards, the only clue to the verbal slap she'd received. "I don't know what to say to that."
"I'm sorry, it is what it is, and I don't know how to change."
"Don't know how, or don't want to?" Monica snapped. "Look, I can't pretend to understand what you're going through. You need counseling and a lot of support. Neither of which you'll find running away or in a bottle. Let me help you."
"I can't stay."
"Do you know where you're going?"
"No. Not yet, but I'll let you know when I get there." Cali turned to go.
"Leave a message. We don't have anything left to talk about."
Cali paused, but couldn't turn around. She deserved that and so much more.
The rest of the loose ends of her life took a few days to settle and she was bone weary. Sleep was sporadic at best. On the third day, her cargo rental loaded and hitched onto the back of her SUV, she drove out of her driveway just as the sun peeked over the horizon. The last thing she saw in her side mirror was the freshly planted For Sale sign swinging in the front yard. If she so much as took a deep breath, her body would splinter into a million pieces. How could she hurt this much without anything physically wrong?
She passed by the cemetery and all the questions she tried to keep at bay stormed through the barrier she'd erected to get herself gone. How long had he known about the baby and didn't tell her? Was he still seeing Kimberly before he deployed? Were they communicating the whole time? Was she a fling he regretted? The noise in her head was deafening. She slammed her palm against the steering wheel several times trying to make it go away. She pulled over onto the side of the highway and screamed as loud as she could.
Screamed over and over, shook the steering wheel, threw the notebook stuffed with papers against the side window and still it wasn't enough. Anything her hands came in contact with was thrown, sometimes more than once. Rage permeated everything. Her husband, the one person she believed would never leave, would never lie to her, did all that and more. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have let her guard down and bought into the whole picket fence, Cinderella line of crap?
As quickly as the rage and pain boiled up inside her, it was gone. Exhausted, her chest heaved in air as she leaned her head back against the seat. After a few minutes, or it could have been a few hours, she put her gear shift into drive, pulled out and left the town that had promised so much. She should have known fairy tales only applied to others.
She drove for hours and hours, pulling over for cat naps when her eyelids began to droop. The soft violets of twilight gave way to inky blackness giving Cali a sense of peace. Sipping wine at rest stops took the edge off, but she was careful not to surrender to the siren's call. She didn't want to kill anybody, but better, she had to escape and couldn't do that drunk. It was simple calculation of alcohol intake versus body weight.
Her car became a cocoon and it didn't matter which direction she headed. At thirty years old, she had never been above the Mason- Dixon line so north seemed like as good a direction as any. She reached for the heater as the temperatures continued to drop and pulled over at a local coffee shop to get another tall latte.
Finding both cup holders taken up with empty containers, she tossed them on the passenger floorboard. Trash from her late dinner also sailed down. Soy sauce and fried rice escaped their confines of Styrofoam, spilling onto plastic weather mats. The hours turned into days as she repeated the food, wine and sleep stops. States whizzed by her window with barely any acknowledgement.
The final morning peeked over the dashboard and her endurance was finished. The highway she was on ended in a state park butting up against one of the beautiful lakes in upstate New York. It was cold. Even with the heater going, she pulled her thick blanket off the backseat along with a party size bottle of wine and five mini vodka bottles.
She downed all of the vodka. After the burn, nothing but smooth warmth. She threw them to the side and grabbed the large one. "Come to mama." She unscrewed her bottle of liquid amnesia and poured it into one of the leftover coffee containers.
The wine, with the vodka, brought a delicious mellow Jello feel to her body. The painful edge hovering on the perimeter of her consciousness eased away. Deciding she liked this feeling, she poured another glass, saluted the gods of the universe, downed it and poured another. Turning the key in the ignition, she got a blast of warm air and music filled the interior. She'd probably run the battery down, but at this point, it was immaterial. Her brain was as fuzzy as the blanket piled around her and the music lulled her into a bitter sweet stupor.
Plaintive voices sang of love lost while she saluted the survivor of a broken heart. Tears and mascara ran down her cheeks as she slowly gave in to the alcohol near the bottom of the bottle. The oblivion of sleep stole over her, blotting out the coming day.
*****
