CARRIE AWOKE ON SUNDAY MORNING TO A GRAY WORLD. SHEETS of rain beat against her windowpane, matching her mood. Maybe this was a good day to stay in bed. She burrowed deeper into the covers and thought about the changes in her life.
The shooting in the movie parking lot had shaken her. Then Adam’s revelation turned her world upside down. She didn’t really want to go to church. She wanted to hide her head, block out the world. But church was a habit she’d acquired years ago, and Carrie knew that ultimately she’d leave the safety of her bed and get dressed. Duty or desire, it made no difference. Church was on her agenda today.
She visited the coffee pot, then set about getting ready to face the world. As she did, she took stock of herself in the mirror. Her blond hair was cut in a no-nonsense short style that framed a face others told her was attractive. Her green eyes saw things clearly without the need for glasses, although obviously they had been unable to penetrate Adam’s disguise. She was an attractive professional, still in the prime of life. But after John’s death she’d put up an invisible fence that might as well have had warning signs on it. I’ve been hurt. I’m healing, but I’m still vulnerable. Stay away.
When she met him, she’d opened the gate and let Adam in. In hindsight that was probably a huge mistake, one with which she’d have to deal. And now her world had changed again. Her ringless finger felt peculiar. Even more peculiar was a morning without the usual call from Adam, a day without a lunch or dinner date. She’d adjusted before. She’d do it again. Carrie wiped away the tears that formed in the corners of her eyes. Maybe church would help, maybe not.
She slipped into a simple green dress, gulped the last of her coffee, and grabbed an umbrella. Ready or not, world, here I come. But be aware. The gate is closed again.
The organ was sounding the final notes of the prelude when Carrie slipped into the half-filled sanctuary. She stowed her umbrella under her seat and tried to put her mind in neutral. Maybe the service would calm her heart. Maybe it would help her find the answers to the questions nipping at the edges of her thoughts like a pack of wild dogs. She hoped so.
Carrie found it hard to focus on the service. She went through the motions, but her concentration kept slipping. She sang the hymns without letting the lyrics sink in. She stood for the reading of the Scripture, but the words washed over her like waves on a beach. There was no comfort there. And through it all, her emotions were all over the place.
She alternated between anger at Adam for the lies he’d told and disgust at herself for believing them. Carrie revisited her sorrow for John’s death and the part she might have played in it. She was wracked with pain thinking of her short time with John, snatched from her after only five years of marriage. Her heart ached as she realized the perfect life she’d envisioned with Adam was now disappearing as well, replaced by a situation that was dangerous at best and fatal at worst.
Carrie considered slipping out during the offertory, but then the pastor stepped to the pulpit and it was too late for her to move without attracting attention. The preacher seemed to stare straight into her soul, and his first words tied her stomach in knots. “Let not your heart be troubled.”
The Scripture should have made Carrie relax, but instead it gave her the sensation of being trapped in an elevator in free fall. In an instant she was transported back to a scene from almost two years ago, a scene she’d never forget but wished she could. Her mind’s eye saw the same pastor, the same pulpit. But this time there was a bronze casket at the front of the church, banked on either side by floral tributes that assaulted her nostrils with a sickly sweet scent.
Instead of her current seat in one of the back rows, Carrie was in the front row, with John’s sister and her husband on one side, John’s mother and father on the other. Carrie’s parents hadn’t bothered to come. Even the death of their son-in-law couldn’t bridge the rift between them and Carrie, the chasm that developed when she embraced Christianity in her first year of medical school.
That day the pastor had read that same Scripture: “Let not your heart be troubled.” She supposed the message he brought was one of comfort and hope, but other than the opening verses from the Bible, Carrie couldn’t recall a single word he spoke. There’d been music and words of tribute from a couple of friends. But all Carrie could think about during the entire service was, We should have had decades together, but all we had was five years. It was such a freak thing—a punctured coronary artery during a routine procedure. I’m a doctor—why couldn’t I save him? She squeezed her eyes shut to hold back tears. What did she do wrong? Why did God let it happen? Why?
The swelling notes of the organ brought Carrie back to the present. She’d apparently stood at the proper time. She’d managed to bow her head with the rest of the congregation for the closing prayer. As she joined the crowd filing out, she thought about the morning’s Scripture passage. “Let not your heart be troubled.” The words brought a wry, mirthless smile to her lips. Sorry, God. I can’t help it. My heart’s been troubled too long.
Carrie was halfway home, driving on automatic pilot, when the ring of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts. She pulled into the parking area of a nearly deserted strip shopping center and dug the phone from her purse. The Emergency Room was calling.
“Dr. Markham,” she answered.
“This is Doris in the ER. We have an elderly man here with severe dyspnea. He says he’s seen Dr. Avery in your group, but not for at least a year. You’re on call, but do you want us to try Dr. Avery?”
“No, I’ll see him. Get an EKG and chest film. Oh, and draw some blood chemistries and a CBC. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Carrie laid her cell phone on the seat behind her and aimed her Prius toward the hospital. She kept her eyes focused on the road, but her mind wasn’t on the hospital or the patient waiting there for her. It was on Adam—her relationship with him, the secret he’d told her, their future together . . . if they had one.
She wondered if there was any way out of this living nightmare. She’d have to talk with Adam again. There were too many questions still unanswered. But she dreaded their next conversation. What could she say? She still didn’t know what she should do. She’d thought she loved Adam, but who, really, was Adam Davidson?
Carrie was still debating her next move when she pulled into the hospital parking lot. Enough of that. She plunged through the double doors of the Emergency Room, ready to immerse herself in the practice of medicine. Her personal life could go on hold for a bit.
The patient’s name was Gus Elsik. He lay propped on the gurney in a full sitting position, struggling to breathe despite the oxygen mask on his face. The sheet had slipped to expose one swollen ankle. Carrie noted the distended neck veins. The diagnosis was already pretty clear to her, but she’d go through the necessary steps to be certain.
The patient was obviously in no condition to talk, so Carrie addressed her questions to the woman in a blouse and jeans who stood beside the gurney, fresh lines of worry adding to the ones that creased her face already.
“I’m Dr. Markham. What happened?”
“My father’s having trouble breathing.”
“Is this a new thing?”
The woman shook her head. “No, I took him to the clinic last year when he was having the same kind of trouble, just not as severe. He saw Dr. Avery, who said it was some kind of problem with his heart. The doctor gave him some pills, but after he started feeling better, Daddy stopped taking them.”
“And when did he start getting short of breath?”
“It’s been going on for a couple of weeks. Maybe more. When it got to where he couldn’t walk from his room—he stays with us—when he couldn’t walk from his bedroom to the dining room without resting to catch his breath, I insisted that we come here.”
Gus’s other symptoms confirmed Carrie’s diagnosis: swelling of the feet and ankles, moist cough, waking up at night short of breath, having to sit upright to breathe. “What you have,” she said to Gus, “is congestive heart failure. I’m going to admit you to the hospital, do some tests, and start treatment. I’ll contact Dr. Avery. He’ll see you tomorrow and follow up.”
Gus’s daughter asked, “Is it serious?”
“It’s serious, but I’ve seen worse. We should be able to get this under control with some medications to get rid of the excess fluid and improve the heart function.”
“What . . . did . . . you . . . call . . . it?” Gus asked, a gasp for air separating each word.
“Congestive heart failure. But don’t let the words scare you. We’re going to keep your heart going for a good while yet.” She encouraged him with a smile and a pat on his shoulder.
As she sat at the nurse’s station to write orders, Carrie thought about heart failure. There was the kind Gus developed, the kind that medications could help. Then there was what she was feeling right now: the heart pain, the anguish, the emotional turmoil that no amount of medicine would improve. That was the worst kind of heart failure.
A Scripture verse popped unbidden into her head. She didn’t recall the source—somewhere in the Old Testament—and she wasn’t sure of the exact quotation, but the gist was that God promised to give a new heart. You didn’t give my husband a new one, God, so that’s one strike. I don’t know about Adam’s heart. And I’m still waiting for my new heart.
As soon as the clock in his kitchen showed eight a.m. on Monday, Adam dialed the law office where he worked. He hoped Brittany, the receptionist, wasn’t running late. He had a lot to do, but the first thing was to square his absence with his employers.
He was about to hang up when there was a click on the line and he heard, “Hartley and Evans, may I help you?”
“Brittany, this is Adam.”
“Where are you? Are you okay?”
“That’s why I’m calling,” Adam said. “Somebody decided to shoot up my car during the night. I’ve got to arrange to repair the damage, get a rental car, all that stuff. Would you tell . . . ?” Who? Bruce Hartley was the senior lawyer in the two-person firm. But it wasn’t always possible to predict how Bruce would react. The other partner, Janice Evans, was the better choice. “Would you tell Janice what’s happened? I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
Adam’s next call was to his insurance agent. He expected to leave a message, then waste most of the morning waiting for a call back. Instead, the agent was at his desk and proved both sympathetic and extremely helpful. When he found out Adam’s car was drivable, he told him where to take it to have the damage repaired. He even arranged for a rental car to be delivered there.
By mid-morning, Adam pulled into the lot that served the two-story building owned and occupied by Hartley and Evans, Attorneys at Law. He parked his black Toyota Corolla rental in his assigned slot, tugged his briefcase from the passenger seat, and headed for the front door.
The briefcase was a constant reminder of Adam’s journey. Along the way he’d parted with his expensive Halliburton case, a gift from his ex-wife. He couldn’t recall into which river he’d tossed the brushed aluminum status symbol, a gesture to further separate himself from a life he could no longer live. Then, after Bruce Hartley suggested that the grocery bag in which he carried his lunch and a few files wasn’t appropriate for a member of their staff, Adam found a scuffed leather briefcase in a pawnshop in town. It was this case that he now parked next to his desk before he slipped into his chair.
Bruce Hartley paused opposite Adam’s open doorway. Adam had heard Brittany describe Hartley as “sixty-one, going on forty.” The lawyer had a receding hairline that he tried to disguise with an expensive haircut, and a bulging waistline that custom-tailored suits did little to hide. Hartley was just out of marriage number two or three—Adam couldn’t recall which—and rumor had it he was already looking for the next Mrs. Hartley, although why anyone would put up with the man’s unpredictable moods was hard to imagine.
Hartley looked pointedly at his watch, then hurried on down the hall. Adam didn’t know whether Janice Evans had passed on his reason for being late, but evidently Hartley didn’t consider his employee’s tardiness worthy of comment.
Adam was going through the phone message slips on his desk when Evans stopped by. Janice Evans was a decade younger than Hartley, and to Adam’s way of thinking, the more level-headed, intelligent, and talented of the two lawyers.
She wore a tasteful wedding and engagement ring set on the appropriate finger. Tiny pearl earrings were Evans’s only other jewelry. Her perfectly styled ash-blond hair fell short of her shoulders. She wore designer glasses over gray eyes that seemed to see everything. He was no expert on women’s clothes, but Adam was willing to bet that Evans’s pants suit had a well-known label and cost several times more than his off-the-rack suit.
“Sorry to hear about your car,” she said. “Get things wrapped up?”
Adam smiled up at her. “Yep. It’s in the shop getting a new windshield and having the headrests redone.”
“What did the police say?”
“Not much, actually. My own theory is that it was some high school kids with a gun, deciding to use my car for target practice.” How many more times am I going to have to tell this?
“Well, be careful.” Evans nodded once and retreated to her office.
A few minutes later Brittany eased up to Adam’s desk and handed him several file folders.
“Anything urgent?” Adam asked as she shuffled through the stack.
“No. Usual stuff. But we missed you. The coffee you make is so much better than what I brew.”
“Glad you like my touch,” Adam said. “And unless someone shoots out my windshield again, I’ll be in tomorrow to brew it for you.” That is, unless I’m dead.