by J. Saman
Start Again
By: J. Saman
Other books by J. Saman
Forward
Start Over (Start Again Series #2)
Love Rewritten (Release Date 6/12/17)
Start With Me (Start Again Series #3) (Release fall/winter 2017)
Text copyright © 2015 by J. Saman
All rights reserved. Except for the use in reviews, the reproduction of utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented including xerography, photocopying, digitally copying or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system is forbidden without the written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and resemblance to the actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
End of Book Note
Prologue
“Mommy, Mommy, guess what?” Maggie’s high-pitched squeal fills my ears. Her heavy stomps fly across the hardwood floor until her small body leaps through the air into my waiting arms.
“What, baby?” I ask, kissing her soft, blonde curls and pulling her small warm body into mine. Her hair is the same color as mine, and a little lighter than Eric’s.
“Daddy taking me ice cream,” she effervesces, her hands clapping wildly.
“Oh, is he?” I say, tilting my head, knowing full well Eric can hear me, which his chuckle confirms.
“How could I say no to that face?” He rounds the corner into the kitchen with an amused and indulgent expression.
“See!” More clapping. “He no say no to me.” Maggie is all smiles for her hero.
“Well, aren’t you a lucky girl?” I lean forward and kiss her round soft cheek.
She nods. “Yes. Mommy, you come too?”
I frown. “Oh, baby. I can’t. Mommy has work tonight.” Maggie’s tiny body slumps in my arms as I adjust her weight so she can see my face. “Next time, okay?”
Her blue eyes sparkle. Same shade as Eric’s, darker than mine. “Okay, Mommy.”
“Hey, noodle bug?” Eric asks Maggie softly as he walks up to us, wrapping his arm around my waist and kissing my temple. “What if we brought Mommy some ice cream at work?” He looks at her sweet, ebullient expression and then back to me.
“Yay!” she yells, bouncing up and down in my arms. “We do that, Mommy?”
I laugh. I just can’t help myself, because you really can’t say no to her. It’s freaking impossible. “That sounds great.”
“Perfect.” Eric kisses my lips quickly before planting a kiss on Maggie’s lips too. “How’d I get so lucky to have two perfect girls?” He means it. “Go to work, babe.” He kisses me again, pulling Maggie out of my arms and into his. “We’ll see you soon with your special treat.” He winks at me. “Love you.”
“Now I’m the lucky one.” I kiss them both. “Love you back.” I throw a wave over my shoulder, and then get my butt in my SUV and off to work.
The ICU isn’t crowded tonight. In fact, we’re slow. We only have eight patients for twelve beds. “Hey Kate?” Shannon, the charge nurse for tonight calls out to me as I walk out of my patient’s room. “You need to get down to the ED.”
My brows wrinkle as I walk towards her. “Why? What’s up?” Then I groan. “Am I being floated?”
She’s shaking her head. “No. They didn’t say. Just asked you to come down. Said it was important.”
I laugh. “Oh. It must be Eric and Maggie bringing me my ice cream.”
He always tries to avoid bringing her into the hospital, and sometimes he parks by the ED because it’s easy for me to get in and get out. Same for him.
“Lucky lady,” she winks. “Go on then. Can’t leave that cutie waiting in the ED.”
“Oh, he won’t bring Maggie in. I’ll have to run out to the car.”
She shakes her head. “I was talking about Eric, but I guess Maggie’s pretty cute too.” Another wink.
“You’re shameless,” I laugh, waving over my shoulder as I head towards the back stairwell. I hate hospital elevators. I avoid them if I can, and since the ICU is only on the fourth floor, I usually take the stairs. The second I open the door to the ED, I pause, and I can’t explain why.
Something feels off. Something feels so very wrong.
It’s nothing visual, more instinctual.
A chill runs up my spine, freezing my blood and taking over my body.
I’m off. Running down the hall and wishing I hadn’t taken the fucking stairs for once because the elevator would have put me on the other side of the ED where the trauma rooms are, instead of by triage. My clogs slap against the linoleum floors as I race down the hall, darting around people as I go.
Sound. Yelling. Orders. Controlled chaos. I hear all of it, but I’m removed from it. Detached. And even though I know why I’m running at full speed, I don’t know why I’m running. My gut is twisting and adrenaline is pulsing in my veins as I burst through the swinging doors of Triage One. Three doctors and four nurses surround the gurney, making it impossible for me to see the patient.
But I know.
I know exactly who it is because I feel her. And then I get a glimpse of her pink light-up sneaker tilted on its side on the floor where it looks like it was thrown.
“Maggie!” I shriek out before I race towards her.
“No. Wait. Kate!” Someone calls to me, stopping my motion mid-stride by wrapping her arms around my waist and pulling me back to the door.
“Let me go.” I fight, still trying to run to my girl. “Maggie,” I call again. “Stop. She needs me.” I’m kicking and pushing, becoming more and more hysterical by the second.
“Calm down, Kate. Let them work.”
I collapse in her arms and onto the floor. Something about the word work did it. They’re working on my little girl. Working a mile a minute, and barking out orders that are laced with concern and frustration.
“What happened?” It’s both a whisper and a demand.
“Car accident.” Her hand glides down my back and I sob out, shaking uncontrollably.
“I need to go to her.” I can’t even bring myself to ask the next question. The sensible question. The one that I should be asking, but am unable to form into words to do so. She doesn’t respond, just holds on tight to me.
I have no idea whose arms around me.
I don’t care.
I can’t pull my eyes off of my little girl’s lifeless body. Off the tube in her mouth breathing for her. Off the central line coming from her femoral artery pumping her full of medicine. Off the chest tube that the
doctor is trying to place to re-expand her lung. Off the monitors that are barely indicating signs of life and then…flattens out. Blood, fluid, it’s all going in, but it’s not helping.
Nothing is helping.
My baby is dying in front of me and I can’t do anything to stop it.
Compressions. Defibrillation. I need to look away. I can’t look away. I just…can’t.
“Anything?” someone calls out.
“Nothing,” someone else responds.
“She’s losing it as fast as we can give it.” Another voice. And now I stand. The nurse lets me, but maintains her grip on my arm in case I decide to run at her again. “Her aorta is shredded. We’re not going to get her back.”
“Shut up,” someone snaps, and then all eyes are suddenly on me.
I shake my head.
My baby is going and I need to hold her.
Pushing someone aside, I look at my baby girl’s face for the first time. She doesn’t look like Maggie. Bruised, battered and bloodied. A large head wound on the opposite side is seeping through the gauze placed over it. Her chest and abdomen are swollen and discolored.
“You have to move, Kate.” A hand is trying to pull me back again.
“Is she gone?” I ask, my voice barely recognizable.
Silence.
I wrap my arms around her small body, pulling her to me. I hear protesting behind me, but it just as quickly stops and the room falls silent again. The only sound is the alarm of the machine that tells me that her heart has stopped.
They shut it off.
“It’s okay, Maggie. Mommy’s here. Mommy’s here,” I cry into her hair, my arms squeezing her small body tight, inhaling her sweet, sugary scent. Running my hands down her sticky, crimson-tinted hair. “Oh, Maggie baby, no.”
I can’t hold it back anymore. I’m rocking her and sobbing, and even though I know she’s gone, I can’t accept it. I can’t accept it.
“Go again!” I yell out at the faces staring at me.
“Kate.” That’s Dr. Philip Turbin. “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” I spit at him. “Go. Again. Philip.”
He shakes his head, walking to me, taking my hand and pressing it over her small chest. She’s not breathing. Why isn’t she breathing? Oh Maggie, breathe for me, baby. Please just breathe for me.
“She’s gone, Kate. I’m sorry.” I’m shaking my head. “Hold your little girl, and say goodbye.”
“I can’t,” I wail, because I can’t. How can someone possibly say goodbye to their baby? To their almost three-year-old? It’s an impossible task. My heart is shredded. Annihilated. So broken that all I feel is searing agony crushing my chest and stealing my breath.
I want to die with her.
Please, God, just kill me with her.
I need her. I need to be with her. She needs her mommy.
I pull Maggie into me, holding her so tight. I know I need to ask. But I can’t. I’m terrified of the answer, even though I think I already know it.
So I say the only word I can choke out. “Eric?”
My eyes leave Maggie at their silence, pulling up to their reluctant, horror-filled faces. Philip steps forward, his hand covering mine that’s still resting on Maggie’s chest.
“He never made it in.” His soft voice is meant to help ease the blow, but it doesn’t. Nothing can.
My head drops onto Maggie’s and I let my world end with theirs.
Chapter 1
2 years later
Kate
Freshly baked zucchini bread fills the air with the scent of cinnamon and chocolate. It should be comforting, but it’s not. Partially because comfort and I haven’t been on speaking terms for quite a while, and partially because I have the unhappy task of trying to speak to my mother about something important this morning.
Never a pleasant thing.
The couch cushion sinks beneath me as I shift my position to cross my legs, taking my can of diet coke with me. I haven’t slept much this week. Not that I’ve been sleeping all that great over the last two years, but it had been better until now. My fingers go up to the pendant hanging off my neck, touching it gently, a reflex when I think about them.
I should be in a better place than I am.
At least that’s what my therapist says. She hasn’t been too pleased with my progress to this date. Every time she mentions something along those lines in her perfectly crafted, psychobabble way, I remind her—far less subtly—that I lost my reason for living, so she should just back the fuck off. I think the fact that I haven’t offed myself should be considered a major accomplishment.
Apparently it’s not.
So I’m done with therapy.
I made the changes I had to, and the rest is just a matter of getting through each day.
But now those changes are no longer enough. I don’t see them in my car or my tiny studio apartment, because they were never in either of those places. I don’t even see them at work, because I switched hospitals too.
But I see them everywhere else.
I see them in the grocery store, at the movies, in the coffee shop, and walking around town. Everywhere. And it’s killing me. Little by little. Day by day.
It’s killing me.
And even though I make that daily promise that today won’t be the day I kill myself and end my misery, it’s happening anyway.
I can feel it, and I need to do something. I need to get out of here. Away from the place that I spent my entire life with Eric, and then the last few years with Maggie.
So I’m sitting on my mother’s couch, nursing my diet coke and avoiding the guilt zucchini bread in front of me. Her small frame is sitting across from me in her hideous floral chair, patiently waiting for me to say something. Here goes.
“I’m leaving, Mom.”
“Leaving?” she asks, her dark blonde eyebrows raising up to her hairline. “But you just got here.”
I sigh. This isn’t going to be fun. “No, Mom. I mean, I’m moving away. Leaving town.”
She leans forward with a scowl etched on her wrinkle-free surgically enhanced face. “Where do you intend to move to? You know your problems will follow you wherever you go.”
Right. And that’s why I hate talking to my mother.
Couldn’t she have just wished me well? Given me some modicum of encouragement?
“I don’t know where I’m going,” I say, ignoring her jab. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Well,” she leans back, crossing her arms and legs, essentially dismissing the idea. “Be sure to let me know when you figure it out.”
Now it’s my turn to lean forward. “Actually, I plan to just get in the car and drive around the country until I find a place that speaks to me.”
“That’s absurd,” she shakes her head, her lips pursing off to the side. “You can’t just drive across the country—” Her arm sweeps out in front of her towards the window, before folding it across her chest again. “—by yourself, until something speaks to you.” Her head is shaking back and forth, her blonde bob swinging around her shoulders. “It’s not safe for a young woman to go off on her own with no plan or agenda. No Kate. No.” She points her finger at me as if that makes it final.
“Mom, I’m twenty-seven years old. I am perfectly capable of not only making my own decisions, but I don’t need your permission.”
Yeah, I’m trying to hold firm, but this woman has always had a way of reducing me to a weak puddle of coward.
“I’m going,” I huff out, setting my can on the coaster and rubbing my hands up and down my face. “I need this, Mom,” I confess, my hands still covering my eyes. I hate speaking to my mother this way. She’s never been loving or nurturing, which makes emotional confessions that much harder. “I’m drowning here, and I can’t find my way back.”
She scoffs. Actually freaking scoffs at me. “That’s ridiculous. You’ll be fine. You just need to get yourself back out there.”
I suck in a deep breath, holding it tight in my lungs before I let out it out and explode at her. Because I’m this close.
Instead I sit back, squaring my shoulders and looking her dead in the eyes. The same blue as mine.
“I’m going, Mom. In two days. I’ve given up my apartment, packed my things and that’s it.” I stand up, glaring back at her narrowed eyes, wishing I had her love and support because I desperately need both right now. “I was just letting you know.”
I take two steps towards the front door before she calls out to me. “Wait,” she sighs, sounding just a little defeated and a lot annoyed. “Fine.”
I turn back to her, but don’t bother to sit again.
“I get it. You’re a grown woman and you’re leaving.” She waves a dismissive hand. “I can’t stop you.” She stands now, walking towards me and placing her hands on my shoulders. “If I suggest something, will you listen?”
“Maybe,” I say hesitantly. I can see the wheels spinning in her eyes and that’s hardly ever a good thing.
“Well,” and then she laughs lightly. “This is just too darling for words.” She giggles like she’s just had the most brilliant idea. “So I was talking to Jessica Grant this morning. You remember her.” I shake my head to her statement, but she just continues. “You met her when you were six, at their house outside of Philadelphia. She was my sorority sister in college.” Another head shake. “Whatever.” She waves me off like it’s not important. “She was telling me how her son is moving across the country to Seattle for a new job that he starts next month.”
“And your point is?” I tilt my head at her because I have a bad feeling about where this is headed.
“My point is,” she’s smiling huge now, “that he doesn’t like to fly and was debating renting a car to drive out there. Jessica was against this naturally, but now that I know you’re going off into the wind,” she points at me, “you can take him.”
“Um. No.”
“Katherine, he’s a nice young man, and since you don’t have a destination picked out, this is perfect.”