Chapter 1
Dr. May Sherwood was thirty-four hours into her thirty-six-hour shift at Hopewell General Hospital. She could feel the dull ache behind her eyes, a telltale sign that a headache was brewing. Luckily, her shift would be over soon, and she could get some sleep. The faint smell of bleach from the cleaning wipes used to disinfect the patients’ rooms wafted down the hall, increasing the ache behind May’s eyes. A nurse clicked away at her keyboard, charting in her patient's chart and the unit clerk shuffled through paperwork, but other than that, the ER was quiet. The early morning rush had not started yet and everyone was enjoying the lull while it lasted. May looked at the clock...two more hours to go. Quiet night shifts rarely happen these days. Even at the small rural hospital, they often saw close to thirty patients in a single night. It was hard to say why it had been so quiet this last week. Everyone had a hunch that it was because of the new strain of influenza that was keeping everyone away. Most people wouldn’t be caught dead at the hospital right now for fear that they would catch it, no one wanted to risk it. It had claimed five more lives just today. It hadn’t been seen at Hopewell yet but it was still early days. Protocols were still in place, making her shifts dreadfully long. She would gown up and wear a mask and gloves with every patient she saw. It was hot and sweaty and tedious but the risk of contracting this new strain was just too high to risk it for comfort’s sake.
May loved being a doctor and her patients all loved her. She was kind and had a way of making her patients feel like they could trust that everything was going to end up ok, that they were being taken care of. Her favourite part of the job was the human connection and feeling like she was able to make a difference for someone. She worked long hours and a lot of days but it never felt like a job to her. Work was sometimes an escape from everything else that was going on in her life and right now life was messy and complicated. Being at the hospital made her feel like she had some control and predictability amid the chaos. She often used it as a distraction and an excuse to not think about how to get the rest of her life in order. May’s husband Jack had left her with a teenager and a pile of gambling debt to deal with. Some nights she felt like she would be climbing out of it for the rest of her life. It made her feel like she would never be free of him. The bastard didn’t even have the courtesy to leave her a note before he vanished. At first she had been concerned that something really bad had happened to him, she pictured him upside down in a ditch somewhere unable to call for help, but as the hours turned into days with no sign of him or the car he was driving she had a hunch that he had just left them. Two weeks after he disappeared she found the bills and the credit card statements. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt was now hers to deal with. The second mortgage she had no knowledge of was the biggest shock. She thought about the night that she sat on the floor surrounded by bills and final notices. She wept and sobbed, then raged and screamed like a banshee until the wee hours of the morning. At that moment she never thought that things would ever be ok again. As the days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, she knew he wasn’t coming back and that he had taken off to escape the mess that he had left behind. May was on her own now and had to pull it together, if not for herself than for her kid that needed her to be strong. So she worked and she parented and she paid the bills. Life eventually got easier. She was able to find a lawyer that helped her dissolve the debt that she could prove wasn’t hers. The extra mortgage though and the credit card debt that she was stuck with was a huge financial strain, thousands of dollars a month in just interest payments alone. She had a good job though, she worked hard and she would manage. She wouldn’t lose the house, no matter what she had to do, she would work herself to death if she needed to but she would keep her daughter's home.
May smiled at the thought of her amazingly bright daughter. She never complained, even when May had to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet and wasn't ever home. They were a team, no one loved more than the two of them. She often wondered how she got so lucky to be blessed with such an amazing kid. Lilah just got a part time job after school working at a bookstore and offered to help contribute to the house. She was a good kid, always trying to help May out with chores. She would be off to med school after college and although it made May proud, her heart ached a little that her baby wasn’t a baby anymore. Lilah was dedicated, focused and such a joy to be around. She was silly but serious and mature past her seventeen years. May had one more hour to go, she checked on her patients, then sat back down at the desk to chart. She sipped her coffee that had long gone cold and waited for the next shift to come in. No other patients had come through the front door in hours, she just hoped that it stayed that way until she was able to escape. The dull ache had now bloomed into a full blown splitting headache and she just wanted her bed. May checked the clock. Lilah would be getting ready for school, she had gotten into a great local college for premed which allowed her to live at home and commute everyday. May carried a lot of guilt for how little time she and her daughter got to spend together, if only circumstances had been different. She drank the last cold dredges from her paper coffee cup and tossed it into the trash behind her. She finished charting on her last patient, all she had to do was peak her head in and send them on their way with a script for antibiotics. She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the next shift come through the doors, soon she would be free. The ice machine rattled behind her, increasing the persistent throb in her head. Kevin came up and put his arm around her shoulders.
“You look done, go get some sleep.”
“Thanks, it was a long night. Quiet, but long. I don’t have any patients to tell you about, the last one went home about ten minutes ago.”
“Good, get out of here while you can. Are you back in three again to relieve me?”
“Yeah, I’ll see you when I get in, I picked up extra this week.” May pinched the bridge of her nose between her eyes, trying to relieve some of the tension that had gathered there.
The community was so small that Hopewell only had three doctors on staff, they would each do a thirty six hour rotation. She would do everything, from traumas to ear aches and everything in between. For thirty-six hours the hospital was May’s home, she ate there, slept there and would see every single patient that walked through the doors in those thirty-six hours.
“You work too hard May, I don’t know how you do it all.” Kevin gave her shoulder a squeeze before letting her go.
May felt blessed to have a best friend like Kevin. She and Dr. Kevin Ferguson had hit it off immediately. Their very first shift together during orientation they had become fast friends and now called each other family. When Kevin married Brent Mason, a local contractor, she was his “best girl” at their wedding. May had always thought of him as the brother she never had. When her husband deserted her and their daughter, he was the first person she called. Kevin dropped everything and came over with a bottle of wine, two pints of ice cream and a box of tissues. Friends like him were hard to find.
By the time May got to the locker room everyone else was gone, it was quiet and she decided to jump into the shower before heading home. She stripped off her scrubs and threw them into the dirty laundry bag. The shower came on freezing cold and she stood in the corner to avoid the cold spray while it warmed up. What felt like an eternity later the water finally began to warm and she stepped under the stream, tipping her head back and closing her eyes under the spray. She felt herself relaxing under the warmth and some of the tension started to ease from her neck and shoulders. Her headache lessened back to the dull ache behind her eyes.
The water streamed down her back as she lathered soap into a washcloth, then she heard the locker room door open and someone come into the room. She strained to listen to see if she could hear anyone in the room behind the shower curtain. She stuck her head out to see if anyone was there, she thought she saw a shadow around the corner but maybe it was just her imagination because no one announced themselves or ventured in further into the locker room. Why did she feel so jumpy this morning? She quickly washed her hair and soaped up her body before rinsing off as fast as she could. The tap squeaked as she shut the water off. She quickly wrapped herself in a flannel blanket in lieu of a towel, still warm from the blanket warmer she had pulled it from. She took her towel and wrapped up her hair, brushed her teeth at the sink and studied herself in the mirror. She had dark circles under her eyes and looked more haggard than she should for forty two. After brushing out her hair and pulling it into a quick ponytail she donned street clothes and made her way out into the parking lot after saying goodbye to Joel from security.
It was a chilly February morning and there was a thin layer of frost on everything. Nothing her car heater couldn’t handle so she got into her car without using the scrapper and turned the car on to warm up. She checked her phone for messages while she waited to feel heat come off of the engine. As the car started to warm she pointed all the vents towards the window and cranked up the heat. Her windows quickly became clear and she pulled out of her spot and headed toward the gate. Before she could swipe her badge the security guard raised the arm for her from inside his office. “Thanks Joel!” she called out to the intercom speaker attached to the parking gate. She drove home in silence, she found morning radio too chatty, she wasn’t in the mood for the pointless banter of the DJ’s. Cell reception wasn't reliable enough to play music from there
She couldn’t wait to get home and crawl into bed. She thought about eating but was too tired and really just wanted to sleep. She should at least drink some water. She pulled into her driveway just after eight o’clock, the house was quiet when she opened the front door. She kicked her shoes off, hung her jacked up on the coat rack and threw her keys back into her purse. Lilah must have already left for school, a pang of disappointment ran through her even though she did relish the quiet of the house in the morning, she would have preferred to see her daughter after being away from home for so long. She went into the kitchen to grab that glass of water she had promised herself she would drink before heading to bed. Once in her bedroom May peeled off her jeans. It felt so good to be home. She briefly thought about getting some chores done but the nagging pain behind her eyes threatened to come back if she didn’t close them immediately. She got into bed and nestled under the comforter, it wasn’t long until her thoughts fell away and she drifted into sleep.
May woke up with a start. She had been dreaming and in the dream someone had been chasing her and she couldn’t find her daughter. She woke up sweating and panting, her heart felt like it was in her throat. The nightmares come often these days. Ever since her husband vanished she hadn’t had a restful night’s sleep without the nightmare that plagued her. Her blackout curtains made it impossible to tell what time of day it was. It was disorienting but necessary for shift work. May squinted at her cell phone that showed it was just after one in the afternoon. Not even six hours, she thought. Not enough, but she couldn’t force herself to fall back asleep. She opted to get up, she would work on something for a few hours until Lilah got home. She threw some laundry into the machine, washed some dishes and ran a vacuum cleaner across the floor. Then she sat down with a cup of coffee and waited for Lilah. She heard the front door open and Lilah threw her things down onto the floor in the hall while she fought to get her boots and jacket off.
“How was school kiddo?” May called from the kitchen.
Lilah came into the house and kicked her boots off. The smell of lemon furniture polish told her that her mom likely did not get enough sleep and that she had been cleaning likely all afternoon. “Hey Mom, it was ok. I had a biology test, I think I did well, I’m not worried at all. Mrs. Merrit told the class today that she is expecting a baby, so she won’t be teaching next year. How was work?” Lilah plopped down on the stool next to her Mom.
“Good, it was quiet. Do you have homework tonight?”
“I have homework every night." Lilah sighed. "I have a project on the anatomy of the ear due on Friday so I am going to get started on that tonight.”
“Sounds good, what do you want for dinner? I was going to make some chicken with roasted vegetables and maybe toss together a salad to go with, but we can have whatever.”
“No that sounds great. I will start peeling carrots for you, I can also make the salad if you want. Just let me change into something more comfortable and put my hair up, I'll be quick”
May kissed the top of Lilah’s head, “You are just the best kid. That would be lovely. I will get started on this chicken then. Let’s put some music on while we cook.” May turned on the radio and started tapping her foot to the music while she sliced chicken breasts in half.
May and Lilah sat down to dinner and told each other everything that had transpired during their time apart. May thought how nice it was to be home. May was carrying their dishes to the kitchen sink when there was a knock at the door.
"I'll get it Mom, my hands are free." Lilah came back holding a cardboard box. “Were you expecting a package Mom? This was on the porch but it isn’t addressed to anyone.”
May washed her hands and lifted the large box onto the table. It was about the size of a large cake box and had no logo on it at all. It was taped shut with red packing tape. May took out a pair of scissors and sliced through the tape and pulled the flap open. May swore and dropped the scissors to the floor as she jumped back in horror. Lying inside of the cardboard box was the lifeless body of a cat.
