had fallen well short of his expectations. After a punishing two-hour tennis lesson with a fanatic pro, he limped back to his oceanfront casita. Dumping his gear on the floor, he resisted the temptation to collapse on the canopied four-poster bed in favor of watching another spectacular sunset.
With one brief stop to pluck a chilled imported beer from the refrigerator, he made his way out onto the veranda and flopped into a wicker love seat. With his angular legs outstretched and the fading warmth of theafternoon sun on his freckled arms and shoulders, he gazed out to sea. A couple hundred yards from the beach, two WaveRunners with their engines whining sliced across the water in tandem.
Since his divorce nine months earlier, Jack had done little to kick-start a new social life. It had been a process, but he finally admitted to himself that his wife had stopped loving him long before sheâd asked him to move out. The ink had barely dried on their divorce decree when she packed up her belongings and their daughter and moved to France, where she had been born and raised. He never pined for her, but he missed Nicole terribly.
He had never given serious thought to vacationing alone, and it was only at the insistence of a few concerned friends that he needed some time off that he finally caved in and booked the trip. Unfortunately, the change of surroundings did little to improve his emotional indifference.
A few days after he arrived, he gave serious consideration to cutting his vacation short and returning to Columbus. But his grueling schedule of teaching and patient care as chief of neurology at the medical school left him precious little time off. In spite of the disappointment with his vacation, the meager two weeks he could manage each year were far too precious to give up.
It wasnât long before the rigors of his tennis lesson, the premium beer and the light tropical wind levied their full effect. With the droning of the WaveRunners disappearing to the north, Jack closed his eyes and yielded to the inevitable.
It wasnât more than a few minutes later, when the shrill alert of his phone snapped his eyes open, that his tranquil nap came to an abrupt end.
âHello,â he muttered, assuming it was the concierge confirming his dinner reservation.
âJack. Itâs Mike. Iâm sorry to bother you on vacation but somethingâs happened to Tess.â Jack pulled his legs in and shook the fuzz from his head. âSheâs pretty sick. The doctors put her in the intensive care unit at Southeastern State.â
Jack was unaccustomed to the trepidation in his best friendâs voice. Having grown up in Fort Lauderdale across the street from each other, Jack and Mike had been inseparable from their first day of kindergarten until high school graduation in spite of diametrically opposed personalities. Even though they had attended different colleges, time and distance had done nothing to erode their friendship. They spoke frequently and still shared an inviolate golf trip to Arizona every September.
âWas she in an accident?â he asked Mike with a mixture of alarm and uncertainty.
âNo, nothing like that. I got a call yesterday that she had passed out during her spinning class. Her instructor called nine-one-one and the paramedics took her to Southeastern State.â
âIs she still unconscious?â
âNo . . . not exactly. I . . . I guess youâd call it more like a daze. Her eyes were going crazy, so they called in a specialist. As soon as he saw her, he had her admitted to the intensive care unit.â
âIs the baby okay?â
âThey told me sheâs okay . . . but Iâm not sure anybody . . .â Mike paused for a few moments. âI need you to come up here, buddy. Iâm scared shitless. I guess I didnât realize how bad things were until a few hours ago. The ICU doctor told me
Robert Charles Wilson, Marc Scott Zicree