Powerless (Book 1): Powerless Read Free Page B

comfort Philip was offering, she continued to struggle painfully for speech. Words she searched for would not come easily given the extent of her trauma; she kept trying and eventually forced out the words, “Save my baby.”
    Looking into the back seat of the car, Philip reached for his medical bag.   Right there in the middle of all that devastation, disarray and through immeasurable heartache , he performed a procedure that had not been done for an age. Taking his scalpel , he cut into his wife. As he cut her open a combination of amniotic fluid and blood poured out. Reaching his hand into her open womb he removed their child. Quickly he pulled off his coat and wrapped it around the newborn child. Teary eyed, devastated and completely numb from shock, he placed the child in his dying wife’s arms. Through his pain he struggled to say, “Look Joey, it’s our little boy.”
    Unable to lift her arms to offer her son a cuddle, Josephine simply lay with her son propped up on her dying body, unable to move an inch. Looking at her son for the first time with fading eyes, she pushed out one more word.
    “Lee.”
    Breaking down, Philip kissed her softly on the lips. As a tear rolled down her cheek s he gave one last breath and with that, she died on the side of the road amid all that chaos. Philip was left to deal with the devastation that followed this tragic event. Every morning he woke up to the heartache of knowing the loss of the one person who filled his heart; the only woman he truly loved, the person he expected to grow old with. And as much as he wanted to lie in bed all day, going through photo albums and thinking over moments long since passed with his beloved Joey, he was not able to wallow in this pain, having two young boys to raise and provide for.
    Over the coming years he did just that, moving past his own pain and focusing on the two people most important in the entire world to him. He was a caring father who taught his boys the importance of being good and just. At times he was a little hard and strict with his boys, but he always had their best interests at heart.
    *
    Tom returned from the car with the bag in hand. Seeing his father sitting at the table appearing to be uncharacteristically emotional, he entered and took the knife from his hand. He sat in the chair beside him and began to chop. Philip stood up and went to the oven, lifting the wooden spoon once again and plunging it into the pot. After a couple of stirs he began to laugh.
    “What’s up?” Tom asked quizzically from the table.
    “I guess there’s a first for everything,” Philip proclaimed. The sauce is sticking!” Once again both men laughed.
    Tom gathered up all the onions and carrots and dropping them into the pot, told his father, “Don’t worry, you know Lee. He’ll never notice and if he does he won’t say anything.”

CHAPTER THREE
     
    The inevitable wailing of sirens he had expected hadn’t come and he was unsure if they would. Were he in Jimmy’s position he knew without doubt that he would have reported it. But he wasn’t Jimmy.
    Beginning to relax, Lee turned his eyes downward to the coffee cup clasped tightly in his hand. What remained of the heat that emanated out from the drink was fading fast, but this didn’t seem to bother him, as he slowly sipped on the now lukewarm cappuccino, enjoying the cool froth as he got closer to the bottom of the cup. He contemplated going to the counter to order another, but the option to just sit and reflect won out.
    Today was always bittersweet. Well, more bitter than sweet. Every year this day would roll by and he would face an internal rift that weighed heavily on him. Mostly he spent it thinking about his family and hiding the fact that it was meant to be a joyous occasion rather than a sombre one, but for him every year brought with it a small feeling of guilt, a feeling that if today was not his birthday his life might have been very different.
    Lee thought back on the life