Page 23 of Broken Dream

Lindsay was my first love. My only love. We met in college and hit it off right away. She had dated some awful creep in high school, and I was the first guy who treated her the way she deserved to be treated. She got a job teaching high school social studies while I went to medical school. It wasn’t easy. Our marriage suffered, and it only got worse during my internship when I was on call during all hours. We’d go days without seeing each other.

Then my fellowship year, Lindsay got pregnant with Julia.

We laughed at the time. About how we never saw each other, so how could it have even happened?

But we were thrilled.

And by the time she was born, I had an offer to be an attending general surgeon at the university hospital, and I had authored several papers. When I got an offer to present one of them in Switzerland, Lindsay couldn’t go with me because she was too far along in her pregnancy to fly.

I went without her, and I fell in love. Switzerland was so beautiful, and I promised I’d take her back there sometime.

But months turned into years, and we always put the trip off.

Just one of the many promises I couldn’t keep.

And among all of those broken promises, the one that haunts me the most is the promise of forever.

I glance over at the framed picture on the mantel again, my heart constricting. My wife, my daughter, both trapped in a still moment of time as I continue to live and breathe and feel an unbearable emptiness.

The guilt has been my constant companion ever since. It corrodes my soul, gnaws at me, an incessant reminder of everything I’ve lost.

Everything I failed to protect.

I down the rest of my whiskey in one gulp, grimacing as it claws its way down my throat. The empty glass clinks against the wooden table as I set it down a little too harshly.

Angie.

She’s not Lindsay.

I know this, but she’s young and full of excitement about psychiatry.

God, psychiatry.

But it excites her. She’s such a stark contrast to my own existence, which feels like it’s been in a state of perpetual winter since Lindsay and Julia passed away.

Passed away.

What a fucking euphemism.

I should really be truthful.

Three years ago…

Dazed.

Confused.

The airbag. It’s big and white and all around me.

Someone hit me. Or I hit someone. I’m not sure.

Head hurts. Blood.

My vision swims as I try to untangle myself from the airbag.

My ears.

Ringing.