Page 1 of Prognosis Irreconcilable Differences

CHAPTER ONE

DR NATHAN TRENT feltlike hell trudging through the downpour, his Italian leather shoes squelching as he pulled his saturated jacket closer to his body. Another set of chills skated across his hot, soaked skin. His fever and the rain were making his teeth chatter.

He sneezed, and the razorblades in his throat cut a little deeper. His joints ached, making each footfall feel like a step up Mount Everest in the middle of a blizzard.

He thought about his sleek new Porsche, covered in mud and abandoned a kilometre away, bogged down deep in roadside slush.

He should have waited it out. At least it was warm and dry inside his latest toy. But he’d been driving in torrential rain for hours with no let-up, and Jacqui’s place hadn’t seemed that far. And he needed to get horizontal — an impossibility in the confines of a car that was built for show not practicality.

The thought of throttling his estranged wife sustained him as the rain belted down around him. Why couldn’t she live in civilisation?

In a city? Or a town?

Or at least on a highway somewhere, instead of this narrow pot-holed excuse for a road that strung together a series of communities collectively known as Serendipity.

His fingers shook as he checked his mobile phone for reception, shoving it back in his jacket pocket in disgust at the bar-less signal. No mobile towers out here to ruin the pristine, free-range, organic air. No chemicals or satellite dishes — or anything that was remotely useful to civilisation!

‘Damn it, Jacqui!’

Twenty minutes later not even the faint glimmer of lights up ahead could rouse an ounce of glee. The flu that had started as a vague sore throat and sniffle this morning now had him fully in its grip. Water from his hair and his forehead dripped onto his lashes and he blinked, half expecting the lights to be gone — an elusive mirage summonsed by a fever-addled brain.

Nope. They were still there.

He forced his legs to walk faster, his joints protesting at the increased demand on his flagging reserves. When he finally drew level with a darkened row of shops, one solitary light shone from an illuminated sign mounted on a pole near the front door of the middle building.

It had seen better days. The light blinked on and off in some kind of electrical death throe, and between his delirium and the pouring rain he could just make out the letters.

Veterinarian.

It took all his determination to lift his arm, make a fist and rap against the heavy wooden door. He shivered as he waited, feeling desperately ill and frustratingly weak.

‘Come on, Jacqui, answer the bloody door!’

His curse was drowned out by the deafening drumming of rain and the pounding of his fist against the wood. The effort to be heard strained his inflamed vocal cords, ripped through his sore throat and hammered through his throbbing temples.

He leaned his forehead against the door and contemplated death.

---