Page 28 of My Heart Before You

Wading into the surf up to his knees, not caring that the tide was wetting the edges of his shorts, he pushed deeper into the waves with his father’s urn in his hand. When the water started to pull at his legs, drawing him in before the next wave overtook him, he tossed the ashes in a large arch. The remains of his father mixed with the salt air in a dusty cloud before finally joining his beloved wife’s in the sea.

It had been more than a year after his mother’s death before he and his father honored her wishes to always be able to touch a beach by forever living in the ocean. A month after that, Colin opened his first letter from the wooden box written in Phyllis’s tidy print, titledWhen you miss meon the envelope.

Dear Colin,

Go to the sea and talk to me. I miss you, my sweet boy.

My whole heart,

Mom

P.S. Take your father with you.

He remembered being a fourteen-year-old boy telling his dad they needed to drive down to the beach to see Mom. His father never balked or asked any questions; he just drove them and then sat next to him in the sand. Colin spoke to the ocean as if she was standing at the water's edge listening to his every word. When he’d said everything that weighed on his soul that day, they sat in silence for a long while before his father slowly started speaking. After that day, they would both come to the sea to talk to her.

Rubbing his hand over the day-old scruff of his unshaven face, Colin listened to the crash of the waves, the caw of the seabirds, and the eolian tones from the wind bashing the beach posting behind him. “Here I am again.” He tried to clear away the tightness at the back of his throat. “I always knew I would be eventually, but I thought we'd have more time.”

He pulled the collar of his jacket around his neck and jammed his now icy hands into his pockets. “I just wish . . .”

Tilting his head up, he stared at the changing cloud formations. “I mean why?” His hands fisted in his pockets. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped you. I could havesavedyou.”

The wind blasted his ears in response and he glanced at the sand around his boots, allowing his head to hang heavy. The knowledge that he could have prevented his father’s death had the circumstances been different ate at the pit of his stomach. Not for the first time, he felt helplessness surge because in the end there was no changing the past.

Taking a deep breath, he lifted his head to watch the black-backed gulls floating effortlessly on the thrashing gusts of air. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m blowing in the wind. That I’m lost.”

“At least I have Max.” He ran his hand through his hair before returning it to the pocket. “And Kate,” he amended. “They’ve really taken me in. We have dinner all the time, and they had me over for Thanksgiving last weekend. They keep calling me family . . .”

The elderly couple crossed in front of his view, their calm black lab trotting slightly ahead of them as their heads bowed in conversation. Colin waited a long while after they passed to continue.

“CTSB gives me all this time off. I don’t know what to do with it . . .” He cleared his throat again. “I’ve been running a lot more. I’m working on making my condo look more like a home, though it doesn’t feel like one. Not like your home . . .”

The salt spray hit his face with an unexpected sting due to its icy temperature. The misty droplets sprinkling his cheek would have been a welcome sensation during a warmer month.

“I didn’t understand the reason behind the hourly reduction and actually started to resent the policy until one of the partner’s told me why John set up his rules.”

He’d learned that John Reddington’s only son had followed in the family tradition, going to medical school and being admitted to a top residency program for cardiothoracics. When John had a harder and harder time getting a hold of his son, he attributed it to the rigors of training, knowing that this time would pass for his son as it did for him. He knew his son was sleep deprived, working a hundred hours a week often in thirty-six hours shifts, and mentally exhausted from the constant “pimping” that the senior surgeons would subject the residents to—calling them out when they were at their most fatigued and berating them in front of the rest of the staff.

Unfortunately, his exhausted son believed he wasn’t good enough and took his life, leaving a single note, “I’m sorry, Dad.” Around the same time, several other residents ended their lives under similar circumstances and reform over physician working hours became a national issue. All the techniques that had been imposed on his son, John had inflicted on residents in his care and the partners in his practice over the years. After that he stopped conducting things the way “they’ve always been” and started making immediate changes.

“I know that for the people with families, the reduced hours make a big difference.” Colin had seen how attentive his best friend was with his son. “It’s just a big shift for me . . . Max says I should start dating.”

Emilie materialized before his eyes as if she just stepped out of the sea in her pastel scrubs. A mermaid of soft brown eyes and waving chestnut hair. Her fair skin scattered with tiny dots like sea stones sprawled carelessly along a sandy beach.

“There’s this woman I work with. A nurse. She sprayed me with mace.” A breathy chuckle left his lips at the memory. “It was an accident, but since then we talk whenever we’re working together. There’s something about her. She’s beautiful and smart and funny, but there’s something in her eyes that stops me every time I see it. Some darkness that seems stuck. I wish there was something I could do about it.”

Imagining that he could rub his thumb over the delicate freckles of her cheek and watch the shadow in her eyes fade brought a shiver to his body. As much as he wanted to touch her, he also wanted to understand her, to find out why her eyes glinted.

“It’s not like that will happen though. CTSB has a policy against it, and it probably wouldn’t work out anyway . . .”

Part of him wanted to say that he was too busy for a relationship, but he knew that wasn’t an excuse anymore. His body jolted with sudden understanding that it was more than that. On some level, he always used his career as a shield to keep from getting close to the women he dated. He’d seen firsthand the damage a profound love could do when one of the pair unexpectedly died. His father never dated again after his mother’s death, never wanted to, saying that he’d had the love of his life and that was the end of it.

What if I loved like that and lost?

He stood briskly to shake off the overwhelming feeling and stamped his feet to free the sand attached to them.

“Don’t I know you?” a male voice spoke from behind him.

Colin turned to find an elderly couple steps away. The man held the woman’s gloved hand, and his other arm wound around her body. Her free hand held the leash of the sweet dog that sat patiently, regarding him with a cock of his head.