Life After Perfect Read Online Free Page B

understanding.”
    “No problem. You change your mind anytime about anything, you know how to get us.” Derek wrote out her prescriptions and handed them to her. “Here you go.”
    “Thank you so much.”
    She looked relieved that he hadn’t pressed her for more details. “You take care,” he said, and left the room, taking her chart and the prescriptions to Wendy at the front desk, and then retreating to his office.
    Behind that closed door, he pulled off his jacket and loosened his tie.
    His skin prickled as if he was under a Jamaican sun, but he knew the air was working. Sweeping a hand across his sweaty brow, he picked up the picture of Laney from his credenza, one from before she got sick, before treatments. He wanted so badly to remember her like this. Beautiful. Healthy. Instead all he remembered were her last days, when she looked not so unlike Kelly Jo just now.
    No color. No energy. Not much life left in the container God had lent her. The one that cancer had sucked the beauty from so heartlessly.
    It took him a few minutes to pull himself together; then he went back out and continued from room to room, handling the patients until there weren’t any left to be seen.
    “That’s it?” he asked as he approached the front desk.
    “Yes. Nothing else on the books.” Wendy smiled. “Our lucky day.”
    “I’m going to run over to the diner and grab something to eat. Text me if you need me.” He patted his hand on the counter and headed down the long corridor.
    Derek made one last stop in his office to hang his white coat back on the rack.
    He glanced at his degrees on the wall. He was going through the motions, keeping his medical license intact. For now. Until he figured out what the rest of his life would be. There’d been lots of days since Laney had died that he’d considered chucking it all. He’d spent the six months after her death hopping from conference to conference and class to class, trying to stay as busy as he possibly could getting his general practitioner CMEs up to date.
    His future had once been all laid out. Not so anymore. Not since the day Laney died. He was only certain of one thing: he couldn’t work in oncology.
    Balancing the wins and losses had become impossible, and the losses were sucking him under like quicksand. He knew that it was the time to switch gears, and leave that area of medicine to others.
    There was a time when he’d have pushed his opinion on Kelly Jo. Touted the help she’d receive at highly acclaimed facilities like his. And for a moment those thoughts flew through his mind, but they didn’t emerge from his lips. He didn’t have it in his heart anymore. There were a few drugs they could use to slow things down a little, but from the look of Kelly Jo’s last scans, there wasn’t much hope for any relief that would improve her quality of life in those additional days.
    “Are you clear on all of your options?” he’d asked.
    She’d held up a hand. “Completely. Please don’t—”
    “That’s fine. I understand.”
    She’d breathed a noticeable sigh of relief. She was so tired. It was as if Laney were sitting in front of him. The life no longer danced in her eyes. The rounded slope of her shoulders evidence it was too much to hold a straight line anymore.
    No. Cancer wasn’t for sissies. This gal was no sissy. She’d fought her battle, and she’d chosen what she was willing to give. It was okay. It wasn’t easy. Not for the patients. Not for their families and the physicians and nurses who kept an eye on “quality of life” even when the end was near.
    When Laney got worse, he’d shifted most of his patients to the care of one of his partners, keeping only a handful who were so far along in their treatments that it seemed unfair to ask them to trust someone new.
    By the time Laney died, all of his other patients had too, and so had a big part of him.

    Mentally exhausted, he walked over to the Blue Skies Cafe. It was a straight shot, back door