“I did.”

I struggle to comprehend this. “But he weighs over sixty pounds! I can’t believe you did that. I can’t thank you enough, Troy. You’ve earned a spot in heaven tonight.”

He chuckles as if it were nothing, but it’s not nothing. Not to me. It’s everything.

“Will you ask Dr. Payne to call me when he knows something?”

“Of course.”

We end the conversation, and I decide to call Zack right away. He’s lost so much tonight that he deserves to have some hope to hold on to.

After that, I will finally contact Alan’s father, Lester, on the West Coast.

Only then do I realize how much I’ve been dreading that phone call. It means that an already excruciating day is about to get worse.

CHAPTER TEN

As I pick up my phone to call Lester and deliver the news of his son’s death, I find myself thinking about how he handled a similar situation many years ago, when Alan’s mother passed away.

Alan and his brother, Bruce, were both at school when it happened, and for some reason I’ll never understand, Lester didn’t pull them out of class. He simply left them to finish out the day while their mother was removed from her private room in the hospital and taken to the morgue.

Hours later, Alan and Bruce rode the bus home from school and played street hockey with some of the neighborhood kids until the sun went down. Then they cooked Kraft Dinner for themselves because Lester didn’t come home for supper. According to Alan, this wasn’t unusual. Whenever their mother was in the hospital for treatments, they looked after themselves and didn’t bother to ask their dad when he was coming home. He worked odd hours, and there were no expectations that he would be there for them as a father.

That night, Lester came home very late, completely bombed, and Alan never forgot that pivotal moment in his life. His father burst into his room without knocking, thrusting the door open with such force that a picture fell off the wall. Alan, who had just fallen asleep, nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Your mother’s gone,” Lester said. “She died early this morning. Funeral’s on Friday. She’s gettin’ cremated. Tell your brother.”

Lester left the room, shut Alan’s door, and that was that. Alan was never given the opportunity to say goodbye to his mother, and from that day forward, he and Bruce weren’t permitted to talk about her or feel sorry for themselves. Neither of them dared to cry in front of Lester for fear of getting smacked or ridiculed. There was no love left in their house after she was gone, and Alan said that every day felt like a black hole. At least until he met me.

And now I have to call this heartless man to tell him that his son has died. I hope that he responds differently this time.

With a deep breath to prepare myself, I dial Lester’s number and wait for him to answer. His voice is deep and gruff when he picks up the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi, Lester. It’s Abbie.”

“Abbie?” he barks. “Alan’s wife?”

I’m not surprised that he doesn’t recognize my voice. We haven’t spoken in years. “Yes, it’s me. I’m afraid I have some bad news. Is anyone with you?”

“No, I’m here on my own,” he replies. “Verna’s gone to the store. But whatever it is, just spit it out.”

My heart pounds heavily, and I draw in a deep breath. “Okay. Well . . . Alan was in a car accident tonight, and . . .” I pause and clear my throat. “I’m very sorry to tell you this, but it was serious, and he . . . he didn’t survive.”

Lester says nothing for a moment. All I can hear is the thunderous pounding of my heart in my ears. “Are you still there?” I ask him.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

The conversation grinds to a painful halt, and I close my eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right,” he replies testily. “I’m not the one who died in a car accident. So what happened?”

I gather my thoughts and try to explain as clearly and gently as possible. “Alan was on his way to Lunenburg, and it was foggy and dark, and the roads were starting to freeze. He drifted across the center line.”

Lester scoffs. “That little idiot. Was he drinking?”

The question, combined with his hateful tone, catches me off guard. “Actually, he was . . . but why would you ask that?”

“Because Alan never could hold his liquor. He was always a lightweight.”

I take another deep breath and try to remain calm when all I want to do is tell my father-in-law to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.

“So when’s the funeral?” Lester asks pointedly. “I suppose you’ll expect us to be there. Flights aren’t cheap, you know.”

“I don’t expect anything from you, Lester. It’s up to you if you want to come. I’m not sure when the service will be, but I’ll certainly let you know.”

“Fine. I’ll tell Verna and Bruce.”

“Good. I have to go now. Goodbye.”

Fighting against the rising tide of my anger, I end the call and slam my phone down on the bed. Then I stare at the ceiling and listen to the tinny sound of ice pellets striking the windowpane.

“How did he take it?” Mom asks.

“Sickeningly well,” I reply. “Didn’t shed a single tear. You’d think I was calling to tell him that his roof needs replacing.”

This comes as no surprise to my mother. She knew all about Alan’s difficult relationship with his father, who had always been mean-spirited and abusive.

She pats my hand.

“That’s Lester for you,” I add. “I don’t even know if he’s going to come to the funeral. I hate to say it, but I hope he stays away, because I don’t want to see him. Honestly, I don’t know if Alan would have even wanted him there.”

I continue to lie on the bed, quietly seething over Lester’s emotionless response to his son’s death. I think about Alan and how he turned out to be such a good man despite having been raised by a terrible father.

All I want is for Alan to walk into the room so I can pull him into my arms and hold him tight.

Then Lester’s words hit me full force, and I remember that Alan was driving drunk and nearly killed the both of us. The husband I loved—since the first moment we met—suddenly feels like a stranger to me, and I don’t like the feeling. I don’t like it at all.

For the next hour, Mom and I watch television in silence. Maybe it’s the pain medication or mere exhaustion, but I’m barely aware of what I’m looking at—a sitcom I’ve never seen before, with a laugh track that is strangely hypnotic. A nurse comes to check on us, then leaves again. Another nurse comes later. Ice pellets continue to beat against the window, relentlessly. Time passes slowly.

I wish I could shut down my brain, but I can’t stop thinking about the trauma room and how I was forced to perform CPR on my husband and then watch Dr. Sanders call the time of death. I see Alan lying there, dead on the table, and I feel as if I’m awake in a nightmare that simply won’t end, as it carries me lightly into a memory of how we met.

It was just the third day of medical school, when we were introduced to the dead body that would serve as our group’s cadaver for the year. The class had been warned in advance about the importance of behaving in a respectful manner, and the mood was solemn as we entered the lab, which smelled strongly of formaldehyde. I was nervous to begin with. We were also told that some of us might become nauseated or experience some other unexpected emotional response.

For me, the timing was unfortunate. I had buried my beloved father a month earlier. As soon as I saw the dead man, I became distraught and had to leave the lab.

Alan followed. He asked if I was okay. I said no and told him about my dad. Alan let me cry on his shoulder. He rubbed my back and said he understood because he had lost his mother to cancer when he was thirteen.

Alan and I formed an unbreakable bond that day, surrounded by death. The friendship carried us through the highs and lows of medical school, and when graduation loomed, I didn’t know how I would ever live without Alan if our professional lives separated us. He felt the same way, but fate was kind and placed us together in Halifax to complete our residencies. We tied the knot three months later.

Now here I am in another hospital, two decades later, wishing he were here so I could cry on his shoulder again.

Never in a million years could I have imagined I would lose him like this. Nothing about it is right.

My cell phone starts ringing and pulls me from my thoughts. I glance at the screen and pick it up. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Abbie MacIntyre?”

“Yes,” I reply.

“This is Dr. Payne.” He pauses. “I’m very sorry to hear about your husband. Troy told me.”

I feel like I might start to cry again, but somehow I manage to keep it together. “Thank you.”

There’s a long silence before the vet clears his throat. “Please know that I’m doing everything I can, but your dog is in pretty bad shape. You’re lucky that Troy found him when he did.”

I sit forward on the bed. “Is he going to be okay?”

“I hope so, but as I said, it’s serious.”

My stomach burns. “What’s wrong with him? And please be clear, Doctor. I’m a physician myself.”

“I see. Well . . . he’s had some internal bleeding, which I believe is coming from a ruptured spleen, he has serious bruising everywhere, and his skull is fractured.”

“What?” All of this knocks me off-balance emotionally, and I fight to keep it together. “But he ran such a long distance after the accident. He did that with a ruptured spleen and a fractured skull?”

“Yes,” Dr. Payne replies. “Clearly, he’s a very faithful dog, but I need your permission to open him up. I suspect I’ll have to remove his spleen and see what else we’re dealing with internally.”