Sophie's Path
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Catherine Lanigan
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Chapter One
JACK WAS AT the bottom of a dank, wet drainage tunnel. He smelled earth, rain and blood. It was dark and he couldnât see even a few inches in front of him. The ringing in his ears drowned out everything else. He felt as if there was something nibbling at his ankles. Rats? He hated rats. Just the thought of them made his stomach lurch. He tried to shake them off but couldnât move his legs. No, not rats. It was pain. Shooting, biting, sharp pain that now went careening up his calves.
His thoughts were confused and morphed into one another, creating a senseless universe. That was it, he reasoned. Heâd been catapulted into some black hole. Floating. Spinning. Weightless.
And alone. Utterly, completely alone.
Except for the pain. The pain was his bedfellow. His traveling companion. It overtook his entire body now. His spine felt as if someone had shot it with molten steel. His skull pounded in agony. He couldnât open his eyes for fear that the tiniest beam of light would penetrate him like bullets.
Surely, he was dying.
This was what it was like at the end, he thought. Every cell in his body felt as if it had been shot with electricity strong enough to fry him to ash. No human could endure this kind of torture and live. No human would want to. This was the moment, that sliver of awareness that he was about to give up the ghost. And in his moment of choice, Jack knew it was okay to let go. Except for his sister and brother-in-law, he had no one. No wife. No children. No one would mourn him. He wouldnât be missed.
Then he heard a familiar male voice, though he couldnât place it.
â9-1-1? Thereâs been an accident. Hurry. Weâre going to lose them!â
* * *
LIKE THE HIGH-PITCHED, irritating buzz of a mosquito, a voice reached into Jackâs consciousness. Impossible as that was to accept, he struggled to figure out what it was saying.
âJack? Can you hear me? Help is coming. Stay with me.â
Jack had expected to talk to an angel upon dying, but this was a manâs voice. A young man who sounded vaguely like the new recruit heâd hired for his insurance agency, Owen Jacobs. Yes. His mind slowly ground into gear.
âJack,â Owen said. âCan you hear the sirens? The cops are here. The ambulance, too. Itâs going to be okay.â
Jack didnât hear sirens. It took all his effort to listen to Owenâs voice, which he was positive was coming to him from the other end of a tunnel. Jack wanted to answer Owen, but there was so much blood in his mouth, all he could do was choke, cough and spit. His tongue refused to obey his commands.
Now that he was a little more aware, though, his training kicked in. Apparently, even in his last minutes on earth, he was an insurance agent through and through. He wanted to know all the particulars. Where was he? What happened? Why was he paralyzed and in pain? And what was Owen doing here in this tunnel, if thatâs where they were? He wanted facts. Even if Owen was talking to him, Jack couldnât be sure heâd understood all the words. Each wave of pain smothered reality like a desert haboob that engulfs land, water and all living creatures. Jackâs world now contained only himself and the pain. The incessant, unrelenting, excruciating pain.
For some reason he couldnât open his eyes. Something had glued them shut. He forced himself to listen, to make out even the faintest sounds, but Owenâs voice had faded and all that was left were the surges of his pounding blood and rapidly beating heart. Mercifully, that one sound told him he was still alive. For the moment.
Just as Jackâs mind was beginning to ease away the fuzzy edges of confusion, a searing, debilitating pain shot across his forehead, making him feel as if his eyes had just been scorched out of their sockets.
Everything went black. Jack was floating in the galaxies again.
* * *
SOPHIE MATTUCHI HAD a little over an hour before she began her weekend night shift as a cardiac nurse in the ER at Indian Lake Hospital. Sophie had signed on for the extra hours because the ER was shorthanded and because she saw the need. Sophie always saw the need.
Although it was an unusually foggy evening, she pulled on her running shoes, determined to fit in a run around the three-mile running trail that circled the lake. It had been a rainy and cold early June, and before that, sheâd felt as if winter would never end after a record four-foot snow pack that stayed until late March. Still, she hadnât missed a single dayâs run since sheâd taken up the sport two years ago to keep her weight under control and her mind off Louise Railtonâs extra creamy homemade ice creams. The city had installed LED street lights all along the trail that allowed fanatics like Sophie to run in just about any kind of weather.
Sophie had invested in the best running shoes, clothing and gadgets to track her fitness, and sheâd downloaded motivational podcasts to listen to while she ran. There was nothing like starting her workdays or evenings with inspiring mantras to help her reinvent her life.
And these days, she was all about reinventing, restructuring, realigning and rebooting Sophie.
Ever since sheâd kissed a very reluctant Scott Abbot in first grade, Sophie had been labeled the town flirt. For most of her life, she hadnât minded the moniker at all. She liked boys. A lot. She liked flirting and dating and being around men. She liked living in a manâs world and she liked being as good as any man in her job. Sophie thought that men were more interesting than women, or at least sheâd been telling herself that since high school because sheâd never had many girlfriends. She was too busy dating two, three, four different guys in a single week. Sophie always took it upon herself to explore whatever world it was that her newest guy was into. Baseball, football, track, cars, boating, weight lifting. She didnât care. They liked her because she was âinterestedâ and she loved their attention. The truth was that Sophie learned to be good friendsâand often moreâwith all the guys she knew. They liked holding her hand and stealing kisses on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the county fair.
However, the moment anything started to get serious, Sophie moved on. It had been the only way to handle her life when she was in school. Sheâd been dead set on obtaining her degree, and nothing and no one could stand in her way.
When she graduated, sheâd spent a year at a hospital in Grand Rapids then moved back in with her parents to help them with her aging grandmother. What Sophie thought was going to be a single summer at home while she applied to top hospitals in Chicago and Indianapolis had evolved into an entire year. One year had turned into five. Her biggest surprise had been landing her dream job with Dr. Caldwell and Nate Barzonni.
In all that time, Sophieâs modus operandi for dealing with men never changed. She was an expert at getting a manâs attention, but once sheâd landed him, she threw him back. Catch and release.
Sophie had come to realize that her commitment phobia and the lighthearted, devil-may-care persona she put on for the world to see, was just flat boring. Like a hamster in a cage, she was spinning her wheels and getting nowhere with her life.
The problem was that in a small town where everyone knew everyoneâs business and had very long memories, her flirtatious ways had caused her to lose many peopleâs respect. And that was unacceptable to her.
Sticking her earbuds in her ears, Sophie smiled to herself. She bent down to press her nose to her knees as she clasped the backs of her thighs. Sheâd made some real changes over the past year.
Running had become nirvana for her and for the first time she had the body sheâd always wanted. These days when she got depressed, she headed for the lake trail instead of a dish of Louiseâs salted caramel and pecan ice cream. Her favorite store now was the organic farmerâs market. She had stamina that she hadnât known before, and her weekend shifts at the ER, which could run as long as eighteen hours, didnât compromise her regular weekday workload helping Dr. Nate Barzonni with heart surgeries.
Despite all these changes, Sophie hadnât yet gotten a handle on love. She had no earthly idea how sheâd overcome her bad habits, phobias and insecurities, but this was the year sheâd start trying. Her self-help podcasts promised she could make it happen. She had to think differently and then sheâd be able to make the right choices. She had to trust in the universe. Believe in the laws of attraction. Be the master of her own fate. Write her own script...
Her cell phone blared with an ambulance siren alert. It could only mean the ER was calling.
Sophie halted her run before it even started. She whipped the cell out of her shortsâ pocket. âMattuchi here.â
The excited womanâs voice on the other end said, âHow fast can you get here? We have a multiple-car accident on its way in from Highway 421. Possible DOA.â
âIâm there,â Sophie shouted into the phone, already sprinting toward her car.
