LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      “ANOTHER ambulance is coming.”

      Leah Montgomery didn’t spare her nursing colleague a glance as she stripped the used hospital sheets from the bed. “Tell me something I don’t already know,” she said wryly. “The moon was full when we came to work this morning.”

      Although it wasn’t a scientific fact, hospital staff the world over recognized and accepted that full-moon shifts were the proverbial shifts from hell. So far, this was shaping up to be one of them. Everything from car wrecks, heart attacks, lawn mower accidents, and simple sore throats had flooded the Spring Valley ER on this hot August day.

      While many of her staff bemoaned the extra workload, she didn’t mind the increased pace at all. Being busy kept her mind off things she didn’t want to think about—things like her husband’s plane crashing in the Mexican jungle a month ago today. Or the report stating that there were no survivors, which meant Gabe was dead.

       Dead!

      After four painfully long weeks, it still seemed surreal, as if she might wake up some morning and discover she’d simply had a horrible nightmare. To her disappointment, each day was like the one before—the facts hadn’t changed overnight. Neither did they change when she worked until she was too exhausted to reflect on the losses in her life.

      If her boss would allow it, she’d cover more shifts than her PRN status allowed in order to keep her demons at bay. She was willing to do anything to stay busy until time took away the anguish over her last conversation with Gabe—the one where she’d asked to make their separation permanent with a divorce.

      Some might call her crazy, others might say she was being silly and sentimental, but the truth was, she was mourning for Gabe on so many levels. Grieving that his vibrant life had been cut short at age thirty-eight; grieving that their marriage had reached an impasse; grieving for the loss of their dreams and missed opportunities. Was it any wonder she needed the fast pace of the hospital, the steady stream of new patients and drama as a life raft she could climb aboard?

      “I hear Maternity is swamped,” Jane rattled on, blithely unaware of Leah’s inattention. “They’re so packed with new moms, they’re overflowing into the med-surg unit.” She unfolded a fresh sheet and began tucking the corners under the mattress.

      Leah pictured a nursery filled with bassinets of sleeping babies wearing pink or blue stocking hats, the hallway crowded with beaming fathers and proud grandparents while new mothers, some having already forgotten the pain of childbirth, looked

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