Tobias: Book One of the Cantrell Brothers Series

Chapter Fifty-One

Downing the remains of powdery chocolate milk, Jane licked her lips appreciatively, savoring the sweet taste of Frosted Flakes. It was early morning Wednesday, and like every other day, she went about preparing for her day of work.

Everyday, simple tasks were becoming harder and harder to bear, but she forged on, hoping and praying to God that Jerry, the private investigator who had gone to California for her, would be back soon. He had left well over a month ago, and Nancy had personally guaranteed that her husband would be back any day now.

You better hurry up, old man, she thought moodily before grabbing her keys and heading off to the Clinic.

Walking into the Clinic, she ignored the stares she had constantly been receiving ever since word of Dr. Froid's and her affair had spread. Slowly but surely that lie was soon becoming a belief amongst her co-workers, many of them having already asked what happened to Tobias.

“Well,” she would begin by saying, “Dr. Froid and I were never in a relationship of any sort, so please, just stop that rumor. I would never do that to Tobias.”

“Okay,” they would reply, eyes gleaming with the promise of another gossip topic.

Like always, she ignored the curious looks and went into her makeshift office that doubled as a patient room. It was almost an eternity later before her computer rang the alarm for the first patient of the day, an eight-year-old girl with bucked teeth who had broken her hip a few months back.

“If this isn't irony, then I don't know what is,” Jane mumbled to Karen, the one whom she had cried on for hours on end.

“It'll be okay,” her best friend mouthed to her just as the little girl limped around the corner.

Much like Tobias, her limp was prominent. But the girl, Madeline, wasn't Tobias, and this wasn't the very first day they had met. Jane wouldn't change a thing about that day. If she could go back in time, she wouldn't stop their relationship from happening, for the memories, feelings, and times spent together had been the very best of her entire existence.

She wouldn't trade those memories for the world. She wouldn't trade him for anything, and yet, what had she done? Had just thrown everything away. Their love, their future, all gone because of something that had happened in her past, something – she realized now with astonishing clarity – didn't have a hold on her anymore.

Jane didn't know when it had happened, but somewhere along the line, she had finally gotten over the despair of her parents' deaths. It was now just a thing of the past – something she should have known a long, long time ago. As each petal of the Amaryllis had fallen, a little piece of her had been revealed, a little something that was uniquely her recovering.

Tears came to her eyes then, their familiar salty sting making her vision blur. Madeline gave her a strange look just as Karen gently grabbed her own arm and hauled her back into the makeshift office.

“Shh, Jane." Her friend soothed, extremely strong for her slight frame.

She choked, sobbing, “I...I've been s-so stupid, Karen. I-”

“No, honey, you're fine. You're okay. I'll call in Lee. He'll come in today if you're not feeling up to it. I promise.”

Wiping away the liquid from her tired face, she tried to be strong. “N-no. I think I'm fine. I just...patients need me now. It wouldn't be right. I-I'll go see Tobias after work. That'll be okay, right? I can't go see him like this anyways.”

“Of course,” Karen replied with kind eyes. “If you need anything at all today – anything at all, - just come up to the desk, and I'll get it, okay?”