Snippet Sunday: A Quiet Interlude

Another passage from our manuscript, taking place shortly after where we've been the last couple of weeks. This has our supporting characters Rachel and Olivia at home together in New York after a long day. We'll be picking up with the second half of this interlude next week.

Olivia settled into bed late in the evening, feeling Rachel’s arms wrap around her from behind, snuggling close to her. She smiled at the contact, at the feeling of her hands, and drew one up to her lips, kissing it, knowing how Rachel liked that. “Hey, lover,” Olivia softly greeted her in the darkness.

“Hello, sweetness,” Rachel replied, her voice intoxicating.

“Long day?” Olivia asked, kissing her fiancee’s hand again.

“Yes, but a good one. I saw Faith.....how she handles that job…”

Olivia sighed; she’d always been astonished by any doctor who had the fortitude to tackle that damned disease. “She compartmentalizes it a lot, doesn’t she?” she asked. She thought briefly of Gabriel and Chloe, of the same damned disease that was robbing Chloe of her mother. Small world, she thought.

“Lots of oncologists tend to do that,” Rachel remarked.

Snippet Sunday: Coping Strategy

Picking up a few lines after our last post, we have this momentary conversation between our characters Rachel and Faith at the hospital. Rachel has just asked Faith, her maid of honour at her upcoming wedding, how her day has been.

“Same old, same old.” It was as much as Faith would say about the job. Unlike other doctors, she didn’t talk shop. It was as though she needed to set the reality of her work aside at the end of the day. Rachel suspected it was a coping strategy, knowing that medicine needed doctors who would fight that particular illness. “So, how’s Olivia?”

“Wonderful as ever.”

“We’ve still got the fitting on the weekend?”

“Of course,” Rachel confirmed with a smile.

Faith smiled back, pleased by the distraction. “Good.”

Snippet Sunday: Medical Specialities

This is a passage involving two of our supporting characters in our manuscript, from the point of view of one of them. Rachel is one of Gabriel's closest friends, and a doctor in New York City.

Rachel walked through the hospital late in the afternoon, unwinding from a successful delivery. Mother and baby were doing fine, and father had made it through without fainting. She smiled, shook her head, wondering about the notion of someday having children with Olivia. We’d just have to settle which one of us gets pregnant, she thought with a smirk.

She looked ahead in the crowded corridor, and saw a good friend and fellow doctor. Faith Cavanaugh worked here in the oncology department, fighting a battle against a disease that all too often ended in a loss. Too many patients lost the battle to cancer. Rachel had often wondered how Faith could stand the emotional toll that area of medicine took on its doctors and nurses. It was something she could never do herself. She preferred the happy endings that came out of helping bring a new life into the world.

Snippet Sunday: Breakfast With Gram

Another short passage from our manuscript, this featuring Gabriel paying a visit to his grandmother in Ireland at the end of a working trip in the British isles....

Saturday morning saw Gabriel awake early. After checking out of the hotel, he drove out of Galway in a rental, along the familiar roads to Headford. It wasn’t long until he was in the town, pulling into a parking space by his grandmother’s home. Bridget was already awake, greeted him with a hug, fussed over him, and brought him back to the kitchen, where she was engaged in making pancakes. The smell of cinnamon, sugar, and flour filled the room.

“So, Gabriel,” she said breezily. “Tell me about it.” 

 

 “About what?” he asked, digging into a pancake.  

 

“Something’s changed about you,” she remarked. 

 

 He smiled. “Can’t get anything past you, could I?”

Snippet Sunday: Quite A Noise

We have another passage today, this from the manuscript and the point of view of Dana, one of our supporting characters, a city girl out in the country staying with her friends, and hearing something she is definitely not used to in the night....

Dana had never heard a screech owl before.  

The owl outside her window roused her from a sound sleep. She grabbed the bedside phone and made a frantic call to 911. Then she went running down the hallway, screaming. She woke everyone except Linda, who was heavily sedated. They rushed into the hallway. Chloe grabbed her friend's shoulders. “Dana—what's wrong?” Dana was shaking. 

“Someone's being killed outside! I heard the screams!"