"Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains." ― Jeffrey Rasley
Looking in the mirror Ava Aldrich does her best to prepare herself to face the day. Her ivory skin is as pale as snow. It makes her look Even worse than the sickly creature that looks at her back from the surface of the mirror. Dark circles lay under her eyes as her sparse eyes lashes frame large hazel eyes. What is left of her light brown eyebrows is filled in with pencil and mascara is gently put on her fragile lashes. A blue scarf covers her bald head.
Her collarbones protrude and her ribs are scarily visible. Freckles decorate her skin but they stand out as the sickly tone of her skin shines through no matter how much she tries to disguise it. Ava dresses in jeans and a warm woolen sweater and does her best to drink her sweetened green tea complete with honey and lemon. Going out onto her porch she breathes in the fresh mountain air and does her best to push down the feelings welling within her.
Here among the glaciers and rocky roads and craggy mountains Ava has tried to find a small measure of peace in whatever time she has left. Once a whole she drives into the city to dutifully do her chemo to try and prolong the inevitable. But Ava knows the truth. She can feel it in her bones, she is dying. It is a harsh truth the rattles her brittle bones and makes her weak heart stutter. But as unyielding and dangerous as it may be it is also freeing in a strange and spectacular way.
Ava is a doctor and she knows the odds. They are not in her favor. So she gave into her wanderlust a year prior and went West determined it not waste what was left in the smoggy and overpopulated metropolis of New York. Ava is free of the guessing game. She has a clear idea of how much time she has left and she chooses to spend it here beneath the big blue sky instead of a concrete jungle that holds nothing. there she is a nameless figure in the crowd. Here she has friends and knows she will be mourned and remembered in this small mountain community. Maybe it is selfish but Ava wants someone to remember her when she is gone. And she does not want to be alone.
So here she is a Harvard educated doctor working in a small clinic where most days she does nothing but meditate and visit with the other clinic workers as the doctors take the majority of the workload from her. On one hand it drives her crazy and on the other she enjoys having nothing better to do than look and breathe in the mountain air. There are two other doctors who are healthy and robust. She is the anchor that is slowing them down. But still she tries to do her best and be useful.
It is a normal and cloudy Monday when Rodney Jenkins is brought in with nail through his foot from the new home that is being built at the top of the hill overlooking the lake that surrounds the town with its pristine clear water and deep hidden depths. Ava is the only one on duty and so she rushes to help the man who is clearly in pain. But as she meets him at the entrance of the clinic her attention falls to the large blonde man who carries Rodney in like he is nothing but a bag of apples.
The man has hair shorn short with broad shoulders and muscles clearly defined under his flannel. Wearing worn jeans and steel toe shoes he seems like a ordinary construction worker that comes through every few weeks and then leaves once the job is done. Moves on from this small town onto bigger and brighter things, but none of the others passing through look like this man.
he stands tall but does his best to blend into the background even though his imposing physical stature makes it impossible. His eyes are a blue as bright as the sky above but they are haunted by shadows Ava does not even want to guess the cause of. And just as she finishes with Rodney she sees him about to exit the clinic without even having the decency to check on his coworker.
Ava Aldrich is dying so mostly she does what she likes. So she rips into the man and lets her low opinion of him be known. She then waltzes off smirking and patting herself on the back for putting the bastard in his place. What she does not notice is the blue eyes that follow her retreating back.
Over the course of the next few weeks every time she runs into the man she knows is named Steve she eyes his disdainfully for his old fashioned ways and all American looks that have everyone falling at his feet. Ava knows his type. He thinks he is secretly above everyone else and she knows he will always seem like a hero But in the end he will leave and never look back. He saves others and then does not stick around afterwords. It is something she has seen and lived and she has no desire to associate with.
but it seems fate is not on her side when she is in the parking lot of the local grocers and she suffers a seizure. She black out so she does not see a tall blonde man racing to her side, she does not see him frantically drive her to the clinic nor refuse to leave her side. She does not feel his haunted gaze upon her. Nor does she feel his large calloused hands gently hold onto her own.
but when Ava awakens and her eyes see the figure squashed into the small reclining chair beside her own snoring softly she is shocked. Steve is beside her bed sleeping and has been there for the past twelve hours it has taken for her to awaken. And when moments later his eyes flutter open and his sky blue gaze meets her own something changes.
Dr. Ava Aldrich is Living on borrowed time. She has no time for romance and complications. Yet her fragile and few horrors heart is now dancing a small staccato beat to a tune she is not familiar with. She is dying yet little does she know she is about to truly start living.