Page 1 of Chosen Path
CHAPTERONE
This body is wasted, full of sickness, and frail;
this heap of corruption breaks to pieces,
life indeed ends in death.
The Buddha, Dhammapada, Chapter XI, Old Age, l. 148
* * *
Scandia Bluff, Vermont
Population, 588
Tuesday, just before lunch
Molly Hart, MD, eyed the phone for the eighth time in as many minutes. She could pick it up and call, right this second. Her uncle Al would have wrapped up his last patient appointment of the morning by now. She could picture him, sitting at the small round table in the staff room, methodically unwrapping the wax paper from the peanut butter and jelly sandwich Aunt Rachel had packed him. He’d smooth the wax paper flat, then fold it into a perfect square to save for the next day’s PBJ on wheat.
She smiled at the image, and her hand fluttered toward the receiver.
Call him. He’d love to hear from you regardless of … this.
Then her gaze shifted to the copy of the death certificate, its edges curling up from the surface of her scarred pine desk. Her stomach flipped, and her hand froze mid-air.
Or you could let the man enjoy his lunch, schmoozing with the nurses and residents and doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. It’s Tuesday, so it’s an ink day.
Uncle Al filled out the puzzle in pen Monday through Thursday, then he switched to pencil for the remainder of the week. Molly had never understood his reasoning. He always completed the puzzle, even on the harder days. When she’d asked about it, Aunt Rachel had laughed, then told Molly he’d claimed the switch to pencil was out of humility, but it was really superstition.
Superstition. It was silly for a man of science like her uncle to believe in such a thing. He and she were doctors. They believed in evidence, reason, clear cause and effect. Her eyes flitted back to the document. Somewhere, in the pile of papers on her desk, there was a manila envelope that held the photos she’d insisted on taking of Nikolas Lundgren’s stiff, cold body, but which gave no hint as to the cause of his death.
Death comes in threes.The thought popped into her mind. She wasn’t sure where she’d heard it.
Now who’s being superstitious?she scolded herself, but her heart wasn’t in it. Sure, maybe the human need to find patterns led people to find trios of death, but she couldn’t deny the hard, medical facts:
There’d already been two sets of three deaths in the six months she’d been here. Now, Nikolas Lundgren made seven. Seven otherwise healthy members of the community. Seven people with no underlying conditions of note, no serious health complaints of any kinds, and no infections at the time of death. Seven people who, by all appearances, had simply dropped dead. To be sure, her patient population wasn’t in perfect health. The dead had suffered from an array of common chronic conditions, but nothing acute, nothing that explained their sudden deaths.
She couldn’t sit around and wait to see if two more people would die to complete the pattern of threes. She couldn’t afford to. The tiny village’s population had been reduced by more than one percent since her arrival. As the only doctor in town, she ought to have an explanation for the rash of deaths. But she didn’t.
She exhaled loudly and snatched up the phone receiver before she could change her mind. Then she punched in her uncle’s mobile number from memory and rolled her neck from side to side while she waited for him to pick up.
“Molly-Dolly! This is a splendid surprise,” he boomed.
“It’s Doctor Molly-Dolly now, Uncle Al,” she teased.
Her dark mood began to dissipate almost instantly. Uncle Al had a talent for cheering you up when you didn’t even realize you were down. His patients raved about his bedside manner. Her mom said he had the demeanor of a whimsical elf.
“Of course, of course. But, in that case, it’s Doctor Uncle Al to you. To what do I owe the honor, my dear?”
She swallowed around the hard lump in her throat. “I need your help.”
CHAPTERTWO
Little Lotus Sangha
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Tuesday, late afternoon
