The Heart of It All (HeartSick Series Book 1)

by Weston Mitchel

  Mia had no inkling of what was going on right now, her head hurt and her throat hurt from the huge tube stuffed down it providing her oxygen, and her chest felt like the elephant was back from the cafeteria and had been sitting on it ever since. What she did know however, is that the lady taking Austin away from her right now needed to stop.

  Mia propped herself up in bed on both of her elbows, then leaned to just one as she started waving her other hand in the air trying to get someone’s attention as she tried failingly to scream with the tube in her throat. The two doctors that had been just standing there in disbelief for the last few moments finally hopped into action, moving briskly to Mia’s side.

  One had her lay back as he swiftly pulled the tube out of her gullet causing her to gag and gasp for air. Then as soon as she got that under control she screamed out “Austin!”

  She gasped again, swallowing nothing just trying to get some saliva to coat her parched and torn esophagus before trying again, this time louder, “Austin! Bring him back to me damn it.”

  The Doctor’s did what they normally did, tried to ignore the raving patient as they worked to save her from herself. They weren’t sure how she was even conscious right now much less writhing about and hurling out a storm of cuss words at them but they didn’t want her to do anything to put anymore strain on her already weakened heart.

  “Bring him back, you don’t understand. He’s supposed to be here next to me, you don’t und-” is the last of what she was able to get out clearly before wracking fits of sobs took over her body. The crying turned to slow breaths a few seconds later as the sedative, given by the uncaring, and unknowing, doctors worked it’s way though her system. Until finally she was asleep again.

  Epilogue

  EPILOGUE

  “Hurry nurse, we need to get him into trauma two quick if he’s going to have any chance of making it through this,” A doctor screamed out a little too rehearsed as they pushed the rolling bed through the hallway. The doctor seemingly right on cue for a stint on Grey’s Anatomy continued with “Carter get us 10 packs of O neg ready and waiting, I wanna be able to pump him so full of the shit his eyes turn red.”

  The group of nurses and interns surrounding the doctor, pushing the bed down the hallway all nodded in agreement even if they did think he was a pompous asshole.

  Izzy nodded towards the door at Brian, who dutifully followed her advice. Brian got up from the chair and closed the door, blocking the raucous noises from entering what should be a calm and serene environment at this appointment.

  Brian then went back to his chair right next to Izzy’s. Both of them sitting quietly, watching the screen before them with such intent you would think they were searching for Waldo amongst a sea of barber poles.

  “Think we found a heartbeat here,” The nurse said smiling as she rolled the sensor over Mia’s jelly coated belly. The heartbeat thumped through the room on speakers so everyone could hear.

  “Yep and there it is, Ms. Beckett, congratulations. Looks like you’re going to have a son,” she said pausing the wand on a certain spot and moving her body out of the way slightly so the others in the room could see the peanut with a peanut.

  A symphony of “Awwwww,” joined in with the pulsing beat still echoing in the room.

  “Have you thought of a name yet?” the nurse asked, bright and smiley like she hadn’t asked this question a thousand times already this year alone.

  “Yes actually,” Mia said wiping away what must have been the ten zillionth tear to fall from her eye in the last few months. “We’re going to call him Leo… Leo Regulus Kyle.”

  Now Mia wasn’t the only one swiping tears from cheekbones, nearly all of them were now in this small room, except for the sonogram tech of course who knew absolutely nothing about the trials this family has gone through.

  Mama K, who had been standing at Mia’s side the whole time smoothing down hair on Mia’s head that didn’t necessarily need to be smoothed, said “Austin would have liked that, hun. He really would have.”

  From the corner, where she had been standing the last fifteen minutes, Brooke slowly stood up and voiced what the whole room had been thinking on her way to mia’s side, “Wish he was here right now to see this.”

  Not taking her eyes off the screen, squinting at times to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, Mia replied “Oh he is. Daddy is here, isn’t he little Leo.” Mia then began to rub her slick jelly belly as Brian snorted out a sob in agreement.

  Author's notes

  A note from the Author is usually one of my favorite parts of a book. It’s the place that lets the reader delve inside the writer’s mind and find out just what the hell they were thinking when they wrote the book.

  Since this is my first book and nobody knows who I am, most of the people reading this book (my family) already know all about the why of this book after having to listen to me drone on and on about it during it’s creation, but here it goes anyway…

  I have always wanted to be a writer, ever since I could remember (original huh?). Starting all the way back in the 90’s, as what they call nowadays a tween-ager, writing scripts for Saved By the Bell in my bedroom that never saw the light of day. Then in high school writing way too serious love poems and letters to whichever girls that stole my heart on a week to week basis.

  Then life hit.

  Writing became just a dream that I would get to do someday for real, but not anytime soon kind of a dream. I kept telling myself I’d become a real writer eventually. Maybe when I’m older… after college. 4 majors and no degree later the Navy came calling, so obviously after the Navy, that’s when I would make my mark on the book world.

  This then turned into waiting until after my second career, outside of the navy, which in turn led to thinking maybe after the kids leave the house, maybe after I retire at 75, maybe after I die, but before I am in the ground. The dream never actually died, but I wasn’t doing much to keep it living either.

  I used to believe this was just part of the growing pains of becoming an adult. Dreams were for the sleeping, and I needed to be awake to earn a living. At first just for myself, but then for my family, which made it all the more easy to crank that back burner down even more nearly extinguishing the flame that my dreams sat on.

  That was until my first anniversary with my second wife rolled around. You see, my wife is amazing at gifts. I used to think I was great at giving presents, until her anyway. I now know I completely stink, with a capital gross, at gift giving.

  Literally every gift I’ve given her (besides the big ones like a car or the car after that one), so figuratively, every gift is even now as a write this is collecting dust somewhere in our house. It’s either hidden or on full show in the place it was set after opening, never to be used again. If there was a grown up version of Toy Story, these gifts would be the old, sad, and neglected ones.

  So for our first anniversary I racked my brain endlessly on what to give her that would not only blow her away, but also let me win the gift giving contest, because come on, it is a contest right?

  After I Googled what the traditional gift for the first year was supposed to be, Google dealt me a crushing blow, paper. Are you effin kidding me? Paper? How am I supposed to win, I mean be a sweet new husband with paper? This must have been the go to gift back in the day after not being able to afford anything for a year after paying for the wedding and honeymoon. So I understood, I just didn’t get it.

  After a few days of floundering in a paper hell, it finally hit me. Write her a story, dumbass, but it couldn’t be just any story, it needed to blow her socks off. So I wrote her the story of how we met, and fell in love.

  For the next few weeks (that’s right… weeks, I actually thought about this gift way before any man really should, so just for that I should have won… stay tuned) every spare moment I had went into writing this story. Which at that time there wasn’t a lot of while working in the oilfield, before the bottom dropped out.


  I loved it though, I more than loved it actually, I never felt anything like it. I was either sitting in front of the computer in between helping the kids with homework and while my wife was grocery shopping, or writing on my phone during my daughter’s soccer practice.

  Our anniversary night came fast, and I thought for sure I wasn’t going to finish in time. I did though, just barely. We were in Dallas for our oldest daughter’s cheerleading tournament. Rah. Not to worry though, Nanny came along and kept the kids in her room. Her room, however, was joined to ours, so rah rah.

  The time came to exchange gifts and I was just as nervous as I was excited, almost jumping out of my own skin waiting as she read it. I watched eagle eyed as she laughed at the parts she was supposed to laugh at, and tearing up at the sappy parts. Now I am down right giddy.

  She finishes and goes to open the door that should have remained locked until morning, giving it to Nanny so she could read it. She loved it too. Then she reads it to the kids and they love it, and now I am riding a high like never before thinking two things; maybe I can do this writing thing after all, and yes I won.

  Until she pulls her gift out from the luggage that is.

  She hands me a signed first edition of Stephen King’s Under the Dome. A book signed by my idol, she wins again. Not only did she win, but ever since then, on every gift giving day of birthdays, Christmases and anniversaries she tells me “I’m still waiting on part 2 of our story.” A guy can’t win.

  So that's why I decided to give this writing thing a shot about 30 years before I thought I ever would. The reason I chose this story though was completely unexpected.

  Shortly after our anniversary I got super sick, like someone please shoot me kind of sick. One night while I was sick I had a fever dream that was so realistic I actually thought for a few minutes after I awoke that it actually happened (I was on a few meds too, so that might have contributed to this a bit as well).

  It was a dream about this teen-aged boy who absorbed all the sickness and disease in the world, but it stayed with him, inside of his body and eventually he basically turned into the size of a 2,000 pound man. He became so big that he could only be moved by heavy equipment.

  Once the last person was cured he had them dig a hole in the ice of Antarctica and bury him as deep as they possibly could so as to not let the sickness out… Fast forward 100 years to an earth that hasn't dealt with flu or colds or cancer since, but thanks to climate change melting the ice in the arctic everything is released back in to the world. Or something like that.

  Now this book is so far off from that story that I can't believe it came from the same starting point. The story really does take a life of it’s own once you start putting it on paper.

  Now for the part where I get to thank everyone and piss off whoever was left out.

  First off, like I said in my dedication and earlier in this section, this whole journey is because of my family. They kept pushing me, and encouraging me when I thought for sure there wouldn't be a person in the world who would ever want to read a word of mine.

  At dinner the kids would ask “is the book finished?” and I would say “no it's not, it's only half done.” The very next night “is the book finished now?” and I would hang my head low and reply “no, now it's less than half way done somehow.”

  They would just smile and say “Okay, can't wait.” They got so excited, they started writing their own stories and books (most better than mine). If they ever thought that I would fail, or not finish or just give it up altogether, they never showed it, and I think the fact that I didn't is credited a lot to that.

  Thank you, Alison Green, who was my go to for all things medical. If anything is wrong it's because I chose to use creative license or I screwed up her meaning, so blame me.

  Thank you to Jessica Rickman for doing such an amazing job editing my book and steering me in the right direction, when all I wanted to was veer off course and go mudding.

  Thank you Vesna Tišma and everyone else at Cakamura Art Studio in Belgrade, Serbia for designing the cover art. I can only hope my story will live up to their excellent creation.

  Thanks to everyone at Sterling and Stone, with out their expertise and advice I would most likely be handing out paper-clipped together copies of this story that I printed out from home to people in the Wal-mart parking lot, instead of actually selling books.

  To Brad Ozeroglu, for showing me no one is going to just hand you what you want in life, if you want something you have to take/earn it.

  Thanks to my sister and her family, Kate and Cole and Joe, for their support and not laughing too loud when I told them what I was doing.

  To my Brother-in-laws (Chase and Steven), Sister-in-law (Tara), and Parents-in-law (Lora and Terry) for not helping my wife move out after finding out that I wanted to be a writer, and therefore make no extra money.

  To my Mother (Lou) and Father (Wes), who taught me that no matter what life throws at you, through hard work and dedication you can make the life you want to live. They supported every hair-brained idea I have ever had, (I did mention 4 different majors and no degree right?) and showed me that dreams aren’t just for the sleeping.

  Once more to my kids (Ashlynn, Brooklyn, and Blaine), who remind me on a daily basis what love and pride actually means.

  Finally, to my wife, Crista Mitchel, who so far has stuck with me through all of the different levels of my stubborn craziness, when most women would have called it quits years ago. Without her, I would be half the man I am today, 3/4s less happy, and twice as stupid. I love you more and forever.

  If you liked this book please leave a review on whichever website you purchased it from. If you didn’t like it, there are no such things as reviews, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.

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