Free Coming Undone by Staci Stallings Page B

when he was super busy, he always found a way to include me in his life.”
    “ He sounds like a great dad.”
    “ He was.” Ben nodded, a smile coming to his face as his hands came together at his knees. “I always wanted to be just like him, you know? Carry on the tradition. But doctoring was not my specialty. I think I liked partying a little too much.” He laughed softly. “It was a lot better than Anatomy and Physiology, that’s for sure. So I went into pharmaceuticals, and when I got out, Dad helped me swing a job with a drug company.”
    Falling into the memories, Ben hardly realized he was still talking out loud. “Everyone loved my dad. I couldn’t go anywhere that they didn’t know him, and I think that made me even prouder of him. And I wanted him to be proud of me, you know? I wanted him to be able to say, ‘That’s my son. Ben Warren.’
    “ I…” The story stopped for a moment as he remembered his father as he had been what seemed a blink ago, not as he now was. “I never wanted to let him down, you know?” He sniffed back the sudden tears and wiped his nose that was betraying his effort not to cry. “I guess that’s what I feel like I’m doing now, with this, like I’m letting him down.”
    “ Is your father living the life he would want to live now?”
    Instantly a picture of his father in that bed flashed into his mind. “No.”
    She let that word hang there in his heart for a long moment. “There is nothing wrong with heroic life saving if your efforts actually bring that life back. That’s what they did to begin with. But there comes a time when holding onto a life that needs to go on only prolongs the inevitable.”
    The tears were overwhelming him now, and he sniffed them back angrily.
    “ This option is not about tossing that life away. It’s about honoring life and the end of life. Death is a natural part of the process. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing. It just is. Your dad lived a strong, healthy, vibrant life. He helped a lot of people. He gave a lot of good to this world. You are not going to diminish that by accepting that the time of his death is near.”
    Sorrow crushed over his spirit, crumpling it. “But I don’t want him to go.”
    The touch of her hand on his shoulder brought the tears springing out of his eyes.
    “ I know. And that’s okay. One thing you have to learn is to be very gentle with you. Let yourself feel and grieve and hurt. It’s part of the process.”
    Overwhelming panic gripped him as he looked up at her. He could not do this alone. That much he was perfectly sure of. “Will you go with me? To sign the papers?” For a long moment his gaze searched hers, and then his bounced around and fell to the floor. “I really don’t think I can do this alone.”
    Her soft brown eyes under the fall of blonde waves soothed his overwrought emotions when he glanced back up. “If you want me to go with you, I will.”
     

Chapter 5
     
    Kathryn sat in one chair in Dr. Vitter’s office, Ben in the other. Dr. Vitter sat like a stone statue on the other side of the expansive desk. She watched the pen just touch the paper, and then Ben jerked it back. Closing her eyes, she prayed for God’s will to be done. If Ben was having this much trouble, maybe there was a reason. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to sign those papers. She didn’t know, but she knew Who did.
    “ And there’s nothing,” Ben said as if he was pleading for his own life. “Nothing else you can do.”
    Dr. Vitter’s gaze never left the other side of the desk. “We’ve done everything, and nothing in any test we’ve done gives us the slightest hope that he could ever come back.”
    Ben nodded but did not move.
    “ Ben,” Kathryn finally said, and he turned to her with that same pleading in his eyes, “if you’re not sure, there’s no need to rush. Maybe you know something we don’t.”
    She felt Dr. Vitter’s gaze snap to hers, and she felt the anger too. But she didn’t