Changed Plans 1

Dr. Christina walked into her offices overlooking the Reedy River which were tucked into a corner of the, 'The Engineering Firm's corporate offices allowing her to use their reception area which was also used by the Security Consultation Group.  Neither of those firms hardly ever received clients at these offices as most of their work was done afield.  Her office here though it did have two examining rooms was not where she did the brunt of her work as that tool place in surgery centers or hospitals.  Here was where she could sit down and study charts and do her research without the office politics she had endured for more than she could remember.  Her move here in the timeline she called her life had been recent, or rather it was her move back she did not have to remind herself.  At fifty three she knew she looked almost twenty years younger, accept for the graying at the temples in her otherwise platinum blond hair and one really did not even notice that unless they were up close and looked at her slightly darker roots.  Still though she did have the cases she preferred to see in a less medically formal environment and with both of her treatment rooms overlooking the river it helped her clients or the ones she saw here.  This morning it was a young mother of three who had been in a serious head on collision and after spending months in recovery just learning to walk again it was now time to give back to her something more a sense of self worth and self esteem.  

Normally her sense of humor and quick wit helped both her deal with seeing the aftereffects of such a major catastrophe in someone's personal life, as well it also set her clients as well as their loved ones.  Her looks which had been a good trait when she was primarily taking already gorgeous people and tweaking them to make them more perfect were almost a deterrent in this more recent aspect of her career.  Thankfully it was not the young woman's husband that came with her but her sister, mom and her children.  This would take time almost seven surgeries over the next year.  She was pleasant enough to her newest patient but she played I am the professional and have been doing this for years card and sent her out to get lunch at one of the numerous restaurants that lined the river.  In her office which actually held some of her ex husband's hand made furniture which Beth had saved when she had her lawyer sell everything.  She stopped realizing her ex was not her ex anymore and the last two or rather three weeks if you count him showing up to surprise her, not that she was surprised thanks to not only her son but his handlers who had turned over him back to his own company.  She had not had all the details even from her son who only let her know that he had twins.  She remembered the first letters which she had let pile up which she had left unread for a year and would have continued to ignore them if had not been for Beth who had intercepted the mail man and recognized the writing on the envelope.

She looked at her hands which had begun to shake again.  That had started two nights ago after he was hauled off to jail with the man who yes she had danced and flirted with but had never expected him to show up at the house and she cringed as she knew that if he had not been there she would have been somewhere south of the border after becoming a bride.  When she had been told about the plans they had for her daughter she had wanted to vomit, the fact he had acted like it was a normal thing for him had made her mad, but with several of hr friends talking to her she had calmed down until he had been dropped off and stood around hanging with his men; or her men as she had thought of them during the years he had been sequestered away from the world with her not being able to tell a living soul.  In a way it was his fault as it was his life and career that had been put under the microscope but so was hers and she had had to come face to face with the fact much of why he had stayed away was the fact he loved her and did not know how to deal with the fact she had had an affair which was over before it started.  Then in her attempt to deal with his long absences she had turned to her friends which he had found about the night they had flown home or the home she had finished raising their daughters and her son in and it had become home for her and in some ways even for him.

With him showing up like he had when she was at the height of her career and had become a central part of the small iconic haven of ranchers turned landlords and the hideouts from the left coast.  Everyone knew she was married to a man who worked overseas and traveled the world, but she had kept doing what a secret.  The fact he was gone so much and she was a doctor who did her share of travelling for conferences and vacations helped her to feel apart of those jet set.  His paychecks which were substantial allowed her to put her children in the private school, pay for that property in which she had made her life where she had essentially lived as a widow struggling to overcome the loss and move on with her life.  Then when he came home he said permanently she had struggled to deal with that and him as he had seamed lost.  Dr. Christina realized that was almost ten years ago and her life since had been turned upside down.  She had gone and helped aggressively grow the medical group when she moved to the desert and tried to retain a sense of normalcy as his life had seemed to spiral out of control.  In her mind she had known it was not all of his doing particularly when her Uncle showed up which she now knew was to observe and if necessary to stop him from becoming completely unwound.  She started crying as she thought about trying to maintain her status quo but with the children old enough to be out of the house she had to watch as the father of her daughters and in all respects beyond the physical when he had been home he had been a father to Christopher.  She realized now as she had looked back his work had revolved around the various wars and interventions her country had gotten involved in but during these past years as she struggled to maintain her life as she watched his go from absent to something out of a nightmare she had married that horrid man who had not been horrid when during her struggle to find equilibrium he had comforted her and had loved her so tenderly and then to have that boondoggle in her life try to kill the man who was more and more looking like the hero at least to her children.

That had ended after they both had come home and he had hauled off and hit two of the men who were trying to help after which he forced the law to arrest him.  Then these past three years one with her spending a good deal of time with him an that arid piece of dirt with that creek which at times was no more than a mud puddle.  That had been her darkest year and the man who she in reality had originally because of her own rebellious streak with which she had shed his innocence not that he had complained then or even now as he had accepted full responsibility for his part in her getting pregnant, she had not expected her dad who had brought a strange boy into their home to actually allow them to marry, but he not only did but pulled that boy out of school and finished his step into manhood almost over night.  It was not until her flight back after what had to be the wildest two weeks she had ever had even thought she knew he thought she had been wild the reality was she had changed because of him, yes as soon as she got where she actually had real cell coverage she called to move her schedule around some more so that yesterday she could talk to the Colonel who for some reason beyond her understanding had been handed the oversight of Security Consultations Group after he had held a gun to her husband in front of her.  He had not wanted to talk but with Steven who now ran the other half of well her company she had cornered her uncle in the board room.  He had not even known she and Jonathon Christopher had gotten hitched and had actually thought she had been aboard the Mercy Ship.  Nor had he known that her husband was raising twins.  Something he had said after that crazy stunt he pulled with the horses had gotten her to ask where he had come from before dad brought him home and gave him a last name.

She held her hands together as they began to shake harder, he had never talked to her about his childhood which with his helping her get through school even as he worked along side her dad and continued his studies under dad not that she had noticed as being pregnant, going to school and coming home to watch him build their house or rather turn the barn into a home; which she only told them to turn into a home to try to wiggle out of getting married.  By the end of college that first year she had loved being married and felt grown up and focused and he had kept her their even as he took on more responsibility,  Best of all was unlike her friends in high school who were always worrying about who they would date or getting caught sneaking out to the old camp amphitheater in the woods, she found being able to have sex as soon as they hit the room in her parents house at first and then anywhere in the barn when it was being finished having her own house as she went to school, well that was good but then life moved on, because her husband had a knack for engineering almost anything and dad making him his architectural and mechanical engineer on several large projects which as she knew now had garnered the attention of others and ended up landing him larger and larger projects, and then projects overseas, she had learned some of it over the last ten years but had tried to ignore it as time after time it seemed, it was insane as he kept finding himself on the wrong side of the law or so she had believed which had been encouraged by her uncle, those friends of hers who were not in the know and the fact she lived in a world where you only got arrested if you broke the law and the fact he had broke up her life and scared her to death particularly after asking to marry her and then disappearing during those trials which she could not blame him for but by then the deed was done and he had acted like it was her fault.

She was interrupted in her thoughts by Beth standing in front of her waving her hand.  She told her to snap out of it as being married was not that bad.  She shook it off and asked if her client was back from lunch.  Beth nodded and told her to eat something.  Finished with her appointment with a second appointment scheduled after she returned from her stay on the Mercy Ship, she was ready to leave when she was handed another letter.  When she looked up, Beth told her mom had the mail forwarded here when she found her daughter had gone and done something crazy like hop aboard a train and stow away in some man's cabin.  Christina told her she was married to that man; Beth told her and then she went off her rocker and fell right off the front porch and she had better be in church on Sunday thanking God that man helped hide her from the railroad police.  Christina new her friend was just trying to get her out of her deep thinking as it was what generally what got her into trouble, the fact Beth had taken her back as a friend still amazed her.  As they left the Colonel was just coming in, he looked tired and old.  He smiled and shook his head signifying he still had no idea where her husband came from.  On the way home Beth asked if he ever talked about his childhood as in all reality when he had moved in to become the boy in the room next door he was over being a child which is why if she remembered correctly someone had wanted to play doctor when she was fifteen and he only twelve.