Chapter One

 Once again the ER at University Hospital was pack to overflowing.  There were so many people in the waiting room, you couldn’t even see the dull gray paint peeling off the walls.  Not only was the waiting room full, so was the rest of the hospital.  The day was looking to be a busy one. Doctor Sandra Randolph had already seen three stabbings, two gun shot wounds, and a drug overdoes.  This all in the two hours she had been on duty.  With a burning in her stomach, and a heavy heart she knew this was going to be a very long shift.  Sandra was a thirty-eight year old single woman with long brown hair and dark green eyes. She had only one thing on her mind, her career.  She had no time for anything or anybody. She made it her business to ensure that was just what happened.  She whole world revolved around her work.  If it wasn’t work related or patient related her co-workers knew not to bother trying to include her in any of their conversations. 

Sandra and her staff were all too aware of the recent reports made the last few nights. There had been a rash of gang violence in the area, due to what some suspect was the cold snap they were going through.  This recent outbreak of violence seemed to be sending all of the casualties through their doors.  You would think that University Hospital was the only ER in the Chicago area.  Maybe they were just the closest to where all the action was. Regardless of what the reason, the patients just kept pouring in.

The temperature was unusually cold for mid-May, the locals saw this happen once in a while, but the tourists were caught completely of guard.  It had been so nice and warm the past few weeks. It seemed all of the stores had gotten rid of their warm clothes. Tourists who had not come prepared for cold weather were scrambling to find warm clothes. Even the forty thousand plus fans that normally packed Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs play had decided to stay out of the cold. 

Sandra had been working at University Hospital for the past ten years.  She had seen the neighborhood go from a safe place to raise a family, to a place where it just wasn’t safe to go out at night alone.  Today seemed to be like most others.  A never-ending stream of patients came through the doors with all too frequent complaints.  The complaints came from both the homeless and the waiting. Nothing unusual but she knew that could change at any moment.  Sandra was not just an Emergency Room doctor, but she was also the Emergency Room Director.  Over the past few years she started to wonder what she was doing all of this for.  She had no family, and very few friends.  With so much time working on her career there had been no time for any social life.  She knew there was something she was missing. She also knew she had no time to go looking for it now.   She’d told herself there was no telling where that missing thing was, or how to find it.  For now her career was the most important thing in her life. Why else had she spent so much time in school?

She had been taught from the time she was old enough to understand that a woman’s career was to be the most important thing.  It was not just the most important thing it was also the only thing. According to her mother a career was the key to being a complete woman.

Sandra’s mother Marsha had been by a single-minded, single woman.  She made sure to teach her the only way to be anything in this world was to be a woman with an important career. 

Marsha had gotten married very young, and had Sandra when she was only twenty.  She had been a very beautiful woman when she first got married.  Her long dark hair came to the middle of her back, and her large green eyes shined like emeralds.  The combination made it so her husband couldn’t keep his eyes off of her.  Before Sandra came along Marsha was an up and coming businesswoman in the very male dominated world of advertising.  When she became pregnant her husband hoped she might slow down.  Spend more time at home being a wife and mother.  After Sandra was born, Marsha’s drive for business did just the opposite.  Instead of spending more time at home, she now spent less.  Marsha dropped little Sandra off at the daycare no later than 6am, and would not return until 6pm.  There were nights when her husband was either working late or out of town that she would have a babysitter set up.  Sandra would be picked up and immediately dropped off again at another location for the evening.  More often that babysitter was her husband.  He would be left home to take care of Sandra while Marsha left for her office after dinner, if she even came home at all.  Marsha’s work was still the most important thing in her life. It came before anything, and that included her husband and baby daughter.  She made it very clear that nothing was more important than her career.  If people couldn’t handle it they could leave.  That is just what he did. Sandra never saw her father again. She was so young when he left, that she had no memory of him.  Everything she knew of her father came from her mother.  Her mother never had anything nice to say.  By the time Sandra was a teenager her mother had become a woman with great hostility and a great disregard for both the world and men in general.  The only thing Marsha wanted was a career. Nothing was going to get in her way, not even a family.  Marsha loved her daughter very much, but work always came first.  She was not the kind of mother who would take off work to see a school play or concert.  Sandra knew that, so it wasn’t expected.  Unfortunately even though Sandra knew how her mom was and where her priorities were she still longed for the feeling she was important.  To be the priority to someone, like her friend’s parents made them feel.  Work was the number one priority.  If she had time left over she would buy Sandra something to make up for anything she missed.  Sandra knew that nothing was going to change, so she put on a happy face. Acting like it didn’t bother her became the norm.  As the years went by that was what happened, nothing bothered her.  She had become just like her mother, a cold-hearted businesswoman. 

All these years later Sandra’s life was looking just like her mothers, work driven and lonely.  She didn’t want to die at work and alone like her mother did.  She knew she was missing a key part of what life could be. She was so driven to be a success in her career, everything except that was pushed to the back of her mind.  Nothing else could come before that otherwise in her mind she would be a failure.

Sandra had always hated the pressure her mother had put on her all through her years at Vanderbilt University.  While she struggled with the pressure from both her mother and her professors, her worst enemy had been herself.  Sandra was the type of student who was so driven, she never noticed who was around her while going from class to class.  Days would go by when she wouldn’t speak to another person unless one of her professors asked her a direct question.  All through school Sandra kept her long dark hair very neat up in a ponytail. She wore very little makeup, and dressed very business.  All of her classmates came to class in blue jeans, and tennis shoes while Sandra would be in a business suit, and dress shoes.  Her male classmate couldn’t keep their eyes off of her, and she had no idea.  Sandra was what you could call a natural beauty.  Now ten years later her long dark hair was tied up in a bun, she wore no makeup, and the lines around her eyes were much more defined than they should be for thirty-eight.  She looked well beyond her years, and she knew it.