This is the first chapter of my new book coming out in 2020. I’d like your opinion, please. I won’t share the book synopsis just yet and hope instead that you will give this a quick read and let me know if you’re interested enough to turn the page to Chapter 2.

Chapter I – Black and Blue

“Mrs. Williams, I regret to inform you that your husband was found . . .”

The next thing I remember hearing is “Code Blue” even though it was now pitch-black outside my ICU window at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. I don’t know what happened next on that beautiful sunny morning after I opened my front door for the police officer. He was standing there in the last ray of sunshine I would see for quite some time. I guess I could look at the police report or medical records, but what’s the point. I really don’t want to be reminded of the single most horrific day in my entire life.

What happened? Why was the police officer talking in slow motion? Was that simply my mind abruptly coming to a halt because I could not bear to hear the next words coming out of his mouth? I know for a fact that my heart broke into a thousand little pieces, so I guess that explains the Code Blue. My heart had stopped beating.

Heart attack—when one’s heart attacks its own body because the heart has been shattered. That’s according to me, not the American Medical Association. When a police officer knocks on your door and regrets to inform you of anything, that only means one thing, one gut-wrenching, unimaginable thing.

I had been married to that man for twenty-two blissful years, and there was no way it was all coming to a catastrophic end like that. We had plans. We had a whole lot of plans. We still had so much life to live, and of course, we were going to grow old together. Our daughter’s sweet sixteen birthday party was only two weeks away. As a matter of fact, I had planned to call the caterer to finalize our headcount for the party before I left for the airport to pick up Bill. His plane was due to arrive at LAX later that evening.

Bill had just called me less than twenty-four hours prior to that knock at the door when he was on his way to the airport. He was giddy. He told me that he had found the perfect birthday present for Bella on his very last day in Tel Aviv at the Jaffa flea market. Bella was a daddy’s girl and, needless to say, the beneficiary of various quaint souvenirs he always seemed to find no matter where his research took him. It was surely going to be a spectacular sweet sixteen surprise that I couldn’t wait to see. He even hinted that it was something that would change her life forever!

Yes, I must admit that I too was a very happy recipient of sentimental and oftentimes breathtaking gifts from around the world. We were his girls, and there was absolutely no way he was not coming back home to us. No way. He had been in Israel for thirty-three days. It was time for him to come back home. I had been expecting a phone call from Bill during his four-hour layover at Heathrow. Instead of Bill’s much anticipated call, I got that abominable knock at my front door!

Then I heard it again. “Code Blue.”

Everything went black. As I reflect on that disastrous day, everything was already black. My world had gone dark and void.

From what I’ve been told, I woke up the following morning with no recollection of the previous day. Apparently, I had a heart attack on my front porch after hearing the mind-numbing news the policeman had come to tell me. Apparently, I had another heart attack in the emergency room and a third one shortly after being transported to ICU. And sadly, apparently those words my ears had refused to allow my mind to process were no less true just because I refused to hear them, let alone accept them.

My heart was broken. I was broken. Life as I once knew it no longer existed. There was no reason to go to the airport. Bill never boarded his connecting flight in London. The only thing at the airport now was his luggage, and there certainly wasn’t any reason for me to go claim that. Well, no reason that I knew of at the time.

Had it not been for the birthday girl and the birthday gift, there really would not have been a reason for me to ever wake up again. I had no inkling that the gift of life was literally waiting for me at Virgin Atlantic. All I had to do was go claim it.