Starting Now by Debbie Macomber Page A

her throat as the suggestion took root. She’d taken up knitting, and now after only a few minutes in the hospital she was actually considering becoming a volunteer. Was this what Hershel meant when he suggested that she get a life?

Chapter 5

    Phillip Stone stood and escorted the young couple to the door of his office. Friday morning he would be operating on their three-pound son, who had been born ten weeks prematurely. Baby Blaine had a defective heart valve, a not uncommon defect. Over the course of his career Phillip had done this same procedure more times than he could remember.
    Still, he’d never performed it on their son, and both parents looked as if they were about to cave in from anxiety and fear.
    “I’ll see you Friday,” Phillip said in his most reassuring voice.
    The wife paused and held his look. Her own eyes were rimmed with tears. “Dr. Stone, do you pray?”
    He debated on how best to answer. When he was a kid, he’d memorized the prayers his mother had taught him. She was Catholic and his father, well, his father wasn’t much of anything. His grandmother had given him a Bible for his high school graduation. He still had it … somewhere.
    “Annie.” The husband urged his wife toward the elevator.
    “This is our first baby,” the young mother said, her voice quivering. “He means the world to us.”
    “I pray,” Phillip said, after a lengthy pause. He hadn’t recently, but there’d certainly been times over the last thirty-nine years when he’d called upon God. Not always in the politest of terms, or in ways that might technically constitute prayer, but it was as close as he got.
    “Then pray on Friday,” she urged, before turning away and joining her husband.
    The couple entered the elevator. The husband placed his arm around his wife’s slim shoulders. Phillip noticed how she leaned into him, as though the love and strength of her mate was the only thing that could keep her upright.
    Their baby’s chances were good; Phillip didn’t anticipate complications. The boy would do fine … God willing.
    He spent the next hour doing paperwork and was surprised when he glanced up and saw that it was already after seven. He’d meant to leave earlier. Old habits die hard, harder than he realized. Finding balance in his life had demanded discipline and restraint. It was much too easy to fall back into the trap of staying late at the hospital and completely immersing himself in his work.
    He saved lives, and these babies needed him. What he’d discovered, though, much to his chagrin, was that he wasn’t much good to anyone if his entire focus remained in the hospital. After he and Heather split, he’d realized the problem was his. At the time, he’d felt she wanted more of him than he was willing to give.
    After the breakup another realization had hit him. Working such long hours, he’d completely lost sight of himself. Every day at the hospital he became enmeshed in the life-and-death drama of what was happening around him, taking no time to reflect on or absorb the impact of these events. He needed to get away, think, make time for himself and for a life outside the hospital.
    Since then, he’d given a lot of thought to his tendency to be so completely single-minded and focused on his work. He realized therewas more to this personality trait of his than just pure dedication. Self-analysis wasn’t comfortable or especially easy, but he knew that if he was ever going to find fulfillment in life outside of work, then he was going to need to change. It struck him that he was the kind of person who found rigorous self-discipline and accomplishment actually easier than relaxation. He hadn’t gotten to the point where he was comfortable lowering his guard, but he was working on that.
    One of the first things he’d done was set a hard-and-fast rule that he had to leave Seattle General before seven o’clock. For a while, he’d cast about to find something other than work to occupy his