Sunset Rising (Sunset Vampire Series, Book 5) by Jaz Primo Page B

he said. “However, it was expected that I
attend college. Fortunately, Doctor Sedgwick was a kind man. He not
only tutored me on basic knowledge in physiology, but sponsored my
entry into medical school. Between some of my father’s savings and
Doctor Sedgwick’s influence, I was accepted to Harvard.”
    “ Very cool,” I said.
“You’re a Harvard man.”
    “ Snob,” Paige said as she
sat down before what had to be the largest chocolate muffin I’d
ever seen.
    Both Ethan and I stared at it.
    “ Hey, stop sizing up my
muffin,” she said.
    He and I simultaneously broke into
laughter.
    At first, she frowned. Then she scowled.
    “ Oh, very funny, you
pervs,” she said. “Get back to yammerin’ before I fang you
both.”
    Ethan stretched his arm across her shoulders
and she snuggled beside him before delving into her snack.
    “ Anyway, by 1856, the year
I turned twenty, I had graduated from Harvard and had fallen for a
lovely young local woman named Deidre, who I’d met while attending
college,” he said.
    “ She was a fellow
student?” I asked.
    “ No,” Paige said. “They
first saw each other on Sundays at the local church.”
    I stared at her.
    “ What?” she asked.
“Spoiler. I’ve heard this already.”
    He looked at her with an endearing
expression.
    “ Within a year, Deidre and
I were married. We had a wonderful year together before she became
pregnant,” he said.
    “ Unfortunately, and as
often was the case back then, she died giving birth to our son, who
subsequently died within hours of delivery. Though the midwife was
experienced, there’d been birthing complications, and neither
Sedgwick nor I were able to stem her internal
hemorrhaging.”
    He paused to take a drink of his cappuccino
and I could see his eyes turn glassy. Paige reached over to hold
his free hand.
    “ I’m so sorry, Ethan,” I
said.
    What a tragic event.
    I thought back to Katrina’s own story of
having lost her husband and children to disease within a short time
of one another.
    Throughout the ages, life seemed to be rife
with senseless tragedy.
    “ I was devastated, and
felt lost for months afterwards,” Ethan said. “Nothing stemmed my
intense feelings of loss and sadness. I think the only thing that
propelled me onward was my work in medicine. In the years that
followed, as I deprived Death of each potential victim, it seemed
like a series of small victories, of sorts.”
    That was an interesting notion to me.
    “ Of course, you can’t
cheat Death forever,” he said. “He always seems to get his due in
the end.”
    I stared at him. “So, is that why you still
practice medicine as a vampire today? To keep cheating Death?”
    “ Now? No,” he said. “I do
it because I thoroughly enjoy medicine and helping others. Although
there may be a small component of penance for what I am now, as
well.”
    I looked into his eyes, wondering why he
felt that way.
    “ Penance?” I
asked.
    The edges of his mouth upturned slightly,
though in a bitter fashion.
    “ By the time the Civil War
started in 1861, I had been actively practicing medicine
itinerantly from town to town. Naturally, the Union Army
aggressively recruited doctors, and I volunteered my services,” he
said. “I was commissioned a Captain, and spent most of my time in
field hospitals.”
    “ Wow,” I said. “I can only
imagine what you saw during the Civil War.”
    “ You’re a historian, so
you’ve read about how brutal it was,” he said. “Still, to
experience it was something else entirely.”
    “ Hey, I’m eating here,”
Paige said.
    I gave her a wan look. “Oh, please. You eat,
sleep, and dream blood.”
    “ Yeah, true.”
    Ethan shook his head.
    “ The field hospitals were
horrible places, and I still remember the stench and foulness that
accompanied sounds of pure human misery. For all of the carnage on
the battlefields, the carnage in the field hospitals was much
worse,” he said. “For every person I managed to save, three or