Rescue Breathing
Authors: Zoe Norman
Rescue Breathing
The Breathe Series
-
Book One
Written by Zoe Norman
RESCUE BREATHING
Copyright 2014
Zoe Norman, LLC
Smashwords Edition
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This book is intended
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Table of Contents
Rescue
breathing
,
also known as “the kiss of life,”
is a rescue technique
where one person provides air
for someone who has stopped breathing.
-
Excerpt from
www.ask.com/health&fitness
CHAPTER ONE
Olivia
“
There is a time in every woman's life when
she needs to just walk away. This, Olivia, is that
time.”
That lovely quote comes directly from the
mouth of my best friend, Charley, over the phone and across the
country. She is giving me her version of a pep talk, which I am
grateful is not currently including a stream of expletives directed
at my ex, Jay.
About nine months ago, I found out he was
not just cheating. Nope, that would have been too easy. In fact, at
this point in my life, I would pay someone to turn the hands of
time back and make it that easy. No, Jay provided me with a much
more interesting betrayal. Wait for it. He was married. With kids.
The whole time we were dating. All three years of it.
It's okay. Take a moment to absorb that.
It's taken me nine months to just scratch the surface of taking
that in. I am now at that special place where I'
m just angry.
Angry and decidedly spending the majority of my
time fantasizing about different ways to remove Jay's testicles in
a painful manner. Charley is all too willing to assist with this
part of the grieving process, even from the polar opposite side of
the United States, since dealing with sobbing, falling-apart Olivia
is too much for her to bear.
“
Liv, are you listening? This is your
opportunity to have some fun. Get the hell out of the city and
breathe a little. You need some space from all this. Even if you
don't see him anymore, you need to get out of town. Come to this
conference. I'll show you around Seattle. We'll go out with my
girls here. It will be so much fun. Maybe you'
ll even get laid!
”
The conference she is referring to is an
American Psychological Association conference where I'm supposed to
present my most recent research to be published about trauma and
servicemen. I've spent the last nine months of my grief process
interviewing nearly every fireman, policeman, and paramedic in the
city of New York. It's amazing how productive hating someone else
and being devastatingly broken can make you.
“
Charley, I'm not looking to get laid. My
God, that's the last thing on my mind!”
This is a lie. A big, fat, stupid lie. I
think about sex every time I go to bed. Not with my ex—that sex
wasn't even that good. No, I think about the kind of sex I've
always wanted, with a man who makes me feel amazing and cherished
and isn't afraid of a little fun. So basically I think about my
dream-man sex on the body of a celebrity. Whatever. It
works.
“
Charley, if I come out there, you know I
have to actually work. It's a conference. I'd be presenting at
three different lectures.”
I hear her sigh over the phone. “I know
exactly what you're saying and I know you have to work. But you
also have to have some fun, Liv. Hey, is that guy Rob going to be
there? The guy you hooked up with at your last
conference?”
I groan. Rob is a psychologist who
presented at conference I attended in Chicago, several months after
I found out about Jay. In a fit of sadness—and a tremendous amount
of alcohol—I had sex with Rob in a stairwell of the hotel in which
we were staying. Suffice it to say, it took me another two weeks to
get him to stop calling me. The last thing I need right now is to
run into him again.
“
Absolutely not, Charlotte. That guy was
like a leech. I have no interest in rehashing that disaster
again.”
I hear her giggle on the other end. “Liv,
please. I haven't seen you in ages. I miss you. Just come out to
Seattle. If there is a happy side effect, it's that you get out of
New York, and if you're able to put some of the Jay stuff to bed,
all the better, but at least we can visit, okay?”
I sigh. “Okay, okay, okay. I'll come out.
I'll send you the itinerary when I get it. I do know I'll be at the
Fairmont Olympic, but I could probably use a ride when I get there
if you don't mind. Maybe we can have dinner the first
night?”
“
Yay! That's the spirit, girl. Oh my God, I
can't wait to see you! Liv, you won't regret this. I promise you,
I'm going to make it all better. I love you, Livvie
girl.”
I laugh as my heart clenches. Charley has
been my best friend since we were in school together at Columbia.
She moved to Seattle a few years ago for work and I miss her
terribly. Not having her here during all this has been terribly
difficult for me.
“
I love you too, Charley. I can't wait to
see you.”
We hang up our call and I collapse into my
couch.
The conference is
next week. I have a lot of work to do before I leave, not the least
of which is call our travel coordinator at NYU and get my flight
plan together. I pick up the phone and dial away.
* * *
My flight out to Seattle is tomorrow night
and I
'm still packing. I
decided to take the last flight out in the hopes of getting a
little sleep before my plane lands. It will mean arriving very late
at night, but that will allow me a full night's sleep before the
start of the conference.
I have all my clothes laid out in front of
me. I have all the usual work stuff—skirt suits, pant suits,
sensible shoes. But knowing that Charley wants to go out, I decide
I should also pack some cute stuff too, so I've included some short
black skirts that are fun, a couple of sexy tops, and some real
fuck-me stilettos. I don't know who I think is going to fuck me in
these shoes, but it's worth a shot, right?
Just thinking about having sex with
someone else, despite all my late-night fantasies, makes my stomach
roil. I wish my heart didn't hurt so much still. I'm lucky I never
run into Jay at all. My guess is that he's—smartly—avoiding the
places I might be likely to see him.
My discovery of his infidelity
(it
's easier to just
call it that at this point) came on the heels of another revelation
that I thought would be the best part of my life. I found out I was
pregnant. Jay and I had always been careful, but fate has its way
of intervening. And intervene it did. I had never thought anything
about the fact that he'd never had me over to his place. Or that
there were weekends he didn't contact me at all despite having had
plans. Or that there were times of the year he was flat-out
nervous. When you're desperate to be loved by someone, someone you
are sure is your soul mate, you gloss over these items for which
the rest of the female world scream, “
There Is A Fucking Problem
Here!
”
So when I told him I was pregnant and he
freaked out, I was stunned into silence. I mean, I wasn't exactly
prepared for it, nor had I been expecting it, but I certainly
wasn't shrieking, “Fuck!” at the top of my lungs or “How the fuck
did you let this happen?” From there, it was all
downhill.
During his tirade, he said,
“
I don
't
want any more kids.” And there it was. What other kids? What did he
mean? And then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world,
he told me that he was married, had two kids, and lived in a
brownstone on the Upper East Side. And in that one quick moment, my
entire life fell apart and his went back to normal.
Jay and I had been seeing each other for
three years, since grad school. He was bright, handsome, and slated
to be a very successful psychiatrist. He also seemed to be
increasingly unavailable. Scheduled visits, phone calls where he
was whispering. I talked at length with Charley about this. She
told me that I was being paranoid, that it was in my head, but I
knew it wasn't. And then, the "incident." Two weeks late on my
period, vomiting in the morning, hypersensitivity to smells, and
fifteen positive at-home pregnancy tests revealed what was now
obvious—I was pregnant.