No Love Lost (The Faith McClellan Series Book 5) by LynDee Walker

Author:LynDee Walker [Walker, LynDee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn River Publishing
Published: 2022-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

22

Death is a constant presence.

Three hundred and thirty billion cells die in an average adult every single day.

Thankfully, every one of them is replaced with a new, fresh cell ready to take on the work of keeping the body’s systems moving.

At least, that’s what’s supposed to happen. That’s what happens when a person is healthy.

Homeostasis—the delicate balance that keeps our lungs breathing, hearts beating, and muscles moving—is really terrifyingly easy to disrupt. Even people who understand this don’t like to think about it—it’s unsettling in the same way most of us don’t really want to know the CIA secrets of how close the world comes to disastrous conflict on a fairly regular basis. We go about our lives, drinking coffee, sending texts, running errands, working late, not giving cellular biology a second thought.

Until it stops working the way it should, that is. A few dead cells a day that aren’t replaced, over time, break the rhythm that keeps a person’s systems moving in the same way a major trauma or heart attack would.

Missing cells disrupt the body’s processes.

The problem manifests in small ways at first. An upset stomach. Burning in the chest. Ready bruising. Easily brushed off, every last one.

Even when they pile on at virtually the same time.

It was all his fault, of course.

Youth imbues most of us with a terribly misguided sense of immortality.

A mind consumed with studying all day and working most of the night has time only for a few scattered daydreams of a bright future: picket fence, black shutters—no, maybe yellow—a red tricycle with streamers and a bell on the concrete sidewalk.

Behind it all, a big, loud, messy house, because aren’t those the very best kind? And love. So much love it seeps out of his pores, threatens to consume him if he doesn’t concentrate on something else.

He has to focus, though. Everything he wants is so close now. Thick books full of long Latin words that are familiar now, never mind that he never thought he’d learn them once upon a time; fat binders full of case studies that are nothing but puzzles to solve—and he’s always loved puzzles. Midnight oil burns right along with his eyes as he reads, watches, takes notes. Three more years. With twenty behind him, it sounds like nothing—but everything waits on the other side of it.

He’s happy. Busy. Stressed.

The perfect formula for missing things he should’ve seen.

By the time he notices, the scale is tipped way too far toward the dead cells.

But there has to be a way to balance it again. To save that shining future.

There has to.

No matter how unimaginable the cost.

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