Ava's Heart: Book One: Discovered

By Crystal Y. Nichelson

Ava Hart thought she lived a normal life working the night shift as a labor and delivery doctor, but she discovers that her life is anything but normal. As a result of a traumatic childhood, Ava’s psyche has been split, creating alternate personalities that are ruining her life. In order to gain control over her life, Ava has to dig deep into her memories to discover what happened to her as a child. What will she learn, and can she face the truth without losing herself completely?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491873762

Crystal Y. Nichelson

Growing up I was always drawn to books. I became a booklover when I was in first grade, and I wrote my first story when I was in fifth grade, called “Love at the Hamburger Stand.” Reading has always been a way of escape for me, a change to leave my own world and go somewhere else, be someone else, experience something different. Writing fiction has no limitations; it allows the imagination of the writer and the reader to expand beyond any boundaries, making anything possible. That is why I enjoy writing fiction. I want to create a world of characters that my readers can become lost in. I want to create their place of escape, to help them be someone else, experience someone else’s emotions just for a little while. In college my dream was to become a published author; through the encouragement of my professors, I followed my dream for several years until my path changed. I got married at a young age, and I had a son; my priorities changed and so did my path. I never lost my desire to write, and I continued to write for my own collection over the years; but my new path led me toward the medical field, and I found something else I was passionate about. During my divorce I was led down the nursing path, and though it was not easy focusing on the demands of nursing school while going through a divorce and raising a four-year-old son on my own, I did it! Today I am a single mother of two beautiful children who are my world: a son, Tariq (18), and a daughter, Kaiyah (9). My children inspire me every day to follow my dreams, and I hope to return that inspiration to them as they grow up. Nursing is something I love, but writing is a passion I was born with, and I will never stop enjoying the thrill of creating a new story. I was born and raised in Sacramento, California. I’m the oldest of four siblings, three boys and a girl. Family and friends are very important to me, and without their support I could not have made it through the years, so I want to say thank you. I enjoy writing. I hope you enjoy reading, and thank you to all my readers for your support!

Book preview

Chapter One

January 2003

H er heart raced as she listened to the voices from the next room become louder. Her palms were sweaty and her hand trembled as she held the steel revolver with her finger on the trigger. She paused outside the door, her stomach churned, and she became overwhelmed with the urge to vomit. The taste of bile scorched the back of her throat, and she struggled to keep the acid liquid down in her stomach. Inside her head there was a voice screaming, It has to be done! We must do this! The words kept repeating, growing louder and angrier. She raised her hands to her ears and pressed her back to the wall. Her head throbbed and she wanted it to stop. Panic began to build inside her and she felt like she couldn’t catch her breath. She shook her head and told herself she couldn’t do it. Her instinct was to run and get out of there. She held the gun loosely in her hand; her heart began to hammer inside her chest. Her heart pounded so hard it felt as if someone were banging from the inside demanding to be let out. She felt herself being pulled into an empty void, surrounded by darkness, and then everything stopped and became calm.

She gripped the loosely held gun more firmly, the panic that once overwhelmed her was gone, and her heart beat at a calm and steady pace. The voices in her head became only one, and it spoke only one sentence: "Kill the bastard." She reached for the doorknob and opened the door. Her eyes were cold and dark as she looked at him sitting there with his drunken buddy and their strung-out whores. Her eyes met his in a slew of hate, she raised the gun, and before anyone could react, the first bullet was in his heart, the next in his gut—and when he fell to the ground dead, she shot and killed the three other people in the room.

The smell of blood went unnoticed, the sight of death didn’t faze her, but the hatred in her heart consumed her; it boiled in her veins. She walked over to his now lifeless body; she stared at him, her head tilted, and a hateful smirk formed on her lips. The hatred she felt blackened her heart and damned her soul. She reloaded her gun and shot off his dick, and when the hatred still raged within her, she put the barrel of the silencer to his forehead and pulled the trigger one last time.

Wiping a solitary tear from her cheek, she walked away from the mutilated man she once called daddy and left him there to rot in the filth where he belonged. When she got outside, she removed the shoe covers from her shoes and slipped the latex gloves from her hands. She carefully picked up the gun she’d bought illegally with a plastic bag and zip locked it closed. She drove her car to the Sacramento River and dumped the gun out of the plastic bag into the fierce winter current.

September 2013

The doors of labor room four burst open as two nurses rushed the bed toward the operating room. Dr. Ava Hart sat on her knees on the foot of the bed with her hand far up her patient’s vagina, attempting to keep the baby’s head from compressing the umbilical cord and cutting off its blood supply.

I have a prolapsed cord! Code C! she yelled as the bed was rushed through the double doors and into operating room one.

In the operating room, the anesthesiologist began prepping his cart to put the patient to sleep for an emergency cesarean section. A team of nurses rushed in to help prep the patient, while Ava continued to save the unborn child’s life by holding it up and away from the birth canal. Once the patient was asleep, the team was ready to go, and Ava moved out of the way. A splash of Hibiclens to disinfect the skin, a blue drape, and a scalpel were all that was needed. Within minutes a healthy, vibrant baby girl was born. The neonatal team took over the care of the baby while Ava closed the mom’s wound. Ava walked out of the OR when everything was done, washed her hands, and plopped down at the nurses’ station.

Well, that about tops my excitement requirement for the night. I think I will go home now, she joked.

I don’t know, Dr. Hart, I think you can do better than that. We just invited a woman in having her fifth baby with back-to-back contractions—oh, and her water broke an hour ago. Maybe we can add a parking-lot delivery to your night, you know, to make it complete, Alexis, one of the labor nurses, said jokingly.

Ava shook her head and laughed. The truth was she loved what she did. Ava could remember wanting to be a baby doctor when she was a little girl. She wanted to take part in bringing life into this world, and that’s what she did. Sometimes, like tonight, she even helped save a life that might otherwise be lost before it had a chance to live, and that made her feel damn good.

Bring it. Ava smiled and grabbed two cookies from the bag sitting on the corner of the nurse’s desk. She took two large bites to finish the first one and savored the taste. Really, a sarcastic voice whispered in her head. Ava paused for a minute and then raised the second cookie to her mouth. She was about to gobble it down when one of the labor nurses approached her with a labor strip. She held her finger up to her lips to signal for the nurse to give her a second to finish chewing. With one final swallow and a desperate need to wash it down with something to drink, Ava gave her attention to the nurse.

What do you got there? she asked.

Well, this is Nicole Bryan; she’s in room seven. She’s our twenty-eight-week antepartum patient, here for premature rupture of her membranes. I’m concerned about her baby. He’s been having variables for the past couple of hours, and now he just had a prolonged decal with minimal variability, Jennifer explained. Jennifer was a petite nurse about five feet tall, with short strawberry hair and blue eyes.

Ava looked over the fetal monitoring strip, flipping back through the past couple of hours. She flipped to the section where there were three or four sharp variables that sometimes went down to the nineties but always returned to baseline. The deceleration Jennifer was concerned about didn’t look horrible, but it was worth watching. Ava flipped through the strip a second time before speaking.

You know, the strip overall looks reassuring; the variability is still moderate, even with the decels. The deceleration here that went down to the nineties is obviously something we don’t want to keep happening; let me know if it happens again. Is she still leaking clear fluid? Ava asked.

Yeah, the fluid is clear, there’s no odor, and she isn’t feeling any contractions. She says the baby is moving around a lot, and she is afebrile, Jennifer reported.

Okay, I’m not worried at this point; we will just keep watching, Ava said and put her initials on the end of the strip.

Jennifer took the strip and went to a computer to finish charting. Ava grabbed two more cookies and was about to sit down when one of her colleagues came out of the OR.

Hey Mark, how’s that baby looking? she asked as Dr. Mark Reynolds washed his hands.

Good. I believe the apgars were 8 and 9, he said as he walked over to the desk and grabbed a handful of cookies. Apgars are scores given to infants to determine how well they transition immediately after delivery on a scale of 0 to 10. Who brought the goodies? he asked and stuffed a whole cookie in his mouth.

That would be our charge nurse, Barb, Jennifer answered.

They’re pretty good. Mark winked at Jennifer and she blushed. She had a huge crush on Mark. Hey, Ava, if you wanna go to bed now, you can. I’m gonna stay up. Kathy is finishing up in the OR. It’s pretty quiet right now, Mark offered.

Ava yawned. Yeah, I think I better close my eyes for a few hours. The board is pretty stable. Room two, once she gets her epidural, you can go ahead and AROM her; room one, if she hasn’t changed her cervix at the next exam, could probably benefit from some Pitocin; and the twenty-eight weeker in room seven is here for PPROM. Her baby is having some variables and had one prolonged deceleration down to the 90s. The baseline has been in the 150s with moderate variability. We will probably want to keep an eye on her—make sure she’s not trying to get an infection. Room nine and room eight are both progressing, and there is no one in triage at this time, Ava reported.

Okay. I think I can handle it. Go catch some z’s, Mark said, and Ava headed off to the doctors’ sleep room. When she got into the room, she kicked off her clogs and fell back on the bed. She was on her twelfth hour and counting. The room smelled of men’s cologne and baked goods, so she knew Mark must have been the last occupant. It didn’t bother her—thank goodness he wore decent cologne. She curled up beneath the covers, let out a long sigh, and stared into the darkness. She loved what she did, she was good at what she did, but there was something missing—the one thing she wasn’t good at was love. With the last thoughts in her head being of love, Ava drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Two

March, 2007

S he loved him, that was all Ava kept telling herself as she lay there beneath him as he fucked her. He was heavy, sweaty, and breathing hard in her ear. He was so into his own needs that he failed to notice her lack of enthusiasm. Tears streamed down her cheek, and again she told herself she loved him. Ava took him back after he cheated on her because she loved him—didn’t she? She was so sad, so confused, and so full of hurt; it was like a blanket of blackness that covered her until she couldn’t bear to feel anymore—she just needed to disappear.

He grabbed her breast and squeezed it in the palm of his hand; her hips thrust and a moan escaped her throat. She maneuvered herself from beneath until she now straddled him and began to ride him vigorously. The change in pace excited him, and he held her hips as he fought to maintain control. She drove him deep inside of her, moving her hips in a rolling manner that brought him in and out, stroking him until he was sure he would explode. He noticed the look in her eyes was different; her eyes were darker, deeper, and cold. She grabbed her breast and brought the nipple to her mouth. She teased it with her tongue and caught it between her teeth. The moan from her throat was sultry and inviting. He grabbed her hips and held her firm as he thrust hard and deep inside her. He cried out, growled in lust, and gave one final thrust as he released himself inside of her.

She stared down at him and watched him lie there, satisfied and exhausted from his climax. Her heart was cold, but the blood that ran through her veins boiled. He said he loved her, and she trusted him with everything. How did he show his love? By fucking around on her, and sleeping with some low-class bitch from downtown and getting her pregnant. Somehow he talked the girl into an abortion; she left him a long voice mail on his phone begging him to come to the clinic with her. She declared her love for him like some pathetic puppy. I love you and I only want to make you happy, were the last words she said before she’d hung up.

He was supposed to be there this evening at the clinic with the girl, killing his unborn child, but he was too much of a coward and a liar to face his responsibilities. Instead, he stayed home to fuck his wife as if he didn’t have a worry in the world. Ava knew what he had done and it disgusted her. Ava hated herself and her marriage, but she needed him. If he left again, she would be alone so she didn’t ask him about it.

Her blood boiled with hate. She hated him—the way he looked, the way he smelled. The feel of him touching her made her sick; she wanted to scream. She climbed off of him and went into the bathroom to turn on the shower. She looked at herself in the mirror and studied the reflection that stared back at her. Her body was moderately heavier than she would have preferred, her hips were too wide and her stomach too flabby. Her breasts were larger and heavier, so much so that they didn’t sit up quite as perky as they used to. It wasn’t bad-looking, but it was certainly something she was going to have to change. The water in the shower was beginning to steam and fill the bathroom with warm mist. She watched as the steam covered the mirror and her reflection faded away. The sound of him coughing caught her attention, and then she heard him whispering. A smirk curved her lips and she opened the bathroom door to find him with his back to her and his cell phone to his ear.

It was barely a thought before she actually did it. She grabbed the baseball bat leaning against the dresser and smashed it against his skull just after he hung up the phone with his whore. He fell bloody to the ground, barely breathing but still alive,