Henry Ahrens, MD

Henry unlocked the door to his apartment and stepped inside, closing the door gently behind him before going on to stretch his arms and running a hand through his brown hair as he made his way through his hallway. It was just past half past seven in the morning, and Henry had completed a night of working the graveyard shift at the Regional Medical Center in Chesterville, having enjoyed another wonderfully uneventful night of being the doctor on call.

Moving through the living room as it was being flooded by the rays of the rising soon, and resisting the lure of his sofa, Henry could hear Sarah moving about in the kitchen and so made his way over there.

“Good morning Sarah,” Henry greeted the figure in the pink pyjamas.

“Daddy!” Sarah leapt from her chair and hurried over to hug Henry.

“You’re getting heavy…” Henry observed as he picked up his daughter, knowing that it wouldn’t be too long before she had grown too big for him to do so.

“Daddy I’ve made you breakfast.” Sarah appeared to be quite proud of having succeeded in setting the table.

“Oh, how did you manage to do that?” Henry asked his daughter as he set her down on the floor. The plates and cups were placed in the cupboards, which were way beyond what she could reach.

Sarah scampered over to one of the kitchen chairs, grabbing hold of its back as she turned to her father to announce triumphantly that “I used this!”

“Sarah, you shouldn’t be climbing around in the kitchen.” Henry softly chastised his daughter, not having the energy be really upset with her. Besides, if he was to scream at her each time that she did something which he saw as dangerous, he’d just end up having raised her to be a neurotic, paranoid girl incapable of leading a normal life due to her debilitating fears of just about everything.

“Sorry daddy,” Sarah responded with all the vigour of a young Irish Catholic saying his Hail Marys the morning after a particularly entertaining Saturday night.

“Just don’t do it again,” Henry said as he took a seat and served himself some cereal, reflecting on the fact that at five years old, his daughter had already decided that he needed some looking after. She seemed to have inherited Monica’s strong maternal instincts, Henry thought, and then let out a sigh as his thoughts inadvertently turned to his deceased wife.

He remembered that it would soon be two years since the cancer had stolen Monica away from him and Sarah, leaving him to raise her on his own. Fatherhood was the bringer of odd situations, even as Monica’s made Henry doubt the existence of any cosmic order or divine justice, he found himself telling Sarah that there was an afterlife. It was simply a lot more comforting for a little girl to be told that her mother was up in heaven, looking after them, rather than that she was now nothing more than withered bones and some compost.

“Pumpkin, you should go get ready for school.”

“Fine,” Sarah pouted as though she didn’t agree with that suggestion at all, but left the kitchen to go the bathroom and brush her teeth.

It had been Monica, a native of Chesterville, who had discovered that there was a residency available at the Medical Center, and the two of them had agreed that a smaller town like Chesterville was a good place in which to raise their daughter.

They had ended up buying a house, a perfect place for raising the many kids that they planned on having, in Hope primarily because the high school there offered her a job as a teacher. Henry had sold the house after Monica’s , partly because it was way too big for just him and Sarah and partly because he couldn’t stand how it reminded him of her.

Tasked with raising his daughter on his own and highly sceptical of meeting a woman whom he liked and who had the patience and character required to serve as a good maternal figure for Sarah, Henry was planning on dedicating himself solely to his daughter, living like a monk until Sarah was old enough to go to college, at which point he would be in his late forties.

Of course, Henry had no idea that things would soon happen that would render his plans for the future quite out of date.

[Contains writer's notes]