Chapter 6

Heaven:
heav·en n
1. Heaven or heaven a place or condition of supreme happiness and peace where good people are believed to go after death, and, especially in Christianity, the dwelling place of God and the angels
2. an experience of blissful happiness
3. the sky by day or at night as seen from Earth (often used in the plural)
4. Heaven or heaven in Christian belief, the power of God to direct events on Earth

Dante & Alice’s house – A few days later

Dante and Alice Bizzarri’s house was everything Carmen had ever imagined it to be. Wide, colored, with a huge patio and a perfectly neat – and enormous – garden.

The couple had managed to gather at least twenty relatives to celebrate Dante’s newly functioning heart and they all seemed to be having a great fun. The house and the garden were already crowded and noisy, and Dante was busy at the barbeque, spinning hamburgers masterly and laughing heartily with his three kids.

Carmen observed them from her car, biting her bottom lip, her fingers tapping rhythmically on the steering wheel. She felt unsure. She had thought and thought for the last few days about going to that party, afraid of meeting Shane but, at the same time, aching, yearning, longing to see her again.

Since their soft kiss in the park, Shane seemed to have disappeared from the face of Earth. And Carmen had realized to miss her. She missed Shane more than she had ever thought possible. It was a pulsing, aching sensation of loss, of painful emptiness that Carmen just couldn’t ignore or avoid… and it was slowly killing her.

Carmen Morales, the doctor, the physician, the woman who had spent years of her life bent over her books, struggling against her own hot blood, against her own temperamental attitude because it wasn’t useful to her profession – even worse, it was harmful; Carmen Morales, who had tried hard to become detached and strong in order to be one of the best surgeons in town despite her own young age; Carmen, who had never really needed anyone, was now struggling against a whole bunch of feelings that seemed to be haunting her night and day.

Shane was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t at the hospital, she wasn’t at the library, she wasn’t at the park, and yet Carmen felt like she had never abandoned her. Whether Carmen was riding her bike, or operating, or taking a long, relaxing bath, or strolling with Earl, the feeling of having Shane around would never abandon her. She was like a silent observer, lost in time and space, or at least that was how Carmen pictured her. Her black outfit, her messy hair, those green eyes