Excerpt of Medical Judgment by Richard L. Mabry

Acrid smoke assaulting her nostrils brought Dr. Sarah
Gordon awake. Was the noise downstairs real, or was it a
part of a dream? No matter. The smoke was real. Her house
was on fire.

Her first impulse was to make sure Jenny was safe. But
first, she needed to wake Harry. Sarah reached to her
left across the king-size bed, but when her hand touched
a bare pillow she realized her husband wasn’t there. He
was dead. He’d been dead for eight months now. So had her
daughter. Sarah was alone… in a burning house.

Or was she alone? Had she really heard a noise? Was
someone down there, waiting for her to come down those
stairs? She couldn’t stay up here and burn to death,
though. What should she do? Rules and admonitions, read
or heard long ago and almost forgotten, swirled through
her mind. Sarah stopped and forced herself to think
logically, just as she would when faced with a problem in
the emergency room.

She threw on a robe, shoved her feet into slippers,
grabbed her cell phone and in a few strides covered the
distance to the door leading from her bedroom into the
hall. Feel the door. If it’s hot, find some other way
out.

Cautiously, she pressed her palm against the door…