doctor, doctor

Doctor, Doctor is Mary Vesta Nickerson's soon to be second published book. Her first published book was The Decoy and The Dove. Her first screenplay was done from her book The Decoy and The Dove and placed in the quarterfinals of the 2003 International Screenplay Competition hosted by the American Screenwriters Association and Writer's Digest. Out of a field of 1200 entries, she placed in the top thirty-five. She has completed one other novel GARCO and has ideas for several more novels.

M. Nickerson has a small antique store located at the Maxwell Interchange at Maxwell, Nebraska. The store is called Nickel's Edge and sells Antiques, Books, and Collectibles. She lives in the country south of Maxwell with her husband, a dog named Tipper, a cat named Twitch, and two horses named Scarlett and Julie.

Prologue
Flat River
The Month of March
1994

Albert Winslow lay dead in his backyard in Flat River, Nebraska since six p.m. Still young at age twenty-five, he was unaware of the freakish March storm that hit Ashe County around nine the evening he died. The thunderstorm and small hail-blizzard set about demolishing the daffodil and laying the new grass flat. The sky spit sleet sporadically, quitting at five a.m. Drops of melted water were still on his ashen worn-out face. His tan shirt and blue jeans were wet with water and the release that came to his bladder when his body relaxed in its submission to death. The whites of his blue eyes were dotted with small red pinpoint hemorrhages that popped from pressure after he gasped his last breath of air. Five years to the day after his mother died, Albert was dead.

He was slight with blonde hair and pitifully thin, his glasses crooked on his face, unseeing and untouched by the events. His boyish frame seemed too young to die naturally, but his face reflected the rigors of life mixed with the rigors of death.

Albert hadn’t taken his mother’s death well when she died at forty. Her death left him feeling deserted and alone. Living in a small house set back from the street, it was all he could afford after his mother’s medical bills, funeral expenses, and the inheritance taxes. He lay on his back, arms outstretched, palms open, with bloodied eyes facing the heavens as if to say he was with his mother now. A loaded handgun he’d been carrying lay by his side.

At the moment of death he experienced a cadaveric spasm which froze a grimace on his face. When death relaxed his muscles before rigor mortis set in, his face was wiped clean of fear.

Last Update: 02/24/2004
Web Author: Mary Vesta Nickerson, Author and Shop Nickel's Edge: Antiques, Books, and Collectibles
Copyright ©2004 by Mary Vesta Nickerson, Author and Shop Owner of Nickel's Edge: Antiques, Books, and Collectibles