Chapter 17

"Do you believe it's been ten years already?"

Katie lay in bed next to John; listening to the just barely-audible noise emanating from the pub below. It felt good to be in bed at a decent hour, holding the man she adored in her arms, knowing that her new partners were taking care of the business. At Tim's suggestion she had taken on two partners, selling them a minority interest in the now highly-successful business. They both had been long-time employees, one a bartender and the other the cook. They now owned forty-eight percent of the business and would be paying her a substantial monthly sum for the next ten years. She had also negotiated a great deal with Tim and his partners for the purchase of the Shannon Rose, with Tim once again supplying the funds needed to buy out his partners.

"Tim, are you sure you are OK with this?"

"Katie, as long as you keep making the payments I'll have all the money I could ever spend. I'll going to enjoy myself, relaxing on my front porch, in my favorite rocking chair, overlooking a very peaceful and green valley. I've had enough of the desert."

John, officially known as John R. Strong, PhD, had cut back on his teaching and was now deeply involved in several NASA-funded projects. His first NASA project had evolved from landing a craft on an asteroid in order to get samples, to landing a craft on an asteroid in order to change its course to avoid an impact with earth. He was also consulting for a private company that had contacted him shortly after his paper had been published on the feasibility of capturing an asteroid for mining purposes.

"Katie, just think of it. Someday we'll be able detour an approaching asteroid, slow down its speed, and park it in an orbit around the moon. Then chunks of it can be shuttled to a mining facility on the surface. When we've removed all the useful minerals from the ore, what is left can be discarded on the surface or sent back into space."

Coming from anybody else she would have laughed and told them they were watching too many reruns of Star Trek, but coming from John it made perfect sense.

Everything in their lives was just about perfect; so you know that's when something catastrophic was about to happen. They got the news on Sunday morning. Margaret had been driving home from church the evening before she still went to the same one she had been going to most of her life. She left the parking lot from a different exit than she normally did. As she drove down the street, she realized that she was on the street that passed by the complex that she used to live in. As she entered the intersection, she saw a car approaching her from the left.

'He's coming awfully fast; doesn't he realize he has a red light.'

It was later determined that, because of the angle of the sun, he probably never saw the red light. He hit the driver's side of her car at approximately forty miles an hour sending her car sideways down the street into the traffic that was stopped coming from the opposite direction. Margaret was brought to the same hospital where she still worked, suffering major head trauma and internal injuries. Word spread quickly throughout the hospital and someone from personnel was able to get a contact number for her daughter Katie.

When Katie and John entered the ICU, they were given the details of the accident and Margaret's prognosis.

"She's had an extreme amount of head trauma. I'm not sure she's going to make it. We've done what we could to alleviate the pressure on her brain, but we can't tell how much damage has already been done."

"Will she regain consciousness?"

"We won't know until it happens. I wish there was more I could tell you, but with this type of head injury we never know."

Katie was devastated. She put her head on John's shoulder and started to sob.