Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882

Until a half hour ago, Ethan Thornton's bedroom was a place he laid his head at night. A place he'd made love to his wife and cuddled his grandchildren. A place full of memories, happy and sad. Now, as shadows of dawn trickled through the windows, reflecting on the fairy-like dust particles sprinkling aimlessly on the mauve carpeting, the room was his death chamber. And it was eerily calm.

Too calm.

Ironically, that same calmness had jerked him from his dreams. His eyes shot open when he tried to rise only to find even the slightest movement impossible. With wild nervousness, he glanced down at his body and saw straps holding him immobile against the mattress. Over him, a medium built man, whose stomach testified to years of abundant Sunday dinners, tied a rubber tourniquet around his arm.

Panic started as a small ripple at Ethan's toes, but within seconds it waved turbulently through his body to his heart. What the hell was happening?

"Hold still, we wouldn't want this to hurt," the man said, his voice raspy as if he'd indulged in one too many cigars. Ethan felt him tap along his arm to find the perfect spot to insert the razor sharp needle. "You know, my nurse usually does this, but I'm afraid she was stuck at the office. The good news is I'm not going to charge you for the house call." The man's stethoscope slid, snakelike, from his neck onto Ethan's chest.

"Ten minutes. Lets' speed it up, Doc." Ethan shifted his head to the muscle bound man who stuck his head through the doorway. The contrast between the man's tattooed-ridden body, long stringy hair, and missing front tooth, and the warm, rich molding around the door, which complimented the cabbage rose wallpaper, caused Ethan's stomach to heave.

"Get me that coat rack."

Ethan's eyes wandered to the rack, his mind to the hot summer day on which his wife had bid on it at a country auction. Suddenly, his pleasant memory died as he watched "Muscle-Man" knock his top hat off the rack, carry it to his bedside and hang an IV bag. He screamed for help, but the sounds were absorbed by the gag "Muscle-Man" forced into his mouth.

"I've got some good handwriting samples here."

Samples? Ethan sought out the source of the third voice and found a gangling man with beady black eyes framed in wire rimmed glasses. The papers in his hand appeared to be correspondences.

The man slithered to the bed. "Well, Mr. Thornton, you're making this easy for me." Scanning the paper, the man added, "Isn't this sweet. A letter to your granddaughter." His eyes skipped up from the paper to look at Ethan. "Now, what should I write in your suicide note?" His smile crept over an uneven row of teeth beneath his scrawny mustache.

Unadulterated fear surged through Ethan. He tore his gaze from the man, only to watch as drop by single drop flowed from the IV bag. The clear liquid rolled down the tubing, into his vein.

He wasn't sure if the liquid was the temperature of ice, or the realization that these men came to kill him that chilled him to the bone. He could feel the blood draining from his face, pooling at the back of his head, throbbing in time with the shivers racing through his body.

Ethan struggled against the wide, black bands that held him immobilized. A laugh, nothing less than evil, broke the heavy silence. Ethan's eyes sought the faces of his executioners. Henchmen, hired murderers.

"Muscle-Man," whose sinister laugh had tainted the air, pulled an overstuffed chair from the corner of the room. He plopped on it unceremoniously and propped his boot-clad feet on the edge of the bed. The action angered Ethan as dried dirt shook loose of the stranger's boot onto the quilt his wife had so lovingly hand stitched over ten years ago. Ethan cringed as the man turned his gaze on him. His eyes, colorless, yet not clear, mocked Ethan through their cloudy film.

"You should'a listened. You should'a minded your own business," said a voice, deep, sarcastic. That voice belonged to "Beady Eyes," who'd moved to Ethan's antique roll-top desk. Ethan assumed, to forge the suicide note.

He couldn't bear the sight of them any longer. His eyelids felt as if weights were attached to the lashes, drawing them...and him, downward, into a black hole. He fought the darkness that reached for him with long tentacles.

Pictures gracing the walls pulled his attention, and he forced himself to focus on them. In the last minutes of his life, all he wanted to think about was his family.

His eyes fell to his son, Justin. At the age of forty, he was a man any father would be proud of. A surgeon at Duke University and married a beautiful, loving woman who had given him three grandsons. She was pregnant with their fourth.

"To guard the sick from harm and injustice...First of all, do no harm." Ethan mentally formed the words his son had spoken and that Ethan had defended all his life.

His gaze drifted slowly to the next picture. His daughter, Kathryn, at thirty three, could still wrap him around his finger with her smile. Seated on her lap was his only granddaughter, Courtney. Ethan was proud of Kathryn's accomplishments, not only as a single mother and a freelance reporter, but she also produced her own investigative talk show.

Time slowed to milli-seconds and, despite the coldness, a drop of sweat trickled down his brow. It was funny how the humidity, normally stifling at this time of year, failed to blanket him in warmth. He was so cold.

Death's tentacles pulled harder, tugging...urging...pushing him toward the other side, until Ethan could no longer fight it. Just before he shut his eyes for the last time, he looked at a picture of his wife, Margery. She'd past away two, very long years ago.

"I'll be with you shortly, my love." He could see her sweet, gentle smile as she welcomed him on the other side. His eyes closed, his earthly life almost over. But he refused to believe that his death would be in vain. His breath labored hard in his chest. The lethal fluid flowed to his heart and it beat for the last time.