Two-year-old Isabella Cole is being eaten alive by flesh-eating bacteria, at the same hospital where her sister had died fifteen years earlier. Her parents now have to make critical decisions quickly to give their daughter any hope of survival. Every Day for My Daughter is the remarkable true account of two sisters who would never meet; drawn together to test one mans faith in himself, in God and in his will to live. This story of resiliency on so many levels will literally save lives. Every Day For My Daughter Faith ... in the face of a deadly flesh-eating infection. By Timothy N. Cole AuthorHouse Copyright © 2013 Timothy N. Cole All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4817-0144-0 Chapter One February 22, 1990 Keith Bryant Cole was broken. He was as broken as any man has ever been. And now in the dark solitude of his bedroom, the difference between emotional suffering and physical pain, grief and guilt, an exhausted man and an idle father, were no longer discernable to him. His psyche was shattered until the cracks nearly lacerated his flesh. The only tears that remained in his body before the onset of evening had already trickled down his cheeks, leaving his eyes stingingly dry and tired. His belief in God was now spawned by desperation as he resisted the notion that the life-force he knew as Samantha no longer existed in any form. Heaven had to exist so that Samantha, the tiny girl his ex-wife nicknamed Cricket, had a place to go. That alone was the crux of his faith. He cued a CD to Vincent , a song by Don McLean about the artist, Vincent Van Gogh, and quietly placed a chair next to the open door of his room. His room? If his heart wasn't so broken, the thought would be laughable. His room. Nothing was his anymore. Not his house, not his daughter, not his sense of security (no matter how frail its initial construction) and most assuredly not the drain-vortex he called his life. The dirgeful glow of a three quarter moon coated the plaster walls in a portentous pale. It twisted the shadows of all forms of objects into unshaped bodies, bowed in remorse. His parents were asleep in their bedroom on the far side of the house, stirring them would bring an end to his plan and more attention than he cared to have bestowed upon himself. He was appreciative of their hospitality for allowing their thirty-year-old son to live with them again, a situation that did little for his sense of pride. His marriage to Lori had crumbled, and he had nowhere to go but back home to his parents. And then came the unspeakable; a thunder-strike that would shake the foundation of the rest of his life. Samantha, the paragon of childhood innocence, had lost her life in a day that lasted a horrific lifetime. And since her death, everyone appeared uncomfortable in Keith's presence. They desperately tried to say the right thing, or made a deliberate attempt not to say anything, as to avoid making a verbal faux pas. Not that saying anything positive or otherwise could ever possibly bring solace to his situation. Words spoken were designed to stroke some unsuspecting neuron into releasing a shallow-buried, positive memory or life-lesson that could rise up and smite the dark lord of depression. But words became meaningless; Keith's brain had been rewired. All circuits were now redirected to Samantha. The moon was no longer Earth's nearest celestial neighbor; it was the object of Samantha's fascination. It was a bright point of focus in the night sky as seen through a father and daughter's bedroom window. The sounds of Vincent provided a bubbling-brook dampening to the anguished screams of the civil war battle that raged between the hemispheres of Keith's mind. The gentle, melodic vocals that had once echoed in an empty 1970's recording studio now eased from small speakers; the emotion from the singers voice transcending nearly twenty years to touch Keith's life in a way that was never intended. The softly plucked strings vibrated in the background as an occasional lyric brushed aside the rampant thoughts of Keith's mourning. "Starry, starry night. Paint your palette blue and grey ..." He tied the ends of two neckties together in a double knot, creating a fashionable rope. The end that was an indistinguishably bland gray color with no design, one that he no longer wore, he secured to the doorknob. He created a slipknot on the end that boasted a blue, diamond pattern and stepped up onto the chair, pulling the loop down over his head. He wanted the pain to stop, pain that his tears could never wash away. "... catch the breeze and the winter chills ... in colors on the snowy linen land." The lines of the song bit at his memory with icy insinuation. His two-year-old daughter had drowned in an in-ground swimming poolin water made frigid by the wintery breath of a January in Pennsylvania. A swimming pool that once held fond memories of family gatherings and frolicking summer parties now reminded him of the col