Doctor Of My Dreams (BWWM Romance) (2 page)

Chapter 2  - Nadine

I walked back into the salon five minutes before my next client arrived. I had forgotten to eat, my sandwich in the fridge still untouched. Sonya chucked a meal-replacement shake at me.

“I know you didn’t eat again. Have it, I packed extra.”

I smiled and popped open the top, taking a sip. It tasted like cardboard and vanilla.

“Why do you drink this again?”

Hannah, my next client, walked in and cut the conversation short. I put the shake to the side and walked over to her.

“What do you want done?” I asked.

About ten minutes before my three o’clock, my phone rang. It was Dianne’s number. Trevor often phoned at work to speak to me.

This time it was Dianne. She sounded frantic, and I couldn’t make out what she was trying to tell me with the rush of words.

“Calm down, I can’t hear a thing you’re saying,” I said into the phone. I walked to the back room where Sonya was having her lunch and the speakers that were always on the same radio station didn’t blare.

“Trevor is in the hospital,” Dianne said, and my blood slowed and then stopped in my veins. The walls around me moved in on me, squashing me and I felt lightheaded. I felt blindly behind me for a chair and sat down.

“What happened?” I asked.

“We were outside, I was gardening and he climbed into the tree… I’m so sorry…” She started hiccupping, unable to tell me what was really wrong.

“I’ll be right there,” I said and hung up. I looked at Sonya who was sucking on a yogurt spoon.

“I’ll cover for you,” she said. “I’m off anyway.”

“Thank you,” I breathed and tore out of the salon.

Chapter 3 - Richard

A knock on my office door startled me.

“Come in,” I said without looking up from the papers in front of me. A nurse popped her head around the corner.

“Do you have a minute?” she asked.

I sighed and nodded. The girl looked like she couldn’t have been old enough to be out of school, let alone have a nursing qualification. She had braces, for crying out loud. I waved at the chair opposite me, and she sat down.

“What can I do for you…” I glanced at her name tag. “Darlene?”

“I wanted to talk to you about my rotations. I have...“

“Isn’t this something you should bring up with the head nurse?”

She twirled her thumbs in her lap, looking down. “She doesn’t really like me. She’s always shouting and I’m scared if I ask her to book me on a different time she might blow up. She has so many nurses...“

“I’m sorry you feel that way. But unfortunately the rotations are out of my control. The only way you’re going to sort this out is by talking to her.”

Darlene stood up and nodded. She walked out of the office with her head hanging. I sighed again and I was just about to continue with my paperwork when the phone rang.

“Dr. Morgan,” I said into the phone, clamping the receiver between my jaw and shoulder, paging through the paperwork while I listened.

“We need to talk,” Astrid’s clear voice rang across the speaker. It seemed like I could never really get away from her, no matter how long we hadn’t been living in the same house anymore.

“Not now, Astrid. I’ve told you not to phone me at the office. Unlike you I actually have work to do.”

“We have to talk about the settlement,” she said, ignoring me.

“Call me on my cell after work. My shift ends at three then we can talk.”

“When are we going to have time to talk about this? Did you get the papers?”

I chucked the stapled stack of papers onto the desk and leaned back. I’d been through the divorce papers four times now.

“I’m busy, Astrid.”

“You’re always working,” she complained, her voice turning into a whine. There was a time when I used to think she had the sexiest voice in the world. She could turn me on with a few words, alone, and she didn’t even have to be in the room. Her voice had lost that quality to me. It was a consistent whine now, either demanding or complaining.

“It’s to be able to make all the money you’re going to get out of me, darling,” I said sarcastically and hung up on her.

We’d been married three years, and if you asked me, I’d tell you it was three years too many. There should have been some kind of law that stopped men from marrying women with a tight ass and a sultry voice before they really knew them. I’d known Astrid for six months before we’d gotten married.

I’d met her at a conference in Ohio the year I was still doing my residency. She’d been there with another man, a Swedish doctor that had wanted to practice in the States. I’d taken one look at her and known that the doctor was one lucky man. She had a body to die for, long golden locks that were always styled perfectly and the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. One look and I was sold. I had to have her.

The way she smiled at me, her green eyes hypnotizing me, made me think she felt the same way. Her arm had been hooked through the doctor’s elbow, but her eyes had been on mine, speaking volumes.

We’d started talking in the afternoon. Her voice had been like honey, dribbling across my skin. I wanted her on my lips, in my mouth, all over my body. Her mouth had mesmerized me. I’d wanted to kiss her every time she opened it to say something.

By ten I had her in bed, her body curled around mine in a question mark and I was sure I had all the answers. She’d made me feel like a god. The Swedish doctor had disappeared, and I’d never asked what had happened to him.

I should have.

“Dr. Morgan to front desk.”Reception summoned me, and I stood up, shoving the papers under a book. I didn’t want to look at them. I didn’t want to have to think about who got the boat and who could keep the silver cutlery set, and who would get the crystal chandelier we’d bought in Italy on our honeymoon. Marriage always started off with love that could exist in a void.

And it ended off with monetary value, with how much each thing was worth, with how much each could gain.

Love was a hoax. I would have given it all to her if it wasn’t for the fact that a lot of the things in my home were heirlooms, more than eight generations old and almost priceless with age. And Astrid knew it. Her eyes had glittered when I’d brought her home the first time. Then it’d thought it was love. Now I recognized it for greed.

“Dr. Watts isn’t going to be able to make it today,” Emma, the receptionist, told me. “Will you be able to cover the emergency room until eight tonight?”

Another five hour shift? Why not. If it meant putting off Astrid longer, I’d do it. Besides, I had nothing to go home to. I signed the forms Emma pushed at me.

“I’m sorry to hear about your marriage,” Emma said. I glanced up at her.

“What?”

I don’t know what she saw in my face, but she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

“I just… I was…” She swallowed hard.

“Where did you find out?” I asked. I didn’t like it when my personal life intertwined with my work life. I’d worked very hard to keep them separate.

“I saw it online,” she said softly. She pointed to her screen. I walked around the counter and into the secretary area, bending over her shoulder.

MORGAN DIVORCE it read in bold letters across the screen.

In a recent interview with Mrs. Astrid Morgan, the shocking news has come to light that Astrid Morgan, daughter of property Mogul Robert Foster, and Dr. Richard Nathan Morgan, son of lawyers Mitchell and Ruth Morgan, are going through a divorce.

I stopped reading and closed my eyes.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” Emma said.

“So am I, Emma,” I said and I started my rounds.

This kind of publicity was going to hurt my parents. My father was retired but their position in society was still an everyday job. I didn’t care what people thought of me, but I cared about what it would do to my parents. They’d wanted a lot of things for me in life that I’d never achieved. I was the great disappointment in their eyes. And still I didn’t want them hurt on my behalf.

I pushed the news away. I’d never been the kind of person that wanted my personal life in the tabloids, but Astrid had the blood of a celebrity. She thrived under public attention and drama that went viral. I shouldn’t have been surprised that this had come out.

I just hadn’t been prepared.

I loved being a doctor. I loved being able to save people, and to fix at least one little part of their lives. I just didn’t realize that this would bring so much pain to my own life. It didn’t matter what you studied of the human body. At the end, a broken heart just wasn’t something you could fix.

My parents were lawyers. My father had inherited Archibald, Morgan and Hammond from his father, and he’d wanted me to study law to take the firm further. I’d chosen to become a doctor instead and he’d been horrified to have to let Charlie Hammond, good-for-nothing son of the late Mr. Edward Hammond, take over the firm. It had hurt him, and I’d tried to do him proud with my career as a doctor ever since.

It hadn’t really worked. I knew this online debacle of my marriage-gone-sour would just dent my image in his eyes even further.

I sighed and pushed open the door to the Pediatric ward. I’ve always loved children.

I had five patients that had been in the hospital longer than a month. Four of them were doubled up in two rooms, and the fifth was a little boy whose mother insisted he get a single room. If you asked me, it was just too isolated. I made sure I spent more time in his room, and schedule time where he saw other kids.

Benjamin was eight and his kidneys were a problem.

“Morning, Ben,” I said. The giraffes and cows painted on the walls smiled at me when I walked to his bed. One of the nurses had left a bouquet of balloons in the corner.

“Hey, Doc,” he said, smiling at me. “Why do you look mad?”

Kids knew everything. That was why I loved them so much.

“Just some stuff happening. I’ll take care of it. I want to know how you’re feeling.”

I ran through a standard checklist with him and checked all his vitals.

“Am I going to be here much longer?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. Looks like things are going well. Do you want me to make sure you can spend some time with the other kids later?”

He nodded and I made a note for one of the nurses to push another bed into the room.

“I’ll see you later, okay? Just get better.”

I left the room. The one thing about my job was all the people I got attached to ended up leaving. I was happy about it, of course. No one wanted them to stay sick. It just felt like I never had anyone permanent anymore.

When I thought of Astrid, I realized I never really had anyone permanent to begin with.

At the end of my shift, I made my way down to the emergency room. If there was one place in this hospital that was understaffed, it was this place. There were just never enough doctors and nurses on call for the kind of emergencies that came through the door.

I wasn’t on duty five minutes before victims of a bad car accident were brought in by a squealing ambulance and wheeled through the doors on stretchers. There was a lot of blood, and before a half hour on my shift was over, two had died and the third was stabilized in the ICU.

I sat down on the plastic waiting chairs outside one of the examination rooms and took a deep breath. The metallic smell of blood and detergent still stung my nose, even though I’d left the room.

I hated emergency duty. I’d forgotten how bad it could get.

“Doctor?”

When I looked up the receptionist was in front of me.

“We have another patient. Are you ready to take him?”

I glanced toward the waiting room. A little black boy sat with a middle-aged white woman, clutching his arm like he was sure it was going to fall off. His cheeks were tear-stained and whenever someone walked past he cringed away. The woman sat next to him, looking guilty. She rubbed his back in circles and spoke to him in a low voice.

I took a deep breath, trying to pull myself back together again. I could do this. This was an easy one.

“Hey there, champ,” I said, kneeling down in front of him. “Do you want to come with me? We’ll get that arm checked out.”

He looked up at the woman.

“It’s going to be alright, Trevor,” she said in a voice that sounded like it could smile by itself. “I’ll be right here and as soon as your mom comes I’ll send her through.”

“We’re going to fix you up in no time,” I said and smiled, holding out my hand. Trevor took it and I stood up, leading him to an examination room.

I could deal with children. It was one thing I was good at. Children didn’t try to read a million things between the lines of the only thing that was being said. They didn’t have ulterior motives and double lives. They were who they were and they said what they meant.

“Where does it hurt?” I asked and he showed me. When I touched his arm he cried out. I was about one hundred percent sure he’d broken it, but I wouldn’t make a call without an X-ray.

“I think we better get you down to the X-ray to see what’s going on in there. Do you know how it works?”

He shook his head and I guided him down the passage to the X-ray room, explaining to him how it worked, trying to distract him from the pain and the scary atmosphere in the hospital that was even clawing at me today.

“You know, having a broken arm makes you look tough,” I said. Trevor smiled under the tears.

“And you’re such a big boy, you’re even doing all of this without your mom here. When she gets here, you can show her how brave you were, and we’ll put a glow in the dark cast on you. Does that sound good?”

He nodded again.