Dr. Durham (Healing Hands Book 6): A Steamy Medical Romance Read online

  Dr. Durham

  Healing Hands Book 6

  Vanessa James

  Contents

  1. Copyright

  2. Get Free Books!

  3. Introduction

  4. Chapter 1: Dr. Durham

  5. Chapter 2: Sonia

  6. Chapter 3: Dr. Durham

  7. Chapter 4: Sonia

  8. Chapter 5: Dr. Durham

  9. Chapter 6: Sonia

  10. Chapter 7: Dr. Durham

  11. Chapter 8: Sonia

  12. Chapter 9: Dr. Durham

  13. Chapter 10: Dr. Durham

  14. Reviews

  Inked: A MC Romance Boxset

  1. Introduction To Inked

  15. About Vanessa James

  Copyright

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Laura Eydmann

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously . Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Introduction

  * The scintillating final book in the Best Selling Healing Hands series *

  They had the perfect love… until something ruined it all.

  Struggling with flashbacks and PTSD from his time in Afghanistan, D. Eric Durham hopes to put his past behind him and forget about his troubles. The small hospital in the town of Rockland seemed to be the perfect candidate.

  But when the attractive assistant physician Sonia arrives at the hospital, Eric’s hopes of a quiet recovery soon go out the window. Despite past experiences giving him a cynical view of love, he can’t help but feel drawn to her in ways he never thought possible.

  Their friendship begins to blossom, but just as he’s ready to take things to the next level, their love is thrown into disarray by a surprise event which threatens to tear their bond apart. With their newfound romance on the line and emotions running wild, can Eric save the sinking ship of their love? Or is it already too late…

  If you love riveting HEA romance filled to the brim with passion, then you’ll love the scintillating final book in the Healing Hands series.

  Chapter 1: Dr. Durham

  Sleep was the only thing on my mind as I drove along the narrow untarred road that connected the western end of Rockland to the part of town where my small, cozy cottage was. There was another road that was even and tarred, but it was a longer route and, at the moment, I was too eager to return home to want to spend more time than necessary behind the wheel. I yawned heavily as I negotiated a bend, the last before I arrived home. I was dog tired; I couldn’t wait to shed my clothes and dive into the shower to scrub off the sweat and the bits of dirt that had collected on my skin while I drove around town attending to patients who for one reason or the other could not be admitted to the hospital.

  The street was empty, no other cars were moving there except mine and I couldn’t see anyone walking about. The evening sun cast its crimson light on the spaced-out houses that lined the road. I could see my cottage just ahead, and the desire for my bed’s comfort rapidly grew stronger. I had spent the better part of the day standing in the wards, and that had caused a slight ache in my back. My routine for each day had been similar ever since I came to this town about two months ago, but it seemed my body was yet to fully readjust to the rigor of standing and sitting for long, unending hours. The long years when I had stayed away from active practice after the war ended appeared to have had more of an effect on me than I had imagined.

  I heaved a sigh as I steered my blue Honda into the parking space in front of my cottage. I cut the engine and promptly stepped out, eager to get into the house and relax. I slammed the door of the car shut and hurried towards my front door, scanning the compound with my eyes, making sure it was the way I left it when I headed out that morning. I found nothing out of sorts, and I opened the door and stepped into the warmth of my living room. This house was a far cry from the small flat I had been shown the day I started at the hospital. Apart from the fact that it was pretty close to the hospital, there had been nothing else about it that appealed to me. After checking out the tiny structure, I asked the matron to find me a bigger apartment, and I stayed in a small motel until they found something more suitable for me.

  I closed the door behind me and walked deeper into the living room, pulling off my scrubs as I walked. I took off my clothes and stepped into the bathroom to wash off. After five minutes under the steaming water, I felt cleaner and less tired. Showers had always eased my fatigue. Now, I had some time to sit and do a few things here and there before I got the shuteye that my body deserved after a long, hard day at work.

  The thought of dinner crossed my mind, but I wasn’t hungry. I had dropped by a café to eat some pasta on my way back from Hurst’s house. I wouldn’t have anything to eat again tonight, but I’d make sure to have some water. A sad smile tugged at my lips as I remembered that the habit of eating dinner early had been imbued in me by Lydia. In those days before I left for Afghanistan, she would reprimand me for eating late.

  “Who’s the doctor here? You should know better, Eric,” she would say.

  I would laugh whenever she said that. She did everything she could to ensure that I cut down on unhealthy food and ate earlier, and, in the end, she prevailed. Lydia was one strong-willed lady who always got what she wanted no matter how small it was. We had met at a soccer stadium, where two Major League soccer teams were playing, and we had got talking about the sport and how it was slowly becoming more popular among Americans. I was a big follower of European football and had been surprised to discover that Lydia knew more than me. We had seen each other a couple of times after that, and we drifted closer until I asked her out and she agreed. It had been straightforward because we had already grown quite fond of each other.

  I forced my mind off that train of thought. I was not ready to spend the rest of the evening thinking about the sad ending of my relationship with Lydia. I didn’t want to think about it because it still hurt. It had been years, but I hadn’t really gotten over the raw shock of seeing Lydia with another man, her lips fastened to his, her fingers gripping the sweaty back of the spiteful bastard …

  “Ugh,” I groaned. I was doing the exact thing that I didn’t want to do.

  I walked back to the living room, enjoying the feeling of lightness, of fresh cleanness that had descended on me since I felt the first drop of water on my skin. I walked over to grab the remote from the shelf and turned on the TV. Maybe I would tune in to a soccer channel or maybe watch a movie until my eyes felt tired and I was ready to hit the sack. It was remarkable that the sleepiness that I had felt when I was driving back from treating Hurst was gone now.

  I flipped through the channels, looking for one showing a game of soccer. I didn’t care if it was the full match or highlights, as long as it was soccer. I chuckled now as I remembered playing as a kid with my friends back in Texas. I hadn’t been the best among my peers, but I was faster
than most of the boys so that was to my advantage. It got to the point where I began to dream of playing soccer like Jonas’ brother was doing in the national first division, but my love for biology was greater than my affinity for soccer and I knew that Dad wouldn’t have agreed to a career in soccer instead of medicine. I soon ditched the idea of joining a soccer academy and focused on burying my nose in books.

  “Dad,” I muttered as I finally found a local channel showing soccer. I wondered if he would have approved of me joining the army. I doubted it. He would have argued that I was more suited to the civilian world, he would have referred to my plumpness, my bespectacled eyes and any other thing he could think of that made me unsuitable for a position in the military.

  I dropped the remote and focused on the game showing on the screen. The team uniforms weren’t familiar as I watched the players moving around on the pitch. For a moment, I imagined myself as a professional soccer player, playing at the highest level of American soccer. I wasn’t sure I would have made it to the pinnacle of the game, but it was not impossible. Things could have been different if I had taken up the challenge. I was someone who was determined to pursue the things I wanted till the end.

  As I watched the football game now, my mind drifted to the video test that I had not been able to beat since I came here. It was designed by Dr. Paolini, an Italian American psychologist who I had seen regarding the PTSD that had followed my time in Afghanistan. He had been my therapist, sharing tips and administering medication to ensure that I got over the dark bouts of depression that had started to come over me. Back then, they were more frequent and there were times when I considered ramming the pistol that I had carried during the war into my mouth and blowing off my head. Now, I was a lot better than I had been then. I no longer had suicidal thoughts, but there were still some memories about the war that I could not allow myself to explore, knowing that they would bring back the symptoms that had prompted me to see Dr. Paolini in the first place. There were also objects, pictures, videos, and a host of other things that I consciously avoided, things that could trigger the depressive state of mind in which life lost its value and nothing in this world mattered.

  I don’t know if the traumatic experience of the war had been compounded by the fact that when I got back home, I found my woman in bed with another man. They hadn’t even had the decency to lock the front door.

  “Focus on the game,” I muttered to myself. Thinking about Lydia was no use anymore. She was gone from my life forever, probably married to the guy she had been shagging while I was away.

  I tried to concentrate on the match on the screen, but it was difficult to maintain focus. It didn’t help that I wasn’t familiar with the players. I followed more of European soccer and this was an MLS game. I thought of taking the video test again. The test was meant to determine if I was still struggling with memories of the war. Dr. Paolini had collected images and videos of some of the gruesome events in the course of the war and he had turned them into a long collection. He had told me that if I could go through the whole collection without turning it off, then it meant that I had gained a great deal of control over my mind and that I was well on my way to completely overcoming my trauma.

  The first time I had tried the test, I couldn’t get beyond the second scene. I had been filled with that raw fear that had gripped my chest when the unit I was attached to was under heavy fire of our adversaries. I had never prided myself as someone without fear in the face of death, neither was I particularly fearful. I guess I was like most people, who could be brave or be afraid depending on the situation. The fear that had gripped me when I watched the video had been incredible. A chill had spread over me as my eyes became glued to my computer screen. I had hit the power button when I could not bear it anymore, desperate to not see the gruesome images anymore. I had found myself panting after that brief reunion with the gory details of war. At that point I knew that I still had a long way to go.

  I shook my head at the thought of taking the video test. Not tonight. Maybe I would try it again before the week ran out. I knew that there would be a time when I was ready to face all the dark events chronicled in that thirty-minute video when I would be able to sit through the entire thing, but at the moment, I knew I wasn’t ready. It was true that I wasn’t as absorbed in the soccer game I was watching as much as I would have liked, but taking the video test now didn’t seem like a good idea. I should just turn off the TV and catch some sleep, or maybe take a drive around the town to clear my head. Maybe I’d go to the busier side of the town and watch people coming and going. Since the heavy sleep that I had felt when I was on my way back home had magically disappeared, I had to work out a way to enjoy the rest of the evening.

  I drove slowly towards the busier streets of town, watching people hurry on the way to their destination as the evening wore on and the sun sank out of sight on the western horizon. I whistled a tune as I nosed my car through the streets. I would have loved to put on some music, but the car stereo was faulty, and I really didn’t have the time to get it fixed. I was the only doctor at Rockland Hospital so I had less spare time than I would have liked. I worked till evening every day and I had to rush down to the hospital if there was an emergency, which there often was.

  It was frustrating that the board in charge of running Rockland Hospital had promised to bring in another doctor on multiple occasions, but they had not been able to make good on their promise. Once I saw them talking to a short, wiry doctor who had just left his position in the neighboring town, but nothing came out of it.

  When I asked Mr. Huddleford why they hadn’t taken the doctor on, he told me that they couldn’t afford him. Maybe they thought it was fine with just me working here, doing the work alone. There were times when I liked it, when the busyness of moving between wards and tending to patients provided the vital diversion that I needed from the dark thoughts threatening to push me into the depressive state I never wanted to enter again. But there were times when the stress took its toll on me, when my back ached abominably from too much standing and bending. On such days, I would tell Mrs. Parish, the slim, tall woman who was the matron at Rockland Hospital; that I was going to start a bit later the next day as I needed some time to recover from the intense fatigue.

  I wondered how long it would take the board to find a doctor within their means. It was possible that they were holding out for as long as possible, why should they bring in someone else if I was managing just fine anyway? They had promised to bring a new doctor, and recently there had been talk of another physician assistant. It didn’t matter what they said, I didn’t take them seriously anymore.

  I drummed on the wheel in time with the song I was whistling. The sky had gone from blue to purple and was now approaching black. People were clearing from the streets, although there were still a few walking around. This was a part of the town that was never really empty. I drove along, turning corners as I saw fit. I didn’t really have a specific destination in mind. I just wanted to spend some time away from my cottage until I was ready to go back and sleep.

  I wondered what Mom was up to at the moment. Maybe she was touring the world with her rich boyfriend. She liked to have fun, to travel around and see new cultures, meet people from different walks of life. There was a spirit of adventure in her. She wasn’t the type of person to get tied down by grief and shut out the world because something bad had happened to her. That was why I hadn’t been surprised when she told Claire and me that she was remarrying only a few years after Dad died from a heart attack. I had been slightly surprised to find out that her man was a lot younger than she was. At the time I was on my way to college and Claire was already in her sophomore year, but Mom had decided that she had her own life to live …

  The sight of two red-headed ladies laughing merrily as they came out of a café attracted my attention. They were almost the same height, and they resembled each other, but the shorter lady had more curves and a bigger bust. I kept my eyes on them for a moment as I d
rove past, wondering the last time I had found a lady attractive like this. Maybe I had learned to close my heart to them. If Lydia, the girl who had been with me since eleventh grade, could betray me, how could I trust any woman?

  By now, I had driven past the ladies, and I resisted the urge to stare at them in my rear mirror. They were definitely sisters, maybe even twins. The resemblance was that clear. I resumed tapping on the wheel and for a moment I thought of the wheel as the butt of the curvy lady with the ponytail.

  “Gross,” I murmured. “That’s gross.”

  I decided I had driven around enough for the evening. It was time to head back to the cottage and just stay there till it was time to sleep. The evening was growing darker, morphing into a dark, warm night. I turned the car and started for my cottage. The desire to take the video test came back to me but I still didn’t feel like I was ready to face the dark memories that the videos would bring up … but maybe I could surprise myself and actually go further than the two minutes that I watched the first time.

  No video test!

  I wanted to enjoy the rest of my evening, not ruin it. I should think of things that weren’t dark. Like the joy of making people happy when their loved ones got better, like the absorbing quality of soccer in the top European leagues, like the …

  I was approaching the street that led to my cottage now, the drive had taken longer than usual because I had been driving slowly. I was feeling the pull of sleep again, and I hoped that this time it would not slip away from me again.