Sophia Sasson - Mending The Doctor's Heart

Branches and leaves still littered the road. As they crossed the fallen tree, her foot caught an errant limb and she reached out to keep from falling. Nico grabbed her arm to stabilize her, then wordlessly took the box. He walked to the passenger side of the pickup, opened the door for her and set the box in the truck bed.

She got herself into the seat, then shut the door before he could come around to do it for her. Nico placed his hand on the steering wheel but didn’t start the engine. Anna stared at him. He turned to her. “Before we see my family, there’s something I need to tell you.”

She waited. His face told her she wasn’t going to like what he had to say. Her heart slowed until she could barely feel it beating inside her chest. He tried to smile, but it was his fake smile, the one he gave when he was trying to put a good face on bad news.

“Nana has breast cancer.”

She gasped and instinctively placed her hand on his.

“She’s not in a lot of pain yet.”

A small ray bloomed in Anna’s chest. “Have you considered taking her to Hawaii or California for treatment?”

Nico shook his head. “I’ve begged, but she doesn’t want to leave the island. She’s convinced that it’s better to spend her last few days dying here than to waste away in a hospital on the mainland. Besides, Guam Hospital can do some basic radiation and chemo.”

Anger sparked through her. Couldn’t he see that his mother might have a real chance at treatment? Why are they so obstinate about staying on this island?

“That’s why you’ve been working so hard to get that hospital up and running?”

“She was only diagnosed a month ago. The hospital was well underway, but yes, my hope is that it’ll be open in time to help her.”

She squeezed his hand. His frozen face told her he was fighting back tears.

“There’s one more thing.”

She waited, watching his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. Her heart kicked up a notch. More bad news.

“My mother has asked me to marry again. She wants to see grandchildren before she dies. You’ll be meeting someone who’s very special to me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

AS THEY DROVE down the littered road, Anna clung to the handhold while Nico swerved to dodge branches, pieces of furniture and random objects. At times, he had to go off-road to bypass a section.

“This is what you call passable?”

He gave her a half smile and wiggled his brows. Despite herself, she smiled back. It was Nico’s mischievous smile. Like the time he’d surprised her with their honeymoon. She’d thought they were going to Tahiti or Fiji. Instead, he’d driven her to a run-down house in Tumon Bay.

“What’s this?”

“It’s our new home.”

She stared in horror. They had talked about buying a house so they wouldn’t have to live in his family home, with his mother and the rest of his family constantly in their faces. Anna had pictured one of the cute cottages by the sea with a front porch they could sit on and enjoy breakfast as they watched the tide come in. While this house was on the sea, it looked like it would fall into it any second. The railings on the front porch were broken. A section of the roof had caved in. Trash littered the front and side yards. While she could hear the ocean, there was no sight of it. The whole thing looked like a crumbling heap that would collapse if she poked it with a finger.

“You bought this?”

He nodded and she turned to see his eyes shining, his mouth turned up in a brilliant smile.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking. This place is a dump and if we combined our salaries, we could’ve had something much better. But I wanted to buy this for you, with my own money, and fix it up the way you want it.”

Fix it up? This place needed to be bulldozed. Before she could say anything else, her feet left the ground as he lifted her. Automatically, her hands went around his neck so she could rest her face in the nook between his neck and shoulder. It was the best vantage point to breathe in the scent that was uniquely Nico. Earth, sweat and clean soap. Somehow the feel of his solid chest tempered her anger. It always did, and he knew it. He was still dressed in the cotton shirt and pants he’d worn to their wedding. She had chosen a plain white dress that fell to her ankles. Somehow a big wedding dress didn’t appeal to her. They were married in the church where Nico had been christened, then had a luncheon at the golf course. Her sister Caro had come with her two-year-old toddler and the rest of the guests included nearly every person on the island. Nico and Nana were connected to everyone somehow, either by blood or friendship.

Stepping onto the rickety porch, he kicked open the door, which nearly fell off its hinges. The inside of the house was only marginally better than the outside. They entered through a foyer with peeling paint and years of grime and dirt on the hardwood floors. Miraculously, the stairs didn’t crumble under their weight.

He toed open the door of a bedroom and set her down. Anna gasped. The room looked like it belonged to another house. There was a big wooden four-poster bed, complete with white gauzy drapes. It was covered in rose petals. A dark wood dresser held several candles, their flickering lights dancing along the mirror. The wide plank floors gleamed. Skylights let in the soft glow of the evening sun and big French doors led to a balcony.

Nico walked over and opened the doors. She followed him outside and gasped again. The balcony looked out to the calm waters of the bay and the waves of the Philippine Sea beyond.

“There is no other home on this island with this view. When we fix up the rest of this house, it’ll look like this bedroom.”

This was why she loved Nico. He dreamed of things she couldn’t even imagine and made them happen. She turned and put her arms around him. “I love you, Nico, and I can’t wait to make this our home and raise our children here.”

He gave her that half smile and wiggled his brows as he carried her to the bed.

“Did our house in Tumon survive?”

While Nico had done most of the work to restore that house, Anna had put in her fair share of sweat equity. She remembered sitting with a toothbrush cleaning the grout in the kitchen floor, hauling trash to the industrial-sized bins in the yard, spending days scraping wallpaper off the walls and hand-cleaning inches of mud off the floors. It had taken them the better part of a year to make the house livable, and more often than not, she’d spent the time yelling at Nico for the slow pace with which things got done on the island. But when it was all finished, the house was even better than what she’d ever imagined. She’d been bounced from one rental to another as a child, and this was the first place that had felt like home.

He gripped the steering wheel. “I don’t know.”

“You weren’t home when it happened?”

“I don’t live there anymore.”

Her stomach lurched. Had he sold their house? How could he? Even as the thought flew through her mind she realized how unreasonable she was being. She had left him, and their life. Why would he stay in their home? Of course he’d sold it.

“We still own the house, I didn’t sell it, but I couldn’t live there anymore.”

His eyes were fixed on the road ahead. “I gave it to you in the divorce papers I had drawn up.”

Pain ripped through her chest. How could she have forgotten about the asset division in the divorce settlement? While she had never been divorced herself, she had seen her mother through five of them, each one impossibly more contentious than the last. In the last one her mother had fought with her ex-husband for two months over a painting they had acquired during travels overseas. The painting wasn’t worth as much as they each spent on lawyer fees.