Bobby Hutchinson - Good Medicine

The salary wasn’t what Jordan earned in the E.R., but at least there wouldn’t be shift work. And housing was included. And it was somewhere Garry wasn’t.

Impulsively Jordan took out her cell phone and dialed the number she’d copied down. The phone rang and rang, and she was about to hang up when a man answered.

“Hello?” There was a note of impatience in the man’s deep and resonant tone.

“Oh, um, yes, hello.” Damn, her hands were sweating and she could hear the strain in her voice. “My, um, my name is Jordan Burke, Dr. Burke, and I’m calling about the medical position. Is it still available?”

There was a moment’s silence. “I don’t know. You need to speak to Bennie. Call back another time.”

“Bennie? Bennie who?” Jordan was over feeling nervous and well on the way to being annoyed. Surely he could be more helpful?

“Just Bennie will do. He’ll be here in the morning.”

“And you are?”

“Silas Keefer. And I’m hanging up now, Jordan Burke.”

“But first can you—”

The line clicked and she heard a dial tone. The bloody man had hung up on her.

Dear Reader,

There’s a motto I try to live by. It is Whatever is happening now is right for me. It embodies acceptance and trust, and applying that concept every day is my greatest personal challenge. When life is filled with joy and excitement, it’s easy to say, “Yup, things are progressing exactly as they should—lucky me.” But when huge challenges seem insurmountable—that’s when it’s tough to let go of outcome and simply trust.

As a writer, I hand challenges to characters and then watch how they manage to surmount them. In Good Medicine, as in life, family became a central theme. And a trip to Ahousaht on Vancouver Island’s wild west coast made me realize that no matter how far we travel in distance and culture, the problems we encounter in life are universal. Not only that, they obligingly come right along with us.

This book taught me invaluable lessons about the different ways culture affects our attitudes toward the science of medicine and the gift of healing. The paths may vary, but the final answer is always the same—true healing begins in the heart. Love is the most powerful medicine. And yes, whatever is happening now is absolutely right for me!

With love, and gratitude to all of you who read my books.

Bobby Hutchinson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Marie Donahue and the other Nuu-chah-nulth women who greeted me in the Ahousaht Health Centre one rainy morning. Truly, the Ancestors were there.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

DOCTOR JORDAN BURKE walked over to the automatic sliding glass doors and peered out at the wet April night, not really seeing the eerie fluorescent glare or the deserted cement apron that led to St. Joseph’s Emergency entrance.

It was her birthday. A glance at her watch told her it was 12:40 a.m. She had no idea the exact hour she’d been born, so she might as well make it midnight on the nose. Which meant she was now thirty-two.

Spending the first six hours of her birthday working the graveyard shift in Emerg suited her fine. John Frankel, one of the other doctors, had the flu, and since Jordan was on her long break from day shift, she’d eagerly volunteered to fill in.

It wasn’t as if she’d be sleeping much, anyway. She might as well be working tonight as lying in bed tossing and turning, wide-awake and worrying.

She shivered, even though it wasn’t cold, and crossed her arms, hugging the front of her white lab coat.

Where the hell are all the patients? On most nights, the E.R. was so busy there wasn’t time to do anything except concentrate on the stream of desperate, frightened people needing medical assistance. But it had been nearly an hour since Jordan’s last patient was treated and released, and she was restless. Anxious.

She ought to be used to the anxiety. It never really went away these days.

“Quiet tonight, eh? Downtown Vancouver must be closed for spring break or something.” The tiny Asian nurse was new, and she laughed at her own joke.

“It is quiet.” Jordan nodded and attempted a smile. When did smiling become such an effort? “Calm before the hurricane,” she commented, aware of how callous it was to long for patients. It was just that she needed action, needed the degree of intensity that drove everything else out of her head.

“At least it gives us time to think,” the young woman replied.

“Yeah.” Jordan forced herself to nod, even though time to think was the very last thing she wanted. She glanced at the ident tag pinned to the nurse’s shirt. Jordan had been introduced when they came on shift, but now she couldn’t remember the woman’s name.

Lola. Her name’s Lola, numskull.

Forgetting things had become the norm. She’d lost her keys today, she’d misplaced her cell phone yesterday, she hadn’t remembered what she needed when she got to the grocery the day before last. Thirty-two was nowhere near menopause, but she knew that constant low-level anxiety could cause memory lapses. Eight months of anxiety. Ever since her husband’s accident.

She thought of Garry now, and her gut heaved as an all too familiar mixture of emotions coursed through her: anger, sadness, guilt, longing and an overwhelming sense of frustration and futility.

Two years, is that all it had been? She felt as if she’d been Garry’s wife for at least two long, painful lifetimes. She wanted desperately to help him, she longed for an end to the problems they were having, she—

Stop. Stop.

She would not obsess over her personal problems here, not while she was on shift. She turned away from the doors and walked over to the admitting desk. So there were no patients, okay, she could catch up on patient files. That tedious task was every doctor’s least favorite activity.

“No point getting your blood pressure up doing paperwork, Jordan.” Eddie, the desk clerk, grinned at her, revealing crooked teeth. “There’s an 18-year-old female on her way, severe headache, vomiting, recent history of stomach pain. Her dad called, he’s bringing her.”

A few moments later the patient arrived, a college student named Ardyth Malone, slender and very fit looking, but obviously in severe distress. Jordan escorted the girl to a cubicle and began taking a history.

Ardyth responded with negative answers to questions about drugs, alcohol, allergies, blows to the head. A careful physical examination ruled out appendicitis, inflamed ovaries, gallbladder problems. Each successive test was normal, until Jordan examined Ardyth’s eyes with the ophthalmoscope. There was a slight papillidema, a swelling of the optic nerve.

By now Jordan was beginning to feel really concerned, wondering if this was a brain tumor, but there were a few questions she still needed to ask.