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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Synopsis

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Other Books by Tracey Richardson

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Bella Books

  Synopsis

  An ER physician and a paramedic must heal the most painful affliction of their lives—their own broken hearts.

  A seasoned paramedic and former soldier, Angie Cullen has spent many years helping to put people back together again. But her battle-tested heart is no match for the devastation of discovering that her partner has been cheating on her with the wife of ER physician Dr. Victoria Turner. When a car crash exposes the infidelity one evening in the ER, Angie and Vic find themselves unlikely and wary allies as they attempt to pick up the broken pieces of their lives. While each holds the remedy to the other’s broken heart, can Angie and Vic trust enough to love again?

  Copyright © 2017 by Tracey Richardson

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  First Bella Books Edition 2017

  eBook released 2017

  Editor: Medora MacDougall

  Cover Designer: Judith Fellows

  ISBN: 978-1-59493-564-0

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Other Bella Books by Tracey Richardson

  Blind Bet

  By Mutual Consent

  The Campaign

  The Candidate

  Delay of Game

  Last Salute

  No Rules of Engagement

  Side Order of Love

  The Song in My Heart

  The Wedding Party

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, as always, to the talented and professional women behind Bella Books for their continued belief in me and for the quality work they do. I can’t say enough about my editor, Medora MacDougall, so to sum it up, I’ll simply say she rocks! Thank you, readers…you are the biggest reason I do what I do! And last but not least, thank you to my writing community, my close friends, family, and to my wife for not only supporting what I do, but giving me a place to refuel and regenerate. A writer’s heart and soul are tender things that need nourishment from many different sources, so thank you to all those who have left their fingerprints on me.

  About the Author

  Tracey Richardson is a retired newspaper journalist. Heartsick is her eleventh romance novel with Bella Books. Tracey is a two-time Lambda Literary award finalist and a first-place Romance Writers of America Rainbow Romance winner for contemporary romance. Tracey is also a (Word By Word) short fiction winner and a member of The Writers Union of Canada. She is married and lives in the Georgian Bay area of Ontario, Canada.

  Chapter One

  The ambulance’s swirling blue lights bounced off the wet pavement, creating a kaleidoscope of rhythmic, shimmering motion. Angie Cullen blinked against the colorful onslaught as she guided her rig to a stop at the side of the road a good dozen yards from the car wreck.

  For an instant, her heart stopped at the dark car that looked as though a can opener had ripped it nearly in half, its white airbags visible past the jagged metal, the shattered glass, the gaping holes where there should have been no holes. It had hit a light standard, which now sat folded over the trunk like a limb split from a tree. Brooke, Angie’s lover of four years, was supposed to drive to the airport tonight for a flight to a real estate lawyers’ conference in Miami, and on calls such as this one, Angie found it difficult to extinguish the spark of panic that her victim might be somebody she loved. It wasn’t that she was nervous by nature, but rather that she’d seen the worst in her eight years with the army’s medical corps and knew that devastation chose its targets randomly, wantonly, formidably, and without warning. Too many times she’d seen death’s fickleness. But Brooke’s car—thank God!—was white.

  Angie dashed from her rig without shutting the door behind her, ignoring the relentless chime warning of the keys in the ignition and leaving the engine running. It’d been a year since she’d been on active paramedic duty, but she knew exactly what to do—quickly assess the situation, assign tasks and get to work stabilizing the patients for transfer. She barked at her partner, a twenty-six-year-old in his second year on the job, to check the passenger side of the wreck. “I’ve got the driver.”

  Jackson Shattenkirk hurried toward the far side of the wreck as a Traverse City Fire and Rescue truck screeched to a halt beside the ambulance, its red roof lights merging with the blue of the ambulance’s, the two colors dizzyingly illuminating the dark; the crash had knocked out the overhead streetlight. Angie unclipped her small penlight from her belt and shone it on the driver’s face. A woman, her hair long and dark blond, sat blinking in the dark, her lips open and moving like she wanted to say something.

  “Whoa there, Cull!” a firefighter called out, and she recognized the voice of Vince Robertson. She’d known Vince since high school—he’d tried to date her back then, and when she finally confessed she preferred girls, he’d gamely swallowed his pride and decided he liked her as a friend.

  “Hey, Vinnie. We got a couple of vics here.” There was an unwritten code that saw firefighters, paramedics, and cops call each other by nicknames, which almost invariably played on their first or last name. In the army, you were called by your full last name with no cute twists, which Angie preferred, because Cull sounded so childish. So did Vinnie, for that matter, but she was used to it now.

&nb
sp; She stepped back from the wreck to talk to Vince. He asked if anyone was trapped. The passenger—a woman with a bloody face—was being attended to by Jackson. There was nobody in the back seat. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know if their feet or legs are caught up in anything.”

  She leaned into the wreck and spoke to the driver. “Ma’am, are you trapped? Do you think you can get out?”

  The woman’s eyes darted to Angie. There was fear in them, pain too, but they were alert. It was another moment before she spoke, as if she needed to gather herself first. “Yes, I think I can get out.”

  “Okay, good, but don’t move just yet. Shatter!” She flicked a glance at her partner from across the crumpled metal. “What’ve you got?”

  “Woman, three-inch laceration on her forehead, contusion also. She was talking to me a second ago, but she’s fading on me. Pulse is strong.”

  “Fading isn’t a term I understand. Is she responsive or not?”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Unresponsive.”

  Angie hated it when the younger paramedics called her ma’am. She wasn’t old—well, to her at least, thirty-seven wasn’t old. She conceded that her experience made her an old-timer. Eight years as a medic with the army, including stints in Afghanistan and Iraq. Seven years since with North Flight EMS, although the past year she’d taken a leave to teach in Munson Heathcare’s program for paramedics. Later she’d talk to Jackson. Again. Being the new crew chief didn’t mean he should call her ma’am. Cull or Cullen was fine, even Chief if he wanted to address her formally. But this ma’am crap needed to stop.

  “Ma’am,” Angie said again to the driver. “Where are you hurt?”

  “I…I…the car, it went out of control. It was wet, I didn’t—”

  “It’s okay. Are you hurt?”

  “My, my left wrist. H-hurts b-bad. The air bag…or steering wheel…might have…broken it.” She moaned as if just now finally registering the pain. It wasn’t uncommon for shock to delay recognition of pain.

  “All right, we’ll help get you and your friend out of there. What’s your name?”

  “Karen. Karen Turner. My…my friend…”

  “Okay, Karen. Hang tight, all right? We’re going to get your friend out first. Vinnie?”

  “Yeah, Cull, I’m here.” Shattered bits of glass no bigger than a coin crunched under his heavy boots. His firefighter partner, a tall, bulky man nearing retirement, joined them at the front of the wreck.

  “The passenger is the priority,” Angie said.

  “Got it.”

  Vince and his partner sprang into action as Angie thumbed the call button on the radio clipped to her breast pocket and asked dispatch for an ETA on a second ambulance. Four minutes out, she was told. Time enough to get the two victims ready for transport.

  Angie stepped back as her partner and the two firefighters worked to free the passenger, felt the entire wreck shift as they heaved the door off its hinges. She reached in and checked her patient’s carotid pulse before shining the penlight on her face and eyes again and down her torso. The air was warm, the August heat rising from the moist pavement, but her patient shivered like it was October. She was going into shock.

  Shit, hurry up, she said in her mind but not to her colleagues because she knew they were working as fast as they could. They’d applied a cervical collar to the passenger and were now carefully strapping her onto a backboard, which they would slide onto the stretcher. Their patient was moaning, regaining consciousness.

  The second ambulance roared up, and Angie motioned to its crew to bring the second stretcher.

  “What’ve you got, Cull?” Ben Merkel yelled as he hustled the stretcher over to her.

  “Possible left distal radius fracture. Pulse is ninety. We’ll need to cuff her for a b.p. reading once she’s out, and I haven’t been able to check for any other injuries. She’s getting shocky.”

  Shock was a deceiving little bastard. For something that seemed innocuous—light-headedness, the shivers—it could kill a patient by crashing their vitals.

  “Cull?” Vince’s voice carried over the noise. It was uncharacteristically high, strained, and Vince wasn’t a guy who became easily rattled. “You better get over here.”

  Now what? she thought, impatient to get the two casualties locked and loaded and on the way to Munson Medical Center. Jackson and Vince should be able to handle things, though it was no surprise that they would look to her for guidance, for critical knowledge. She never talked much about her army career, but they knew she’d spent some time working at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, knew she’d been a medevac medic in the war. It took little for her to summon the memories of the choking dust kicked up by the helicopters, the gaping and gory injuries sustained by soldiers, the sniper weapons aimed at herself and her fellow medics and sometimes at their hovering Blackhawk during a medevac, the sickening fear of a hidden IED or an RPG blowing her up the times she had to ride in a Humvee. There were also the veterans she saw at Walter Reed who, months later, continued to suffer mentally and physically from their wounds. All of those things had dulled her from being shocked anymore, had sharpened her keen sense of calm authority in a crisis. A car wrapped around a light post? Kindergarten stuff.

  “What do you need?” she said, trotting over.

  Vince gave her a look she couldn’t read. Then he nodded at the patient on the stretcher who was still moaning softly. Angie followed his gaze, felt her eyes widen and her mouth open against her suddenly constricted throat. She hadn’t seen the other victim’s face earlier because it was dark and the woman was bloodied, but now she looked. And felt everything—the noise, the lights from the emergency vehicles, the chaos—coalesce into a loud ringing in her ears. The woman was Brooke.

  Oh, shit!

  Dr. Victoria Turner watched as her patient drifted into unconsciousness. He was in his forties, a weekend athlete who, not being in the best of shape, had crashed into the boards playing ice hockey an hour ago and dislocated his shoulder. Of course, it hadn’t helped his sense of balance that, by his own admission, he’d had a couple of beers in the locker room before stepping out onto the ice. And now he was in Munson’s ER suffering the kind of pain that instantly and mercilessly yanks its victim into sobriety. Sobriety that, in his case, came a little late.

  She’d already checked the x-ray, confirmed that the rounded ball of the joint had escaped from the socket. She wouldn’t try to do the anterior shoulder reduction with the patient conscious; this wasn’t a television show or a battlefield. She was conducting the procedure with the luxury of drugs—much better for all of them. Vic slid her hands down her patient’s arm, tugged it with a hard snap, and felt the satisfying thunk of it settling back into place. He’d wake any moment and be on his way shortly, no worse for wear. She wouldn’t waste her time lecturing her patient about the dangers of drinking and playing sports, especially a sport played on the hard and unforgiving surface of ice. He’d either learn from this experience or he wouldn’t.

  “Doctor?”

  Olivia Drake, one of three nurses on duty in the emergency department tonight as well as the charge nurse, popped her head into the treatment room. She also happened to be Victoria’s best friend. It was at Liv’s behest that six months ago Vic and her wife had made the move from the bustle and growing violence of Chicago to Traverse City—the city by the bay, the gateway to northern Michigan. Because of its location, Munson ER took in all serious trauma cases from the northern half of the state. It was the only Level II trauma center north of Grand Rapids, something that very much appealed to Vic. She wasn’t at a point in her career where she wanted a sleepy town and a tiny hospital that closed its doors at sundown, but there was no question she was enjoying the reprieve from the daily avalanche of gunshot wounds and stabbings. Steady but controlled was how she liked her chaos, and that was pretty much what she got at Munson.

  “What’s up?”

  “EMS is bringing in two victims from a car crash. Priority Two.”

/>   Non-life threatening but serious injuries. Vic relaxed a little. “How many minutes?”

  “About eight.”

  She winked at her friend. “That gives me time to complete my notes on Wayne Gretzky here. Oh, and what about my confused lady in Four? Any results back yet?”

  A seventy-year-old woman had come in an hour ago exhibiting confusion and complaining of general unwellness. She was running a slight temperature, and while it was probably a urinary tract infection, Vic had ordered a chest x-ray, head CT scan, blood and urine tests. If it wasn’t something sinister and if it wasn’t a UTI, her next guess was low blood sugar. Solving little mysteries like this were exactly the reason she had chosen a career in emergency medicine versus something cushier and with more tolerable hours, like radiology or dermatology.

  “X-ray and scan are normal. Still waiting on blood work. Urine shows a spiked white count.”

  Back to a UTI. “All right. Make sure Dr. Greene is free as well when the ambulance gets here.”

  Jeff Greene was a second-year resident. Victoria, Jeff, and another resident, Julie Whitaker, were the physician crew for the ER tonight. So far they hadn’t been run off their feet, but that could change in an instant. Last night shift she worked, Vic had stumbled out in the morning light so exhausted, she could barely find her car in the parking lot. They’d had to deal with a near drowning, two drunks who’d gotten into a messy fight, another drunk who thought it was a great idea to fire up his barbecue late into the night and ended up burning nearly half the skin off his face, a pregnant woman who didn’t make it up to obstetrics before giving birth, plus the usual treadmill of coughs, fevers, and broken bones.

  Vic typed in the last of her notes on the dislocated shoulder, then paged medicine to examine her UTI lady for possible admission. The patient would need IV antibiotics and fluids for a day or two while they waited for more blood cultures to come back. It was also one more patient off her watch in case the two car crash victims consumed most of her shift.