It takes more than a doctor to mend a broken heart.
Ollie Warne is fresh out of nursing school and working his dream job as a pediatric cardiology nurse at St. Cross Children’s Hospital. Wanting to start the year fresh from personal heartache and his track record of falling for the wrong man, Ollie’s New Year’s resolution is to rid himself of emotional baggage and live a life of carefree liaisons.
But before the resolution can even begin, Ollie is called to care for eight-year-old Daisy Monroe, who’s struggling after heart surgery. Her father, Jacob Monroe, never leaves her side, apart from the times her mother comes to visit.
The tempestuous and somewhat estranged relationship of her parents is cause for concern enough, but the father’s brooding nature has Ollie investing far more time than usual in his Room One patient. Striking up a friendship of sneaking takeaways into the ward, card playing until dawn and the occasional breaking up of domestic fights, Ollie finds himself drawn to Jacob and becomes a friendly ear for the man who’s harboring more guilt and past demons than even Ollie, which is saying something.
The growing attraction makes it hard for Ollie to keep his distance, though he has to—not only do the ethics of his profession demand it, but Ollie is still somewhat involved with another man. One who has a huge stake in Ollie’s life, both personal and professional.
Ollie is risking more than just his job by getting involved with a patient’s father—much more even than the success of his New Year’s resolution, something that was supposed to ensure that, this time, he won’t feel a thing.
EXCERPT
“You want my opinion?”
“Yes.”
“My honest opinion?”
“Yes,” Ollie repeated. “Please.”
“Brutal honest opinion?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you don’t like it?”
“Even if I never want to talk to you again.” Ollie
took a sharp slurp through the straw of his smoothie and winced, his glasses
tipping to the end of his nose. “Until tonight, anyway.”
“Then leave well alone.”
Ollie sighed. He sucked up another mouthful of his
daily fruit and veg intake, flicked back his blond hair that had lost its vigor
after a twelve-hour night shift and glanced away from Taya’s wide brown eyes.
The eyes that signified she meant every damn word. Bitch.
“Told you.”
Taya freed her dark, waist-length hair from its curled
bun and stroked it over one shoulder. She wrapped the band around her slender
dark-skinned wrist then sipped her dainty cup of pink hot chocolate. The blue
edges of her lips, caused by the freezing weather, were subsiding back to their
usual reddish tinge with each guzzle of the pink cream and rainbow of chocolate
candies scattered over her ridiculous sickly concoction. She hadn’t even
offered a spoonful to him. Twelve hours straight on night shift clearly meant
she needed the sugar all to herself.
“He’s not worth your time, your worry or your
respect.” She clanged the cup down onto the glass surface of the table, pulled
her winter trench coat over the scrubs she hadn’t bothered to change out of and
reached for her packet of menthol slims.
“Neither are they.” Ollie pointed to the cigarettes.
Taya glared across the table. She unhooked the top of
the packet, took one of the white sticks between her teeth and lit it with her
pink lighter. Blowing the smoke into the freezing cold air, she waved her hand.
“We all have our vices, Oliver.”
Ollie stuck his middle finger up. He slapped it back
down and shoved it into his jacket pocket. It was freezing, and Taya had to
bloody sit outside the corner coffee shop in order to smoke her way out of the
trying night shift. She was right. Everyone needed their vices, especially with
what he and Taya did for a living. He sighed.
“I think he needs patience.”
“He’s got plenty of those.” Taya pointed her two
fingers clutching the death stick at Ollie.
“Har fricking har. Patience with a c.”
“He’s a c all right.” Taya took another
drag. At Ollie’s glare, she sighed and rested her elbow on the tabletop. “What?
He is.”
“I think you may be the only female in the entire
hospital who doesn’t like him.” Ollie slurped the dregs of his raspberry-ripple
smoothie and shivered. He should have gone for a hot drink, but it was hard
enough to sleep during the day as it was. Caffeine would only make it
infinitely more difficult.
“That’s because I know him,” Taya replied.
“Urgh. Not you, too?”
“Ew.” Taya grimaced around her cigarette. “No, thank
you.”
Ollie leaned back in the chair. He waved a hand to
waft away the smoke drifting into his face. To give her some credit, Taya was
trying to blow it out of the side of her mouth to avoid him, but the icy-cold
January breeze from the earlier sleet downpour blew it straight back. Ollie
zipped up his puffer jacket, folded his arms and jiggled on the cold metal
chair.
“You nearly done?” He nodded to the half-full cup of
violently pink chocolate.
Taya blew another puff of smoke into the air, stubbed
out the remains of her cigarette and downed the rest of her drink, leaving a
foam mustache on her top lip. She licked it away. “Yeah. Home to bed, miss the
snowfall, back at eight. You?”
They scraped back their chairs and Ollie tucked a
five-pound note under the ashtray for the servers. Anyone willing to come
outside and serve drinks in this weather should most definitely get tips, even
if his wages would no doubt be far less than those of the coffee baristas
working this part of London.
“I should go see my dad,” he replied.
Taya linked her arm in with his, curling her slender
fingers around his quilted sleeve. Checking both ways along the crossroads
lined by independent boutiques, high-class restaurants, unconventional cafés
and health-food shops, she steered him across, narrowly missing a black cab
speeding over the mini-roundabout. The glass-enclosed bus stop’s bench
overflowed with waiting passengers, so he stood, his freezing toes within his
inappropriate-for-the-weather slip-on loafers numbing with each passing second,
and checked the time on the electric board for when the next bus was due.
“How’s he doing?” Taya asked.
“Good days and bad days.” Ollie sighed. “Keeps calling
me Tilly.”
Taya tried to hold in the chuckle but failed
miserably. Ollie didn’t mind so much. A good sense of humor was always best in
these situations, not to mention their line of work. He pulled Taya in closer.
It was fricking freezing and snowflakes fell from the overcast sky. How would
he get back to work later that night? London came to a standstill if even one
flake hit any mode of public transport. Him living in the other end of the
city—the cheap end—would make it all the more difficult to travel across town.
On occasions when there wasn’t a downfall, he would have cycled in. But that
was out of the question with the ice on the roads. And the fact that he hadn’t
woken up in his own bed last night. Ollie shuddered at the memory.
“Right.” Ollie bounced to keep warm while awaiting the
number 252. “It’s January. So that means New Year’s resolutions. What’s yours?”
“Quit smoking.”
“Good luck.” Ollie meant it.
Taya stuck out her tongue.
“Well, we both know mine—”
“Which you broke last night.” Taya was a bitch like that.
“I don’t believe New Year’s resolutions should start
until the second week of January.” Ollie rubbed his hands together, digging
Taya’s arm into his side, and wondered why he hadn’t thought to bring gloves.
Ah, yes, he hadn’t had any where he’d been before his shift started. He wasn’t
allowed to leave any trace of his existence there.
“Riiight,” Taya said. “So that means from today,
you’ll be steering clear of arsehole men?”
“Sadly, no. Unfortunately, I will no doubt encounter
many of them in my time without realizing until it’s too late.”
“Amen.” Taya saluted.
Ollie wasn’t sure what the salute was about. But he
wasn’t particularly religious, so maybe that was how it was done in church
these days? Or temples, considering Taya’s family were Hindu.
“So, what is your resolution, then?”
“No baggage,” Ollie replied.
“Baggage?”
“Yep,” Ollie confirmed.
The gleaming new red Routemaster bus edged along the
narrow High Street, bumping over the speed mounds meant to slow the traffic
down, which Ollie thought ridiculous as the morning rush-hour pileup tended to
last all day in central London. The streets were filled with scuttling people
carrying takeout coffee cups, cyclists braving the ice, and the occasional
honking of a taxi horn. This time of the morning, most people were trying to
get to work and not home from it like Ollie and Taya. He was never quite sure
who was keener to reach their destinations.
“I don’t mind a complete arsehole—”
“Obviously.” Taya cut Ollie off with a raise of her
smoothed-out eyebrows. That new rainbow hot chocolate had clearly contained one
too many e-numbers and sent her loopy. That and the long night shift. Not that
she hadn’t been a little bit loopy to begin with.
“Ha ha.” Ollie pushed her forehead. “Like, I can
handle a dickhead—”
“We all know.”
“Jesus Christ,” Ollie muttered. “No more white hot
chocolate with pink dye for you, okay?”
“Sorry.” Taya pressed her lips together. She rose up
on her tiptoes to check on the bus’s progress but needn’t have worried, as it
had traveled all of a millimeter since the start of their conversation. At this
rate, Ollie might get home in time to have a shower and come straight back.
“What I mean is—”
“You don’t want a man who can’t commit because of
circumstance,” Taya finished for him.
Ollie was capable of finishing his own sentences, but
Taya was getting warm from flapping her lips, so he allowed it. “Exactly. I’m
married to my job. I love my job. Therefore, I should have the occasional fling
and become the arsehole myself.” He pointed a finger at Taya. “Don’t fricking
say it.”
Taya shrugged and mimed zipping her lips up.
“What do we nurses say daily?”
“‘No, you can’t have McDonald’s’?”
“Not that one.”
“‘You’re going to feel a little prick’?”
Ollie sniggered. “Not that one either.”
“Oh, I know. It’s ‘Of course I’ll change your TV
channel for you—it’s not like I have anything better to do with my time.’”
“No! I mean the big one—‘You won’t feel a thing.’”
Taya nodded. “So?”
“So, my resolution is to no longer feel a thing.”
“Good luck.” Taya smiled. Bitch.
The bus pulled up and Ollie jogged on the spot,
waiting for the doors to open. They hissed to the side, and even though he and
Taya were standing correctly at the hop-on part of the Routemaster with the
exit farther along the double decker, a tall man with floppy dark hair jumped
straight off and bashed Ollie’s arm as he rushed up the high street, heading
toward the gleaming glass frontage of St. Cross Children’s Hospital.
“Ouch.” Ollie pouted and rubbed his arm.
“Ha!” Taya jumped the step onto the bus.
“What?”
Amusement shimmered across Taya’s face as she bleeped
her Oyster card onto the yellow reader. “You just felt something.”
“Oh, bog off.”
WHERE TO BUY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Brought up in a relatively small town in
Hertfordshire, C F White managed to do what most other residents try to do and
fail—leave.
Studying at a West London university, she realised
there was a whole city out there waiting to be discovered, so, much like Dick
Whittington before her, she never made it back home and still endlessly
searches for the streets paved with gold, slowly coming to the realisation
they’re mostly paved with chewing gum. And the odd bit of graffiti. And those
little circles of yellow spray paint where the council point out the pot holes
to someone who is supposedly meant to fix them instead of staring at them
vacantly whilst holding a polystyrene cup of watered-down coffee.
She eventually moved West to East along that vast
District Line and settled for pie and mash, cockles and winkles and a bit of
Knees Up Mother Brown to live in the East End of London; securing a job and
creating a life, a home and a family.
Having worked in Higher Education for most of her
career, a life-altering experience brought pen back to paper after she’d
written stories as a child but never had the confidence to show them to the
world. Having embarked on this writing malarkey, C F White cannot stop. So
strap in, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride...
