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CHAPTER ONE
DR CHELSEA MAJORS pulled on her lab coat and prepared to bask in the first day of the rest of her life.
OK, so maybe she was being overly dramatic, but she’d worked a long time to get to this particular morning. Today she started work at Madison Medical Center, a family clinic that employed three physicians. Make that, as of today, four.
She’d never considered going anywhere other than the moderate-sized practice near Alabama’s Gulf Shore coast where her brother worked. From the time of her birth Will had practically raised her. Certainly, she’d spent a lot more time in his care than her parents’.
Henry and Iva Majors had had lives to save, extended overseas mission trips to go on, and medical boards to run. Dealing with their youngest child had been left to hired help. Chelsea had preferred the care of her nanny to her often times indifferent parents anyway. Will had been another story. He’d been the perfect son while Chelsea had been an accident from the moment of conception. Her mother had had no qualms at pointing out that due to her difficult pregnancy she’d had to miss out on an important mission trip to Bosnia.
Plus, she was pretty sure her parents had decided a mistake had been made at the hospital and they’d been given the wrong child. Who could blame them when they were such overachievers? Her father, her mother, her brother. Everyone but her.
For too many years she’d been stuck inside her defective body and an outcast within her own home. Will had been able to go with their parents on their overseas trips, to live their lives. Chelsea’s medical problems had kept her at home, in the care of others, and somewhere along the line she and her parents had missed forming loving bonds.
But with Will’s encouragement and her own determination, she’d come past all that and achieved her lifelong dream of becoming a family physician. She wanted to make a difference in others’ lives the way a few good doctors had in hers. Not by serving on some politically connected health board or by going overseas, but to make a difference in a small-town community that would likely never earn her any commendations from the president. Her parents already had enough of those hanging on the wall.
“You ready, sis?” a tall, dark-haired male version of herself asked. Will stepped into the closet-sized room she couldn’t be more proud of—her office—and tossed a small package to her.
“What’s this?” Examining the gold foil and white silk ribbon, she held up the square gift-wrapped box. She met her brother’s twinkling brown eyes, so similar to her own. Her heart pinched at his thoughtfulness. Although seven years her senior, they’d always been close and she admitted to hero-worshipping him for as long as she could remember. Will had been her hero, making her believe in herself when it would have been too easy to shut the world out.
“Just a little something to let you know how proud I am of my kid sister,” he said, prowling through the cardboard box on her desk. He lifted a small, stuffed bear in doctor garb, curled his nose, then dropped the fuzzy animal back into the box. “I thought we got your stuff moved in on Saturday?”
The bear had been a gift from a group of undergrad friends in celebration of when she’d gotten her acceptance letter to medical school. She cherished the gift, just as she cherished the friendships. Having been homeschooled with very little interaction with others until her teens, she never took for granted the blessing of having friends.
“Almost everything.” She glanced at the bookshelf with her precious medical books lined up in neat rows. Nodding toward the box, she said, “This is personal stuff to give the room my personality.”
Will’s handsome face wrinkled in a look of thorough disgust. “You’re going to make this room all girly,” he teased.
She rolled her eyes and finished unwrapping his gift. Her eyes misted at what she saw nestled in the tissue paper.
“Oh, Will. You shouldn’t have.” She wrapped her arms around him and gave an appreciative squeeze. “Have I told you lately that you’re my favorite brother?”
“I’m your only brother,” he reminded her, indulgently hugging her with a pleased grin on his face. “Give it here so I can pin it on your lab coat.”
She handed him the name tag he’d had made for her, one printed with her name and the name of the practice. He pinned the tag to her white lab coat and studied her appearance, much as he’d done many times throughout her childhood.
The badge was a cheap piece of plastic, but the love behind the gift was priceless. Will knew how hard she’d worked, how she’d longed for this day.
Not all the reasons she’d longed for it, of course.
Because her brother didn’t know about the passionate kiss she’d shared with Jared ten years ago.
Neither did Will know how excited she was at the fact his partner was going to be a daily part of her life.
The truth was, though, she also dreaded seeing Jared, of having to constantly face the man who haunted her dreams when she knew she could never have him. When her ex’s rejection had left her emotionally doubled over, she could only imagine what seeing the disgust in Jared’s eyes, hearing him say she was unlovable wou
ld do to her poor heart. No, she wouldn’t open herself up to the kind of pain Jared had the power to deliver. Never again. She’d offered her heart to him on a platter and he’d turned her away, asked another woman to marry him, driving the message home that she hadn’t been good enough.
Oblivious to her thoughts of the past, Will straightened the name tag, and shook his head slightly. A look of pride shone in his golden brown eyes. “There, you look perfect.”
Reminding herself of all she’d accomplished, of the life she’d forged for herself, Chelsea bit back an ironic laugh. Perfect? If only.
Dr Jared Floyd read over Connie Black’s MRI report, not liking the radiologist’s comments. He’d hoped arthritis had been causing her worsening hip pain, but according to the report a tumor was growing in the sixty-year-old woman’s left hip joint.
Which meant he had to deliver the bad news at Connie’s appointment in the morning. Damn.
Connie had come so far from three years ago when he’d first diagnosed her lung cancer. She’d quit smoking, survived the removal of one of her right lung lobes, endured chemotherapy and radiation, and suffered through the loss of her husband three months ago to a massive heart attack. She’d endured everything and kept a positive outlook. Now this.
He stared at the report, hoping the wording would change.
Highly suspicious mass with solid consistency and increased vascularization. Biopsy recommended.
Maybe the radiologist was wrong.
Maybe he was doing a lot of wishful thinking.
