by Bri Stone
Contents
Whisper Me and Roar
Note to Reader
Acknowledgments
1. Melinda
2. Pete
3. Melinda
4. Pete
5. Melinda
6. Pete
7. Pete
8. Melinda
9. Pete
10. Pete
11. Melinda
12. Pete
13. Pete
14. Pete
15. Pete
16. Pete
17. Pete
18. Pete
19. Pete
20. Melinda
21. Pete
22. Pete
23. Pete
24. Pete
25. Pete
26. Melinda
27. Pete
28. Melinda
29. Pete
30. Melinda
Epilogue
Thank you for reading!
Also by Bri Stone
The Brightest Night
Perrie
Thom
Chapter 1: Perrie
Chapter 2: Thom
Copyright © 2018 by Bri Stone.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles and reviews. For information, please contact the author. Printed and bound in United States of America. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design copyright © by Jo-Anna Walker with Just. Write. Creations
Editing by Becca Miller
Formatting © by Mermaid Publishing House
Thank you for reading Pete and Melinda’s story. Some medical content, jargon, and processes are not to be considered completely accurate as they have been modified to fit the contents of the story. Some content may be unsuitable and considered a trigger for some audiences.
For those who have remained strong in light of the hardest things, and the medical professionals who give their lives to make ours better. And for everyone, especially those who hurt and those who think they are broken. May we all have our second chances.
I want to thank each and every one of my readers from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for enjoying the stories so close to my heart, and I can’t wait to write more for you. Thank you to my reader group, Bri Stone’s Book Bees, for your encouragement and presence. And to my ARC readers and reviewers, your help does not go unnoticed and I greatly appreciate it. To all the bloggers that helped me, Give Me Books, my cover designer, and my editor—I couldn’t do it without you. Thank you a thousand, million times.
MELINDA
* * *
“Dr. Charles are you with us?”
No, I’m not.
I feign a smile. “Yes. New interns coming tomorrow, they’ll be annoying, but we have to manage.” My smile is humorless, but the room laughs.
The Chief tries to hold back a laugh before he loses against himself. Harold Mite is a fifty-something, cheery-faced man with an impeccable track record in urology. I don’t know how he ended up the chief of this institution, it’s hard to imagine because he is often very laid back, but it’s true. His dyed brown hair and beady blue eyes matches his personality. Once he composes himself, he finishes the meeting and sends us back to work.
I get to my office and see someone waiting for me. Luke Nelson is a pain in the ass, but I work with him, so I manage not to tell him that to his face.
“Hey, Melinda.” His smile is too bright. Luke is a tall, charming black man that uses his good looks to get pretty much anything he wants out of all the nurses and other doctors here.
I suppose I can’t judge him since I know what it’s like. When you’re beautiful, you don’t know if people are nice to you because of that, or if they actually mean it.
“We’re on a first name basis now?” I stop my eyes from rolling as I move him aside and unlock my door. We have worked together since our Residency, but we aren’t that comfortable.
He follows close behind me, sitting in one of the armchairs across from my desk. I stand behind the table and peer at him.
“Yeah, we should be.” He shrugs, his deep voice booming in the small, simple room. My office is generic, decorated only with mainstream quotes blown up and framed, faux flowers, and my desk always topped with files and sticky notes to cue my memory.
I look him over, with his annoying model looks. His muscles make it so the blue scrubs intentionally flatter his muscles and he likes to draw attention to his manhood by wearing his pager clipped over his hip. I look back at his face and find him smirking at me.
I cross my arms and sigh. “What do you need?” Both of us are attendings here, and the only reason I am not chief of orthopedics is that my research is taxing. Sure, he is intelligent and a great surgeon but he’s different in the way a genius doesn’t have personal communication skills or proper boundaries.
“We usually go over our schedule every morning. Did you forget?” He peers at me.
I twist my lips and tick my jaw. I don’t forget things and he knows that, but the day alone takes me back to a different time, one I don’t know if I want to remember or forget. April fourteenth, which so many years ago was an amazing day.
“No, Luke. I didn’t forget. What do we have?” I sit down and turn on my computer.
The dual screen takes up half my desk, while the other is occupied by files and pens and disorganization at its finest.
“Not much.” He sits on the edge of my desk and peers over at my screen. I glare at him, and he just looks back at me like he isn’t doing something annoying.
I pull up the calendar and view our day. There really isn’t much, excluding cases that may come up in the ER. I have a knee replacement followed by a hip replacement, then I have three patients from my research trials to see. I delegate the hip replacement to Luke, and he doesn’t complain.
“You know, you owe me for helping you out.” Luke stands and smirks down at me.
I scoff, check my pager and stand up to clip it on my white coat. I ignore him as I move to my bathroom to look in the mirror as I tie my hair up into a ponytail. The lighting of the bathroom is dim, making my ochre skin look darker than it really is, and my brown eyes more tired than I am. The thin bags under them aren’t an illusion though, those are real.
“I don’t owe you, it’s part of your job.”
“And what if I ask the Chief how he feels about it?”
I stand in the doorway and stare him down, arching my brow and hardening my lips.
“That’s a little elementary school, isn’t it?” I adjust my coat on and shut my office door behind me with him on my coattail.
“Jeez, do you plan to annoy me all day?” I walk the long, wide hall through patient recovery rooms and the nurse’s station.
“No. Not all day. Why are you so annoyed with me anyway?” He touches my shoulder gently and I stop to face him. He has an incredulous look in his eye as he peers down at me.
“Because you…” I start and realize I can’t say. Sometimes the sheer presence of someone is annoying, or a vibe that just doesn’t feel right from the get.
The problem was I didn’t dislike Luke because of his personality, or for any real reason, honestly. It was just because he reminded me of him.
“I’m not annoyed by you. You just do annoying things sometimes.” I lie and drop my shoulders.
He shrugs his massive shoulders, “Okay. How about I try to not do annoying things anymore, then we can call a truce?” His dark eyes light up.
“Su
re.” I manage.
Luke smiles. “We can start by going on a date.” And we’re back.
I roll my eyes, huff, and walk away with him laughing behind me.
My first stop is the room of one of my patients. She only came in last week, an elderly woman with horribly weak knees, but her left one especially needs a replacement. I went over the approach with her, steps of the surgery, the aftercare and therapy that would follow. She is such a sweet woman, with golden hair and kind eyes that remind me of a woman I met so long ago, and I feel an extra inclination to take care of her.
“Thank you, darling. You’re so sweet.” Her husband moves to shake my hand, and I do. He’s a regal looking type, a retired banker, from what I remember, and she has always been a homemaker.
“It’s just my job, sir.” I give my best, patient care smile. The only time I really smile is when I’m around my best and only friend Perrie or talking to her. And if one of the residents tells a good enough joke.
“Oh nonsense, I know doctors that come around and just cut you up and leave. And I know about your work with the soldiers, my son is serving. It’s truly amazing what you’re doing.”
My heart swells, and I really smile back at him. I never thought of it that way when I was starting. It truly was just an idea in my head that I knew I had to follow through with. The way we treat broken bones is old fashioned and sad, and it isn’t sustainable. Metal rods, carbonic ligaments… It doesn’t make sense.
So, five years ago, I set out to find a way to garner our own bone marrow, grow it like we can grow and regenerate cells; then use it to repair broken bones, ligaments once thought to be beyond repair. Five years ago, it was a project in a lab of Johns Hopkins and now it’s worth millions of dollars and has improved thousands of lives. Some of my patients were soldiers, both active and on reserve who have endured countless injuries. The first of many was a kind, thirty-something man who had been told his limp was permanent, that his leg would never heal from the shrapnel that had ripped through it. Jerry Meyers had done three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before the last left him broken. I met him when he came in during the first phase of human trials for my research at the end of my residency. I was lucky it worked, so was he, and then more and more people applied and took part in the trials. A lot of my other patients are those with long term sports injuries, and degenerative bone diseases too. Once I got the most of my funding and successful trials after the first seventeen months, it was officially off the ground, and the Charles Method was born.
“Thank you, Dr. Charles.” Linda pats my hand and smiles.
“You’re welcome.” I smile in return and have her prepped for surgery.
Her surgery goes smoothly, and I see her briefly when she wakes up to check on her before I take a quick lunch break. The cafeteria has great food all the time, but I just pick up some coffee and croutons before I head back to my office. I have three patients coming in from the research, the first is on the second phase; which I identify as them passing the screening, and moving on to extracting the bone marrow, hoping it will take in the serum. Kevin is a middle-aged man who broke his leg years ago when he fell on a construction site. The damage was so severe his femur was not only broken but shattered. Walking was so painful, he used a wheelchair. Not all the participants of the research project are soldiers, in fact, only thirty percent of the subjects have come from the line of duty. But years ago, when an influx of patient applicants came through, and it caught the President of the United States’ attention, they mostly were.
Kevin does well, and my nurse takes care of him after the extraction. I have a small team of two nurses, a clerk or more of a medical assistant to handle the paperwork and insurance, and then two residents that I choose after their rotations.
“Is there anything else for today?” Carol asks me. She’s a sweet and timid girl that I once thought wasn’t cut out to be a surgeon, but she proved me wrong in her three years of residency here. Her end game is ortho, so she has been under my wing for a while now. It is still hard to consider myself a teacher, but I have been for three groups of interns.
“No, that was it. Just make sure everything is set for tomorrow.”
She nods. “Are you going to the gala this Saturday? You should, everyone will be expecting you.” Her voice is chipper. Too chipper for ten o’ clock at night.
“I am, yes.” I turn my head from her and sigh to myself, “Unfortunately.” I got used to the politics of my part as a researcher, one that succeeded. But I didn’t like it, even still.
“It’ll be fine, I’m sure. And if you need a way out, I know the drill.” She winks laughing, and I remember our agreement for getting me out of situations I didn’t want to be in. She pages me with a code blue or 911.
“Right. Thanks. See you tomorrow, Seven.” I don’t call them by numbers, I’m not that evil. Her last name really is Seven.
I go to my office, pack up and shut everything down before I head home. My mind races on the drive over, replaying the start of this day from fifteen years ago as I have done ever since. Pete’s birthday, when he still pampered me instead of the other way around. It’s always how he was. Naturally goofy too, like Luke, and it’s why I find it hard to be around him sometimes. Of course, I could never tell him. Days like this I want to curl up at home and do nothing. But I have patients, and then the sports medicine gala on Saturday.
I’m needed, and it keeps me going.
I find reruns of America’s Next Top Model and drink grape juice as the allusion of wine with my grilled chicken and rice dinner plate. I try not to drink during the week in case I get paged in. I still use a wine glass though, the thin stem shines in the dim lighting of my living rom. Decorated in Marseille gold; everything matching from the couch, rug, and crown molding.
Around one, I flip the channel and find a game on. Must be a replay. I will my finger to move and flip the channel again, but I freeze when I notice the Texans are leading by two touchdowns over the Jaguars. I don’t know what season it is, but it’s whatever they replay in April. At least the day is over, but Pete still loomed in the back of my mind. So of course, with my luck, the camera pans to him in a recap of the play. He still looks amazing as ever, smiling to someone, laughing. Does he remember me? Or maybe he just remembers how I hurt him.
I lay down on the couch and keep watching him. Those kind brown eyes, his strong shoulders and stalky frame. He may look it, but he is no lunk. Pete Buchanan still tugs at my heart, still owns my soul.
Fifteen years later and I still haven’t repaired what I broke.
PETE
Baylor University, Senior Year
* * *
I run my hands down the side of her head as I stand on her right side, brushing my hand down the thick mane on her neck and she gruffs in appreciation.
“Are you ready to cooperate now?”
Ronnie is the roughest of all the horses, but she is also the fastest and never loses a race we’ve bet on so we tolerate her.
I finally get her back in the stable and finish up in the horse barn before I move on to the chicken coop. Lots of people say they grew up on a farm but what they really mean is they grew up on farmland with a lake a few miles down, but I grew up with the farm. I was seven the last time I remember this place just being a few horses and a chicken that wouldn’t lay. Now Buchanan Farms provides for damn near half the southern United States and Pops worked hard to get it that way. Our farm raises cattle for meat and dairy, and we plant corn, soy, and wheat. In short, it was a lot of work and dad didn’t like to hire out but does it out of necessity. I work the farm, and my four sisters helped too before they grew up and left the nest. I work year-round, and when all the football offers came in junior year of high school, I chose Baylor because it’s twenty minutes from the farm. I never thought of it as a sacrifice or anything, just something I had to do.
“Sugar, you’ll be worn out by the time you get to practice.”
“I’ll be fine, Momma.” I lock Ronnie in
her stall, and she hops in the tractor with me to head back to the main barn.
She definitely isn’t dressed for farm work in her pink day dress, but that has never stopped her. My Momma is tough and unpredictable, but the sweetest person on this green earth.
“I keep telling your daddy to hire some help out here.” She drawls, shaking her head to herself. I laugh and put the tractor in gear, starting the short drive to the barn.
The sun’s heat bears down to the tractor’s open frame, warming my tan skin to more of a sunburn I should wear a shirt out here, but work gets so damn hot that the shirt just becomes a nuisance. Since it’s only about ten in the morning, the sun still has that friendly glow, making the green of the wheat stalks bright and the white of the corn shine.
“He’ll never do such a thing. I don’t mind it.”
“I know you don’t, but you need your energy for school too.” Her voice is stern.
“I have energy. I’m young and warm-blooded.” I wink at her, and she nudges my shoulder in response.
We pull up to the barn, and she helps me unload the barrels of wheat. Momma is fit and able, despite her age. The farm life made her that way, and I think it runs in our blood by now. Farming has been our lifestyle for generations, on both sides of the family.
“What time d’you have to be there?”
“Not until noon, I’ve still got time. Plus, I’m already finished.” I smirk down at her.