A Diagnosis Dark & Deadly: A Dark & Deadly Novella (A Dark & Deadly Series Book 4)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
A Diagnosis Dark & Deadly
A Dark & Deadly Novella
Heather C. Myers
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Acknowledgments
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Also by Heather C. Myers
Chapter 1
If Olivia Goodson was one thing, she wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t like to wear her heart on her sleeve because she felt her emotions were hers to deal with - alone. She was not always like this; a couple years ago, one could read Olivia like a book. There were a number of causes that changed Olivia; first and foremost, she was a doctor, and as such, she needed to remain neutral and professional when interacting with her patients. Secondly, she worked for world-famous Dr. Mason Hadley, a diagnostician and a complete asshole. He pushed her, challenged her, more so than she had ever been. While she always liked a challenge, he could definitely be mean about it. She had known the doctor for three years; she had completed a year of residency with him and worked for him for two years after that on his diagnostics team as an oncologist. He was definitely a reason why Olivia became so guarded with her emotions. But the biggest cause of her isolation was her boyfriend of two years. Soon to be ex.
Owen Bernard was a charming guy. He wasn’t necessarily handsome, but he could make anyone laugh and was most definitely a people person. However, just because he got along with everyone did not mean he was a good boyfriend. He had been badly hurt by an ex before he met Olivia, and for the first year of their relationship, became incredibly defensive and demanding, if only to see what he could get away with and to see how long Olivia would be willing to put up with him. Olivia gave everything she had and more; no one could tell her that she didn’t try to make the relationship work. But as Owen began to open up to Olivia, it only got worse. Because he began to trust her, he was not shy asking for things or making plans and leaving Olivia with the bill.
“You’re the doctor,” he would say. “I’m just a warehouse worker. Once I make more money, I promise I’ll start taking you out.”
While gifts from Olivia were constant, gifts from Owen were rare. She had finally realized she had to end things during a sexual encounter with him. They were at his place, and as he was maneuvering on top of her, she was staring at the ceiling feeling… nothing. Their sex life was once bountiful, and while not exactly mind-blowing, she had been introduced to what an orgasm felt like. Maybe it was because she had lost her virginity to him that she had held so long to who she thought they could be. Whatever the reason, after they had finished and had both departed to their respective jobs, Olivia had realized she had fallen out of love with him long before then. She knew this because when she had come to this conclusion, it didn’t hurt the way she thought it would.
And because she knew this, she knew she had to leave him.
She had called him around ten in the morning, when he was taking his ten-minute break, and asked her to come to the hospital because they had to talk. Owen was somewhat paranoid, but Olivia remained silent about the reason. She had to do this in person.
The Friday was a long one; her mind was not where it should be. She was distracted, trying to make up a sincere break-up speech in her head. Olivia Goodson was rarely distracted when it came to her job. When Dr. Hadley offered his team the opportunity to cover his clinic hours that day (as he usually did when they didn’t have a case), Olivia jumped at the chance. At least at the clinic, Olivia was somewhat distracted. Dr. Hadley always seemed to know when someone had something else going on, and normally he would mock them until he found out what, exactly, it was. Olivia wasn’t in the mood for his persistent questioning, and when he offered her a chance to escape, she took it without hesitation.
Of course, this just piqued the doctor’s curiosity, and all throughout the day, Hadley would make random visits to the clinic, trying to figure out why Olivia had wanted the hours so bad. Olivia always offered to give them back, which would cause Hadley to disappear for a portion of time before reappearing with some sort of excuse.
During lunch, Olivia opted to stay in an empty exam room and take her own blood to have it tested for any STDs. While she felt that Owen had not cheated on her during their relationship, Olivia wasn’t as practiced in the art of making love as Owen was, and felt that he might have had something from before without knowing it. She deposited the blood in the lab, and requested, if possible, to have the results by the end of the day. Of course, she didn’t mention that it was her blood being tested. If word got out she was testing herself for STDs, she didn’t know what she would do.
Olivia managed to grab an apple before lunch was over, and decided to finish up the last four hours of her shift in the clinic. There were always a steady number of patients which meant that time moved along. She wasn’t surprised to see Hadley pop up a few times, but she expertly avoided him.
By the time five o’clock rolled around, Holy was incredibly nervous. Her heart pounded painfully and her stomach was abnormally light, as though she was at the peak of dropping on a very tall rollercoaster. She slipped off her lab coat and grabbed her briefcase from her locker. Flattening out the wrinkles in her shirt, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her red hair was pulled back, her green eyes looked somewhat lifeless, and when she tried to smile, the act felt almost foreign to her. She was wearing an oversized white, collared shirt and formless black slacks. Owen didn’t like her dressing too revealing, and he reminded her that as a doctor, she didn’t want to look like a slut, now did she?
She opened her locker after forgetting to have placed her coat inside when she saw a photo of herself hanging on the inside of the door. She must have been two years old, with perfectly light curls and rosy red cheeks. She had blue eyes then; they had changed color as she had gotten older. Without warning, Olivia felt tears prick the edge of her eyes; she didn’t even recognize herself anymore. She had changed, and not in a good way.
This only encouraged her to continue with her plan.
After shutting her locker, she swallowed the tears away. Before leaving, she stopped by the lab to pick up her test results. She was nervous as the technician handed her a small, white slip of paper before leaving her to stand in the hall alone. She hesitated before looking down, wishing that he would have just told her. Then she wouldn’t have to do this alone. But then again, he didn’t know the blood was hers. Unfolding the slip, her eyes looked at the bolded words.
Negative.
She was negative for everything. She could
n’t help but smile, and she shoved the paper in her briefcase. This just added to her confidence.
After taking the elevator up to the lobby, she began to walk outside. It had begun to rain, which was nothing new to Boulder. After stepping outside, she opened her umbrella. Owen told her that as a doctor, wet clothes were deemed inappropriate, and she wanted to look put together, didn’t she?
She saw Owen sitting on a bench in front of the hospital, waiting for her. He, too, was holding an umbrella over his body to prevent himself from getting wet. When he saw Olivia walk over to him, he stood, ready to pull her into a hug. Olivia looked away and stepped back, preventing Owen from following through with the act.
“Babe?” he asked with confusion, arching a brow and looking at his girlfriend pointedly. “What’s going on?”
Olivia sighed, and then forced herself to look him in the eyes. She had better get this over with; it was now or never.
Chapter 2
Dr. Mason Hadley had never taken a resident on before. In fact, he still wasn’t sure why he had hired Olivia Goodson as his own. She was definitely smart, graduating from Johns Hopkins as the valedictorian. She was beautiful and charming, very friendly, and happy. He had never regretted taking her on, and since then, he hadn’t taken another resident on as his own. Something in him was drawn to her, and he wanted to figure it out. He wanted to figure her out. Three years later, he hadn’t really gotten anywhere. She was still a puzzle to him.
No doubt he would hire her to his diagnostics team once she had completed her residency. She was a damn good doctor and the patient’s seemed to trust her. That always worked to his advantage when he needed consent forms signed; Goodson was always good at that. As the years began to pass, he noticed something in her change. She seemed to get more distant, more quiet. Her beautiful eyes dimmed and her lips refused to smile. While they had always butted heads, she seemed to get more aggravated with him, maybe even more desperate to win.
Mason knew she had a boyfriend. Mason knew he didn’t like her boyfriend. Whenever he brought it up, the result was always some kind of actual fight. Mason had always been observant, not just with Goodson, but with everyone. He felt that actions spoke a lot more than words did, and when it came to Goodson, her actions practically screamed. He knew she started to change after getting with her boyfriend, and while it had never affected her work as a doctor, it seemed to be changing her as a person.
Maybe what he saw in her was nothing. Maybe he was mistaken.
And then she took his clinic hours. Goodson wasn’t quite fond of clinic hours; no one on his team was. He would always offer them up before ordering someone to fill in for him. Not once had his team actually accepted his hours. That was when he knew something was up with Goodson. Something was changing… again. His inquiries went unanswered, however. Out of his three team members, Goodson was the hardest to bend towards his will, unless, of course, it had anything to do with something medical.
Much like Goodson’s impending breakup was invading her thoughts the whole day, Mason’s thoughts swam with possibilities of what she was thinking about. He was normally good at stuff like this, reading people, figuring them out, but he spent the whole day thinking about it and had nothing new when it was time to leave. He even tried to bring up the subject matter casually to his close friend and hospital pharmacist, Robert Shore, but Shore started questioning Mason’s motives, and as always, Mason had used one of the defense mechanisms he had mastered to deflect the question and change the subject.
Then he saw Goodson walk out the main doors to the hospital. Rationally, he knew it wasn’t any of his business to know what was going on with her. Yet, he also knew who he was as a person, and curiosity always won out. She walked over to a sitting figure, probably her boyfriend, he assumed. Positioning himself against the wall of the hospital was his best bet; he could see her, she couldn’t see him, and he wouldn’t get wet considering he forgot his umbrella that day.
The guy tried to hug her, but Goodson stepped back, avoiding physical contact with him. Interesting, Mason thought to himself. Even through the cloudy darkness, he could see that she was talking to him. She was positioning herself somewhat defensively, but her look was determined. Mason could see that the guy wasn’t taking whatever she was saying very well. He looked angry, upset. He tried to grab Goodson’s moving wrists, but she took another step back, her face warning him without words. Then he jutted his finger at her, as though he was accusing her of something. He looked like he was yelling, but the heavy rain muffled the words. Goodson looked down, her one arm wrapped around herself while the other held her umbrella, and he stalked off.
She must have just broken up with him.
Mason watched her stand there for a moment. He wasn’t sure if she was crying because tears easily camouflaged with the falling rain. She didn’t look sad… just lonely. She took a seat on the bench, her back towards him, and closed her umbrella, letting the rain hit her.
After a moment, Mason decided to approach her. He didn’t know what to say; he wasn’t exactly good at saying the right things at the right time, but Goodson looked like she might need some company. He walked as quietly through the rain as he possibly could before he finally took a seat on the wet bench.
She didn’t have to look at him to know who it was. “Are you here to mock me?” she asked him, her eyes focused on the park that was before her.
“I am appalled that you would think such a thing,” Mason said quickly, his eyes trying to find what she was looking at.
“I should’ve known you would have some way to find out,” she stated, turning her head to look at him. He met her eyes with his.
“Yes,” he said, nodding once, “you should’ve.”
There was a pause, and neither could decide if it was awkward or not.
A smile suddenly broke out on Goodson’s face and she looked up at the sky, the rain hitting her delicate features and rolling down until they dripped off of her. “I love the rain,” she stated, not looking at him. “That’s why I moved here from California.”
He didn’t respond to her. There was nothing to say.
“I haven’t sat in the rain for a long time.”
Now he couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or herself. At least now he could say something.
“You know that sitting in the rain can get you sick, right?” he asked her, turning his head to look at her.
“But it feels good,” she said, smiling again. “It feels… refreshing.”
“Is that how you feel?” he asked, tilting his head to the side as he studied her profile. Her hair was tumbling down her back in waves, soaked with water. The red colored turned dark, but that sparkle seemed to have slightly rekindled in her eyes.
Instead of shutting him out, she furrowed her brow, deep in thought. How did she feel? She leaned into the bench, quiet for a moment, before turning to meet his eyes. “I feel… relieved,” she told him quietly, honestly.
A small smile tugged up the corner of his lips. “That’s a good sign,” he stated.
“I also feel… ashamed,” she said with a sad undertone to her face. Her eyes dropped to her lap. “I feel lost, you know? I need to find myself again.”
“Love makes us feel-“ he began, but she stopped him with a sharp look.
“It wasn’t love,” she clarified firmly. She softened her tone. “I mean, I thought it was, but it wasn’t.”
Mason seemed to ponder that for a moment. “What are you going to do?” he asked her.
“Probably reacquaint myself with Jack Daniels,” she said with a rueful smile.
“You don’t drink,” he told her.
“I know,” she said, looking at him. She sighed and slouched her shoulders slightly. “I’ll probably end up taking a long bath, watching romantic comedies, and eating lots and lots of chocolate.”
“Do you want some company?” he asked her before he could even think.
Olivia looked at his face suspiciously, studying his features
for any sort of tell about his true intentions. Her eyes drifted over his sky blue eyes, down to his cheeks, and then to his lips. Realizing she had been staring, she blushed slightly and forced her eyes back into his. He didn’t seem to be kidding, and there didn’t seem to be an ulterior motive…
“That would be nice,” she told him softly, nodding.
The two stood together and began to walk to the parking garage. Both were extra careful not to accidentally brush shoulders with the other, afraid to touch, afraid to feel. They decided that Mason would follow Olivia in his car, so whenever he decided to leave, he was able to do so.
As she drove, Olivia gripped the steering wheel tightly, causing her knuckles to go white. Her heater was on full blast, but she left the radio off so she could listen to the rain fall. Was this the right idea? Should she really be doing this?
It didn’t matter; there was no going back now.
Chapter 3
Olivia let Mason in once they reached her apartment. It was a couple of blocks from the hospital, and when it wasn’t raining, Olivia opted to walk rather than drive. She was somewhat subconscious about her apartment; it wasn’t messy or anything, but it was hers, and now Dr. Hadley was going to scrutinize it, like some detective looking for clues at the scene of the crime.
Her apartment was like any other apartment; it was a little more spacey however. She decided to pay the extra money for a bigger apartment that had a guest bedroom in case any one of her friends decided to spend the night. She never believed Hadley would be here, although she’d be lying if she said she had never thought about it. Maybe thought was the wrong word; fantasized seemed to be a better fit.