The Doctor’s No-Strings Deal (Love Heals All Wounds #4)
1. Megan
CHAPTER 1
MEGAN
M egan Bright stepped out of the shower on the morning of her first day of residency and smelled breakfast cooking. That wasn’t a good thing, as much as she appreciated the kindness. Her mom, Sadie, wasn’t well enough to care for herself, let alone her adult daughter. In fact, their arrangement was meant to be the other way around. Megan was supposed to be looking after her mom, whose recent diagnoses of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome had given both of them some initial hope that her years-long symptoms might finally be addressed.
Then the system had let them down again because, apparently, ME/CFS was not adequately understood or researched. Sadie Bright’s symptoms were part of the reason Megan had gone into medicine to begin with. No doctors seemed to be able to help her mom, and Megan was determined to change that. Over the years, it became as much about changing things for other people with the disease as it was helping her mom.
And now she was finally fulfilling her dream for the both of them. She leaned over the sink and wiped the steam from the mirror with her towel. Her mousy, wet hair clung to the skin of her cheeks and shoulders as she toweled off the rest of her body about as aggressively as she toweled off the mirror. There was no time to baby herself. She did take a moment to pop her head around the corner on the way to her room and reprimand her mom.
“I thought I told you not to exert yourself today,” she said with a grin on her face.
Her mom shot back playfully. “You’re not the boss of me, kid. I’m making you breakfast whether you like it or not. Now make yourself cute, so I can have the faintest hope for grandbabies one day.”
Megan laughed and shook her head. “You know I can’t work miracles, Mom.”
“It won’t take a miracle,” her mom retorted from the kitchen, “just a much shorter skirt.”
“Mo-ther!” Megan’s mock outrage didn’t fool her mom at all. The two of them spent most mornings ribbing each other, doing their best to make the other one laugh. Laughter had gotten them through their hardest days, and they clung to it as a cure for all kinds of stress.
Megan dressed in a hurry, put her hair into a messy bun, and then frowned at herself in the mirror. “Okay fine,” she muttered. “You win.” And she discarded the skirt she had chosen for a significantly shorter one. She’d always been a tall girl — a trait she inherited from her now-absent father — so finding a skirt that fit her higher on the thighs was not a challenge. Whatever made her mother happy made Megan happy, and she would be required to change into scrubs when she got to the hospital anyway. She took one last look in the mirror, decided to clean up her bun a bit, and added a bit of blush and lipstick just to look a little more put together.
“Breakfast!” her mom called from the kitchen.
When Megan sat down across from her mom at their tiny dinner table, she felt like she was staring down at a commercial for orange juice. Fruit, toast, sausage, and the fluffiest scrambled eggs she’d ever seen in her life sat in front of her.
“Mom, you shouldn’t have,” she said, and she meant it. “Promise me you won’t be doing the dishes at least? I can take care of it when I get home.”
“I won’t do all the dishes,” her mom said with a smirk. “But I might do some just to be a rebel.”
Megan took a bit of scrambled egg and would have sworn they tasted exactly the way sunshine felt if that wouldn’t have made her look a little too Pollyanna . “Just try not to burn yourself out. Remember to rest.”
“It’s a good day, Meg,” her mom said with a smile. “I can’t help it. My baby’s going out and making me so proud. I want to spoil her a little.” She leaned across the table and made sad-puppy eyes at her daughter. “Please, please, please.”
Megan wrinkled her nose and pretended to deliberate. “How can I ever say no to you?” She wasn’t joking this time. Megan had lived with her mother her whole life. They told each other everything, got each other through everything. Maybe her reason for living with her mother as an adult was to help out when Sadie got her flair-ups, but Megan wouldn’t have had it any other way. Who else got to be so close to their mother, even after graduating college and becoming independent? No one. To Megan, her life was a gift, and everything in it was perfect.
Well, maybe not perfectly perfect. The two women lived in a small apartment with a tiny kitchen and a balcony you couldn’t even fit a chair on. But they had worked hard for that little home, and it represented a kind of hope. Sadie had even painted the walls bright, warm colors, saying they’d paint them white again when they moved out. The expense was worth the happiness.
That’s how Meg was raised to see the world. Happiness was the point. Work hard because it makes you happy. Succeed because it makes your family happy. Everything was always possible with the right attitude.
“Promise you’ll give me the play-by-play as soon as you get home,” Sadie was saying. “I want to hear everything. You’re going to meet so many new people. Surely one of them will be worth dating.”
Megan squinted across the table at her mother as she chewed a bite of toast. “Your mind is more one-track than anyone’s I’ve ever met. Anyway, we’re not there to make friends. We’re there to learn.”
“Nobody learns anything without making a few friends first.” Her mother grinned back at her. “And if one of them happens to be cute…” She shrugged.
“If he’s cute, he’s not going to notice me.” Megan piled the rest of her eggs onto her toast and started eating it like an open-faced sandwich. “And that’s fine by me. I’m going to be way too busy. This is too important to let dating drama get in the way. I swear I’ll work on the grandbabies, Mom,” she added quickly, getting ahead of her mother’s protest. “It’s just going to be a little bit longer. Then you’ll have grandbabies and a doctor for a daughter.”
“Go get it, girl,” her mom said. “You really can have everything. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“I won’t, Mom.” Megan inhaled the rest of her breakfast, then ran back to her room to pack her bag full of everything she thought she might need throughout the day. She had electronic notepads, books, pencils, hair clips, tissues, and what seemed like everything else that wasn’t her kitchen sink. She chided herself for packing a week’s worth of belongings just for one day. But every time she thought about maybe leaving something out, she imagined a dozen alarmingly specific scenarios that meant she would need that precise item.
Her bag was too heavy to bike with, but she only needed to get it as far as the nearest bus stop, then it was just a short ride at the other end. If Philadelphia had one thing going for it, it was stellar public transportation. But of course, in Megan’s opinion, Philadelphia had just about everything going for it. She loved the city despite its flaws. She’d always called it home and was more than pleased that she’d been able to secure a residency close to home.
On her way out the door, she stopped to kiss her mom on the forehead. “Glasses,” Sadie reminded her.
“Oh, shoot!” She ran back to her room to grab her glasses. Of all things to forget , she thought. “I should just get contacts already,” she said when she reappeared in the kitchen.
“Don’t be silly,” her mom said. “How can I expect you to marry a doctor if you don’t look like a sexy librarian at work?”
Megan burst out laughing and gave her mom another hug and kiss. “You’re so weird, Mom.”
“That’s why you love me,” her mother added as she flew out the door.
“I love you for lots of other reasons, too.” Just before she closed the door behind her, Megan called back. “No dishes!” But she knew it was useless. Her mother didn’t often have the energy to take on daily tasks, so whenever she did have the energy, she almost always overexerted herself. It wasn’t ideal, but Megan knew it was useless to try and stop her.
Sadie Bright had a stubborn streak about a mile wide, and Megan knew exactly what the apartment would look like when she got home. The dishes would be done, the kitchen and dining area would be clean, and her mother would be crashed out in bed, exhausted for the next week. Megan smiled at the thought because Sadie was Sadie, and she was glad the diagnosis hadn’t changed who her mother was. She’d be happy to take over the homemaking for weeks at a time if it meant her mother got to feel like herself for a day.
As soon as Megan started peddling, she realized what a mistake it was to wear a short skirt while biking, but it was too late. Luckily, in the city, most people minded their business and didn’t seem to care. When she came close to her bus stop, Megan hopped off her bike and tried to straighten her wrinkled skirt to no avail.
She had always loved bus stops and the like, where people would gather to wait and chat and just be together. In Philadelphia, the bus stations were almost as nice as the train stations. Some of the kids she grew up with criticized these public spaces, claiming they were dirty and maybe a little dangerous, but Megan didn’t think so. Her mother had been taking the L her whole life, and she was just fine.
A busker sat on the curb, playing a violin with his case open. On her way past, Megan dug a dollar out of her purse and dropped it into the case.
“Bless you!” the busker called out after her.
She turned back. “No, bless you! And thank you for the music!”
The violinist smiled wide while he played. “You have a wonderful day now!”
“I will!” she answered. “It’s my first day of residency — wish me luck!”
“Good luck, beautiful!”
That interaction put a smile on her face as she waited for the bus. And her smile didn’t fade even as she stepped aboard and found she had old chewing gum stuck to the sole of her shoe. It brought back all kinds of memories, and made her nostalgic for a childhood filled with things other people might not appreciate quite as much as she did. Old gum on her shoes and buskers on the street corners.
Today was going to be amazing, and the gum was just a sign that things were going her way. That’s how she saw it, anyway. She gave up her seat to an old woman who said something to her in a language she didn’t understand. Certainly, it included thanks and well wishes. Megan could tell. A couple men on the train complimented her appearance, and she thanked them with a warm smile, which they didn’t seem to expect for some reason. When the girl sitting next to her turned up her music, Megan knew it was so she could hear it too. She grinned at the girl and thanked her, saying how much she loved the song. The bewildered girl stared at her, but eventually, she came around and smiled back.
Megan always found it easy to make others smile. All she had to do was assume they had the best intentions, give them all the benefits of every single doubt, and let them feel truly appreciated. She was generous with her smile and her laugh and her gratitude, and people definitely noticed. It was a skill she had learned from her mom, and it had treated her well in life.
In fact, she was looking forward to using her people skills with real patients instead of just fellow students. One of the reasons she knew she would make a good doctor was how much she loved being around people. She tipped her invisible hat to everyone who passed her on the train, and a good sixty percent of them smiled back. Maybe that was the only smile they would get that day, but everyone needed a daily dose, and Megan was glad to provide. Healing wasn’t just about medicine, and Megan understood that more than most.