Healing of the Heart: A Lesbian Love Story (Signed Paperback)

Pages : 282
ISBN : 9614622000068
Weight : 274g
Dimensions : 127 x 16 x 203 mm

Dr. Meredith Asquith has perfected the art of keeping everyone at arm's length. As a brilliant but cold neurosurgeon at City General Hospital, she's renowned for her surgical skills and infamous for her cutting demeanor. Behind her icy exterior lies a devastating truth: the car accident that claimed her wife and daughter eight years ago left her heart too broken to risk love again.
When psychologist Emily Porter arrives to conduct the hospital's audit, she sees beyond Meredith's walls to the wounded woman beneath. What begins as professional antagonism soon sparks into unexpected attraction as Emily's warmth slowly melts Meredith's carefully constructed defenses.
Just as they begin to find happiness together, Emily suddenly leaves, and Meredith is left wondering if she'll ever learn to trust again. In an impossible twist of fate, they reunite halfway across the world in a war-torn country, both volunteering with Doctors Beyond Borders. Surrounded by conflict and crisis, they're forced to confront their feelings amid impossible circumstances.
From sterile hospital corridors to dangerous conflict zones, "Healing of the Heart" is a powerful story about having the courage to love after devastating loss. As Meredith and Emily navigate their unexpected journey, they discover that sometimes the most broken hearts have the greatest capacity to heal—and to love again.
Book 6 in the City General: Medic 1 Series. Can be read as a standalone romance.

- Ice Queen
- Age-gap
- Medical Romance
- Surgeon/Psychologist
- Opposites Attract
- Found Family
- Slow Burn

The buzz of the lunchtime rush filled the hospital cafeteria. Doctors, nurses, and patient families flitted around the room with full trays, looking for empty tables as those already seated swapped stories as they ate.
For the families of patients, this was a chance to take a quick break from the stress of bedside vigils. For the medical staff, it was a reprieve from a constant barrage of questions, problems that needed solving, and the mountain of paperwork that seemed to be overtaking their time with patients. Out of all of the spaces in the hospital, the cafeteria offered some stolen moments of respite.
The hot topic of conversation for the day was the upcoming audit. It had been years since the hospital staff had been submitted to a full, formal audit, and no one was looking forward to it. Some of the staff were familiar with the process that could follow a difficult patient, or a procedure that had an unfortunate outcome. Lawyers might be called in, interviews conducted, depositions taken.
The conference rooms would be a hive of business suit activity behind drawn blinds. For a few days, the staff of one department or another would walk on eggshells, with everyone holding their breath and having hushed conversations in quiet corridors and then it would all be over. Everyone would relax back into their regular routines, happy to still have their jobs; until the next unfortunate incident and the whole thing would start again in a different department.
The audit would be like that, but with the dial turned up to ten. A full team was being brought in to conduct interviews with every member of the medical staff. All of their patient files and records over the past few years would be reviewed, they would be required to give their opinion of other members of their department, and their fitness to carry out their duties would be critically evaluated in a way they'd never struggled through before. To make matters worse, there would be no break from it: the whole hospital would be audited, all in one go.
Whether they were talking about it or not, the audit was on everyone's minds, and a group of nurses huddled together to talk about it.
"Why do you think they're doing it?" One of the younger nurses, a pretty girl of about twenty-five leaned in close to her friends. "Do you think someone filed a report or something?"
"Businesses are audited all the time." An older woman with steely hair held captive in a strict bun, rolled her eyes. "Don't be so dramatic."
"I'm not being dramatic. I'm just saying, there has to be a reason for this, right? Something must have kicked this off. What if one of the doctors screwed up?"
Her older co-worker shot her a withering look, and the young nurse slouched back in her seat, folding her arms over her chest. "What? Maybe we've had a few too many complaints, they thought it would look good to have someone go over the place. You know, weed out the, uh...the weaker members of staff."
"Maybe they're coming to interview nurses who'd be all too happy to gossip about their co-workers," the older woman said pointedly, sipping her coffee.
"So why do you think they're doing this then?" the younger woman snapped. "If you don't think someone's screwed up."
"I think this is a business. I think they want to run it as effectively as possible, and to do that, sometimes you have to trim the fat." The older woman looked at her co-worker out of the corner of her eye, and cocked an eyebrow. "You know, to increase efficiency?"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"No reason." She looked away, smiling to herself as a young man joined the table. "Jason, what are you thinking about all of this?"
"All of what?" He dropped into the seat across from them. "The audit team?"
"Mm. Erika here thinks that she's living in the middle of a whistleblower fantasy—we've killed off too many of our patients, and there's a team coming to smoke out the murderers."
"I didn't say that!" Erika protested, sitting up straighter. "But the doctors have to get a lot of complaints, right? Maybe they brought a team in because they think there's more to it than that. Maybe they think there are more complaints that are being covered up. Don't you think that's a possibility?"
"If the hospital was covering up malpractice, why would they have hired a company to dig into all our files, and interview us?" Jason asked, picking up a French-fry from his plate and waving it around as he spoke. "You know, if you're driving around with weed in the back of your car, you're not going to speed in front of a traffic cop, are you?"