Second Chance With Her Army Doc. Dianne Drake

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       CHAPTER ONE

      “SO, AFTER YOU left Sloane, then what?” Matt McClain asked his old Army buddy Carter Holmes.

      Carter cringed at the memory of how he’d left her. With a text.

      Sorry, I can’t do this any longer. I’ve got to go find myself on my own.

      Sloane Manning had done everything in her power to help him. She’d come to Germany for his surgeries and stayed at his bedside for days, until he was well enough to be shipped home. Then, at home, she’d put aside practically every aspect of her own life just to help him through.

      She’d found different treatment options for PTSD, and she’d stood by him when her father had hired him back at Manning Hospital, even though he clearly hadn’t been ready for the stress. And she’d stood by him again when her father had suspended him for any number of the little infractions he’d incurred in his first six months back.

      He’d done nothing to jeopardize a patient. Quite the opposite. He’d done everything to jeopardize his career. Insubordination. Tardiness. Bad attitude all along.

      “I found a program that seemed like it might work for me. Sloane’s idea was something more traditional—like seeing a counselor or group therapy. But, that’s not me. So, I looked for something else.”

      “And...?” Matt asked.

      “I completed the first part. Did pretty well, all things considered. And my counselor there said there was excellent hope for my future. So now they’ve put me on a waiting list for the next part of the program, and with any luck I’ll be called within the next couple of months. They give you a little time off between parts one and two, to make sure part one has taken. So...that’s why I’m here, asking for a job. I need to keep myself busy until I go back to Tennessee. I need to keep my mind on the things I can control, and not on the things I can’t.”

      “Sounds like it’s working,” Matt said.

      “It is. It’s a slow process, but little by little it’s helping me define who I am again.”

      He and Matt had been trapped in a cave in Afghanistan when, for whatever reason, he’d snapped. Left the cave and run head-first into gunfire. He’d got hit pretty hard. Lost a kidney and a spleen as a result. Damaged his other kidney as well. Matt had risked his life to leave the relative safety of that cave to save him.

      “It’s a bear rescue facility. I’ll work with bear cubs—rescue them if they’re abandoned or injured, take care of them and, if they’re able to return to the wild, get them prepared to do that. That’s the hands-on part of the program. The first part was doing pretty much the same thing for myself—retraining for life in the world again. Making sure I have what it will take to work with the bears later on. It’s an amazing program. Gives you a different kind of responsibility and helps you find yourself inside that responsibility.”

      Matt whistled. “Bears... I would have never guessed.”

      “Just the little black bear variety. Not ready to tackle the grizzlies yet.” Carter chuckled. “And I’m the one who never even had a dog.”

      “Well, it seems to be agreeing with you.”

      “I hope it is,” Carter said in all seriousness. “I can’t live my life never knowing when something’s going to trigger me. It’s hell. It’s also why I had to leave Sloane. She was always there, ready to help me. Maybe too much. Plus, I was breaking her heart.”

      Carter looked over Matt’s shoulder, out the roadhouse window to the vast expanse of desert beyond them. So big, so empty. So—lonely. That was how he’d felt most of the time. Especially in the early days. Now, while he still wasn’t better, he could see clearly enough to make distinctions about the reality of his situation. It wasn’t great, but with another year or so in therapy it would improve. That was what he was aiming for, anyway.

      “Anyway, I’m hoping that you can give me something to do for a while.”

      They were sitting in a corner booth at the Forgeburn Roadhouse, Matt drinking a beer, Carter drinking fizzy water. Booze had become a real problem in the last year. So had drugs. And while that was part of his past now, since falling off the wagon meant getting kicked out of the program, there’d been a few times he’d come close. But so far he hadn’t indulged in those things since he’d left Sloane.

      What was the point? Getting drunk only drove him deeper into depression. And getting high, while it may have caused him to forget momentarily, always sent him crashing back to reality, usually feeling worse than he’d felt before. It was a horrible feeling, always knowing how close to the edge he was and afraid of what might push him over.

      “I don’t come with a lot of guarantees these days, but I’m still a damned good doctor. That’s probably the only thing I can count on.”

      “It’s what I’m counting on too, Carter.”

      “Anyway, if you still think I’m worth taking a chance on, I’m yours until I get the call from The Recovery Project. And, like I mentioned when I called you last week, if I graduate from the program and you want me back, I’ll be here.”

      No, it wasn’t general surgery. But he wasn’t up to that yet. Too many things to go wrong. Too many lives depending on his wavy blade. But being a good old country doctor would keep him in the profession and, hopefully, keep him out of trouble.

      “Do you really think you can make the transition from being a surgeon to being a GP?”

      “There are a lot of things in my life I have to change—including my attitude. And while in the long term I don’t know how well I’ll adjust to life outside the OR, in the short term I know I can’t go back to that right now. Maybe never again. I don’t know yet.”

      “You’ve come a long way,” Matt said, tilting his mug back for the last sip of beer. “Last time I saw you, you were yelling at Sloane because you couldn’t find your boots. It was pretty intense.”

      “She took a lot of abuse from me.”

      That was something he couldn’t forgive in himself. He’d loved that woman more than life itself, but because she’d always been there she’d become the target for all his pent-up emotions. The anger would build up in him, and Sloane would be the one who took the impact of it.

      “And it kept on getting worse.”

      “Any chance you two could get back together?”

      Carter shook his head. “PTSD is a life sentence. I may learn how to cope with it, even divert it, but there’s never going to be a time when it’s not waiting just below the surface. I can’t take the risk of hurting her more than I already have.”

      “But you feel confident you can take on the part of my practice we’ve discussed? Because I can’t keep an eye on you all the time. Like I told you before, my practice is growing, and I have a family to take care of. You’re like a brother СКАЧАТЬ