The first book of my new Healing Hearts series, will be released today.
This
book is dear to me because of its medical theme. Many of my
compatriots, from all walks of the nursing profession, have similar
histories of failed marriages or dysfunctional pairings.
I've
given this a lot of thought over the years (having been there myself)
and I think part of the cause for those broken relationships is the very
reason we became nurses in the first place. We want to help people. We
want to make things better. We look at those wonderful but flawed men
who attract us like moths to a flame and just know that with enough love
and understanding we can erase those flaws--or at least minimize them.
Naturally
it's much easier to see the flaws in our partners than those in
ourselves. I mean, theirs are always much worse than ours, right?
I
once read--don't ask me where, it was too long ago--that men marry
women expecting they will never change and women marry men expecting
that they will. Both inevitably are disappointed.
Don't
misunderstand me. I don't think it is the nurse who has no flaws and is
always the heroic figure in any partnership. While he or she may be
staying in what would be seen from the outside as an intolerable
situation, they may be acting as an enabler and instead of helping their
situation, they reinforce the very behavior they'd like to banish.
Of
course there are lots of happy, healthy marriages in the medical field,
and I salute those couples for the effort it took both partners to do
the work and gain enough understanding of their mates to form a lasting
bond.
For the rest of us, though...
Patients, especially
those destined for a long hospital stay, have an easy 'in' to our hearts
as care-givers. After all this is what we trained for, right? Hopefully
we can fix them. Heal them. Send them back into the world all shiny and
new. Of course it doesn't always work out that way, but that is the
goal we strive for from the very first instant they become our patient.
If
it turns out they have more than a simply grateful appreciation for our
efforts, the professional distance we are expected to maintain becomes
more difficult to achieve. And let's face it, if the patient is a male
who's hotter than hell, and who pleads for continued visits, keeping
that distance becomes an heroic struggle.
But I digress.
This
book is about a woman who didn't get the chance to make her marriage
work, although it's doubtful that more time might have made any
difference. Initially Gwen sees herself as the cause of her marriage's
catastrophic failure and so decides she's better off single. She resists
her best friend's persistent attempts to push her back into the social
scene and pours all her pent-up affection on the small menagerie she has
somehow accumulated. But her resolve weakens when fate literally
thrusts an attractive man into her path.
Thus, Nick becomes her patient following his serious auto accident.
Nick
and Gwen both have trust issues burned into their hearts by former
partners. Initially they are both wary, but their attraction continues
to grow. Eventually Gwen succumbs to Nick's allure then finds out it is
easy to fall for a man's charms but much more difficult to trust his
motives.
Once discharged from the rehab facility, Nick is
challenged to find a way to spend time with Gwen and replace his patient
persona with a much more intimate one. Unfortunately his plan,
developed on the spur of the moment, involves some subterfuge.
So
the question for Gwen becomes: can caring for, wanting, and even loving
a man be enough to bet your future on? Or is trust the key ingredient
to a happy marriage?
What's your opinion?
Karen Ann Dell
@K_A_Dell
In the interest of avoiding all possibility of a HIPPA violation, I
write under a pen name and all characters in my works are completely
fictional.
--Not that I haven't used a character trait or two compiled from my thirty-plus years in the medical arena... ;)
Click here to read more about Rehab for the Heart
Karen Ann Dell
http://karenanndell.com/
(this post originally posted on http://karenanndell.com/)
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