Free Heart Conditions (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 3) by Phoebe Fox Page A

experienced the latter will choose the leg—as painful as it is—because we know this truth: that physical wounds heal more easily.
    But it’s only when we realize our happiness rests, at least partially, in someone else’s hands that we truly understand what it is to love them—and to lose them. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose—it’s only by understanding what’s at stake that we can appreciate the glorious risk that love is. And that it is a risk worth taking.
    So be grateful to those who broke your heart. Yes, it hurt. Yes, loving someone deeply means mourning their loss just as deeply. And that’s okay. Like a personal trainer, they have pushed you further than you thought you could go, and in the process they helped make you stronger. And when the next love comes around, thanks to the one that didn’t work out you’ll recognize it. You’ll be ready for it. You’ll be open to it.
    But first you have to let go of the injury, let it heal—and get back in the game.

eight

      
    Come to office. 911.
    The text came in at eight a.m. the next morning, a good half hour before I usually headed to the office area of my house. When I unlocked the door from the back hallway to my waiting room, Intern Paige was standing outside my office door, her ear pressed to it, knocking urgently.
    “I am so sorry,” she said, hastening over to me as I opened the connecting door. “She just pushed past me and went in there and locked the door. I told her you weren’t in yet. I’ve been trying to pick the lock since she went in, but that’s much harder than it looks on TV. I didn’t know what to do.” She was in an unprecedented dither, her hands flying out as she talked and her usual tight twist mussed from where she’d clearly pulled the pins out of it, presumably to try them in the lock.
    “Okay, it’s okay,” I said soothingly. “Who’s in there?”
    “Lisa Albrecht.”
    Ah. Lisa, my editor at the Tropic Times , was never known for her tact or diplomacy. She’d started out as a client—my first as the Breakup Doctor, actually—when her husband, whom she’d supported financially for years, walked out on her and her two sons with no notice. For a much younger woman. Lisa, to say the least, had not handled it well, but lately she seemed to have finally gotten past her hurt and rage. This new explosion of fury couldn’t be good.
    I needed to know just what I was dealing with before I went in there. Lisa was a tough customer on a good day. And technically she was also my boss.
    “Did she say anything when she came in?” I asked Paige.
    She nodded. “Yes. She said, ‘Where’s Brook?’ and when I said you weren’t in the office yet, she said, ‘Then get her in here.’ I asked her to wait while I called you, but she was in your office and slammed the door before I could get out from behind the desk. I’m sorry, Brook. I’m so sorry.” She looked utterly crushed.
    I put a hand on her shoulder, and she froze, blinking up at me like a cornered fox. “It’s not your fault. You did everything right. Lisa is…well, she has her own way of approaching people. Sometimes there’s not much you can do about it.” I didn’t want her beating herself up over Lisa Albrecht’s sense of entitlement, but clearly physical contact was not the way to comfort Paige. I dropped my hand and she visibly relaxed.
    She took a breath and nodded. “I just feel terrible. She’s in so much pain.”
    I stopped halfway to my office door and turned back around. “That’s what’s bothering you? Not that she’s in my office?”
    “Well, yes, I mean, I know that’s bad, and I should have stopped her. But she’s obviously upset and uncomfortable feeling all that pain, and it’s making her react aggressively.”
    I couldn’t help the smile that drew up the corners of my mouth. “You’re going to be a good therapist, Paige.”
    Her bemused expression was the last thing I saw before I turned back around and