Free The Cowboy's Redemption: BWWM Billionaire Western Romance by Christin Jensen Page A

serious… more disheartening.
    Everyone lies.
    “I NEED A CRASH CART NOW!”
    He wasn’t any different.
    “20 CCs of Epinephrine now!”
    He hadn’t told anyone about a serious blood condition—because in a way he hadn’t been aware of it. He knew it was an issue in his family, but he believed himself to be incapable of contracting it. Which was not how genetics worked, and for a guy who enjoyed the happier things in life… Melinda had never considered it was because he preferred blissful ignorance over the truth.
    “He’s crashing—we need to defibrilate now!”
    “We can’t do that, the damage to his heart could kill him!”
    “If we don’t bring him back, we’ll lose him!”
    “CLEAR!”
    It had been too late. It took seven minutes to transfer him to the emergency ward… seven minutes in which Melinda had to launch into Eddie’s cot and begin administering CPR because his heart had already stopped. Blood slipped between her fingers, staining beneath her fingernails. Despite how hard she counted, how hard she insisted that they were going to safe him… it had been too late.
    At 8:54 pm… Edward Andersen died of heart failure…
    And that color on her canvas faded… faded to a background that Melinda couldn’t quite stomach anymore. So, she stopped bothering to paint with those colors anymore. Eventually, days just blended together until there was nothing left but gray upon hue of gray on her daily canvas.
    Eddie’s death had been unexpectedly hard on Melinda. Probably not just because she had been emotionally involved with a patient, but because he had been her very first failed case in eight long years as a great doctor. Well… officially speaking anyway. She had been involved in failed cases before, which doctor hadn’t? But, none had been when she had been directly managing the case.
    Meeting with the board of the Hospital immediately after hadn’t helped much of anything aside from seal what emotions Melinda had into a dark space in her heart.
    “Doctor Resano.”
    If you were to talk to any other doctor in the world…
    “Were you, in any way, emotionally involved with the patient?”
    They would tell you the same thing.
    “No.”
    After you lose a patient, you’re allowed to grieve.
    “And yet, other residents have mentioned that you had dated the patient previously to the situation. Even more alarmingly, that you had requested to be made head doctor of his case after his situation worsened, is this correct?”
    That, you should never let the loss carry into your work. You find a way to deal with it; be it with counseling or any other method that didn’t hinder your ability to perform.
    “Yes, we have gone on dates prior to his admission. But, I didn’t know him well enough to be emotionally compromised.”
    Everybody lies.
    “I acted as objectively as anyone else would have.”
    It’s all just far easier said than done.
    “And yet you were seen crying over the patient’s body as you administered CPR.”
    “My ability to be emotionally affected over losing a patient does not make me any less of a good doctor.”
    In the long run, Melinda could have done anything else. Counseling had always been available to her, sympathy was never short from her fellow residents and many of her fellow doctors had nothing to say to her aside from comforting gazes, pats on a shoulder, and a look that said carry on.
    Melinda did carry on. She just left all her emotions behind. If there was one thing she knew she could never allow, was making the same mistake twice.
    Doctor Melinda “Reese” Resano, one of Mountain View General’s brightest young minds, had become one of its most ruthless and dedicated of doctors. Cases that came in under her care had a high rate of success… and the few that failed? Melinda would file in her reports, answer in every case meeting, and she would carry on.
    She never looked back after that.
    And so when a new admission came in, with the face like it had been carved