Dr. Fake It - A Possessive Doctor Romance

1

Gavin

I don’t normally eavesdrop on patients, but Erica was too interesting to ignore.

She showed up in the ER after a car accident a couple of days ago. The details about the accident were a little shady, which wasn’t too strange since people have trouble recalling trauma, but the way she seemed reluctant to even talk about it bothered me. She said she was driving with her mother, and apparently lost control and slammed into a utility pole—though neglected to mention exactly how she managed that. The mother was in a coma, but Erica walked away with minor injuries. She could’ve checked herself out whenever she wanted, but every time the nurses suggested she go home, she made some excuse to stick around.

I got the feeling that she was afraid of something.

So when two enormous men walked into her room one quiet evening, I couldn’t help but follow them.

They showed up right at the end of the visiting hours. Mercy General was a large hospital, one of the biggest in the Philadelphia region, and the second most popular in the city itself, so it wasn’t unusual for people to come and go. But for the past two days, this specific patient hadn’t seen a single person—and she’d barely let me examine her.

As I gently nudged open her door, I caught a look from Fiona at the nurses’ station. She sighed and rolled her eyes, like I was being a huge pain in her ass, but she always acted that way. Fiona was one of the best nurses in the hospital, and I was the young, hotshot doctor: we got along like cats and dogs. Even though we butt heads, when it came to our patients, we always saw eye to eye. I could tell she was pissed off that I was eavesdropping, but she knew me well enough to realize that I wouldn’t do something like this without a good reason.

At least I hoped so.

The voices inside were muffled but audible. I couldn’t see anything since they had the privacy screen pulled around the bed, but a heated conversation drifted out toward me.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Erica said, and I recognized the desperation in her tone.

“We want only what you owe,” one of the men said. His voice was deep and gravelly, and he sounded like he was talking to a toddler.

“I don’t owe anything. I have nothing to do with this.”

“You know that’s not true.”

Fiona snapped her fingers and glared at me. I waved her away as a patient rolled down the hallway in a wheelchair. It was an old man named Albert that checked himself in with a broken finger—although he couldn’t remember how he’d done it. He didn’t need a wheelchair, but he liked rolling around in it anyway. I pointed at Albert and raised my eyebrows, and Fiona sighed as she got up to corral the batty old geezer.

“Please, you know I had nothing to do with it. My father—he made his own decisions.”

“Your father made a lot of decisions, that’s about right.” I heard one man walk around the bed, his shoes squeaking on the linoleum. “And now, unfortunately, you’re on the hook.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do. We don’t have any money.”

“Figure it out.”

“Please, you guys—”

“You know what my boss wants.” There was a chuckle, low and throaty. “If you don’t have the money, there are other ways to pay up.”

Erica let out a moan—of pain, or maybe surprise, I wasn’t sure. “I’m not going to marry him.”

“Aw, come on. Cosimo’s a good guy. A little rough around the edges, but who isn’t?”

“I don’t know why the hell he wants to marry me. I don’t even know him.”

“Don’t matter. What the boss wants, the boss gets, and you’re on the hook, girly. So take it from me: pay up and be smart. Marry the guy, make him happy, and have a good life.”

A short pause and I did my best to keep my breathing steady. I didn’t understand what I was hearing, but I knew it was messed up—way beyond anything I’d experienced before, and I’d seen a lot of shit in Mercy.

“Tell him no.” Her response was soft, and the fear was obvious.

“Suit yourself. He’ll send us back sooner or later to collect, whether it’s the money you owe, or something else.” Another laugh, and I heard footsteps—and barely had enough time to pull away. I ducked over to the room next door and slipped the chart out of the holder, flipping the pages open to look busy as the two big guys left the room. One of them shot me an odd frown, and I memorized his face: wide, fat nose, too-close eyes, shaved head, thin lips. They disappeared down the hall, back toward the elevators.

I lingered and slipped the chart back into the holder. I tried to process what the hell I’d heard when I spotted Fiona walking toward me. She had long auburn hair, green eyes, full lips, and an attitude that made me want to claw my eyes out. Her dark blue scrubs were accented with bright pink shoes.