“Okay.” The little boy looked from his mom to Jake, the new toy clutched to his chest. “Bye, Jake.”
“See you soon, buddy.” Jake thumped his hand on the side of the car, then moved away as the firemen brought in the heavy equipment.
* * *
Moose!
Dr. Molly Flynn slammed on the brakes of her rented burgundy Range Rover and veered to the berm of this oddly deserted stretch of roadway. Well, deserted except for her and the behemoth creature standing twenty feet ahead. She shifted into “Park,” then met the animal’s startled gaze while fiddling with the onboard GPS once more.
Still nothing.
Molly shook her head and snorted.
“Go to Alaska,” her executive producers had said last week. “A high-profile sports case is the best way to raise the ratings.”
Normally she would’ve told them that her soon-to-expire contract clearly stipulated she got final say on all cases portrayed on her reality medical drama, Diagnosis Critical. But, considering she was on thin enough ice with the MedStar cable network, those ratings might be the only thing saving her career. And her career was all she had these days.
Besides, she’d earned this show, darn it. Built it from the ground up without any support from her father or her family. Now she’d do whatever was necessary to save it—even if it meant traveling to Anchorage, Alaska, a place that was a far cry from the hustle and bustle of Chicago.
She took a deep breath and stared at the lush forest around her. Maybe the middle of nowhere wasn’t such a bad place to be after all. It might allow her a chance to escape the spotlight for a while.
Strange as it sounded, for a person who made her living in front of the camera, she’d always seen fame as a necessary evil. Curing the incurable, solving the unsolvable medical puzzles—that was her true love, the real driving force behind why she did what she did. In fact, the thought of being able to melt into the woodwork as she saved her latest patient sounded like pure bliss, if highly unlikely. Her network’s syndication deals ensured that her show reached nearly every corner of the globe.
So much for privacy and anonymity.
Molly frowned at the digital clock on her dashboard. She’d been scheduled to meet with the chief of staff at Anchorage Mercy General Hospital twenty minutes ago, but her late-arriving flight, followed by the rental car’s faulty GPS, seemed to have other ideas.
Add in the fact that the sun was setting over Cook Inlet, which was the opposite of where it had been when she’d left Ted Stevens International Airport at least an hour prior, gave her the sinking feeling she’d been driving in circles.
Overhead, an eagle swooped through the air, its low cries eerily haunting in the autumn evening. Despite her conundrum, Molly had to admit Alaska was lovely. Too bad she wouldn’t have time to appreciate much of the gorgeous scenery, given her tight production schedule and the seriousness of her patient’s case. Work came first, as always.
The male moose huffed and shook his mighty antlers before ambling into the forest on the opposite side of the four-lane road. Molly stared wistfully at the spot where he’d disappeared into the thick foliage, wishing she could find where she belonged so easily. Then her pragmatic instincts kicked back in and she focused on her current mission—find the hospital, locate her crew, save her patient.
Determined, Molly pulled back out onto the road and continued around a slight curve—only to slam on her brakes again. Now she could see why oncoming traffic had been virtually nonexistent. Judging by the array of emergency vehicles blocking all four lanes, there had been an accident.
As a licensed physician, it was her duty to assist when needed. Critics of her show always complained that she had the bedside manner of dry toast, but her real skill was as a diagnostician. And when she was working on a case everything else fell by the wayside—friends, family, romantic relationships. She’d sacrificed everything for her patients, and success was her reward.
A twinge of loneliness pinched her chest before she shoved it aside. The last thing Molly needed was a relationship. Especially since her last one had ended without warning. She parked on the berm, cut the engine, then blinked back the unexpected sting of tears as she walked around to the rear of the SUV.
Yes, maybe she did sometimes wish she had someone to share her life with. But, as her father had always said when she was a child, “Wishes are for fools. People like us seize what they want.”
Trouble was, Molly had never felt like her father’s kind of people. Or her mother’s, for that matter. In fact there wasn’t really a single member of her family, parents or sister, that she truly identified with. So she’d learned early on to live inside herself and bide her time. Now, though, it seemed she’d gotten so good at keeping her emotions bottled up she couldn’t seem to show them at all—not even with the people she should. People like Brian.
She shook off thoughts of her ex and rummaged through the car for her emergency first aid kit. The pungent smell of spruce, mixed with a faint hint of fish and salt from the inlet, snapped her to attention.
Dressed comfortably for the nearly seven-hour flight from Chicago to Alaska, Molly didn’t pay much attention to her appearance—jeans, sneakers and one of her favorite T-shirts that read, “Back Up. I’m going to try Science”—as she approached the nearby officer guarding the perimeter of the scene.
“Dr. Molly Flynn.” She drew herself up to her full five-foot-four-inch height and held out her hand to the middle-aged guy. “Looks like there’s an accident ahead. Do they require assistance?”
The cop looked her up and down, his expression dubious. “What are you, twelve?”
“Twenty-seven, actually, thanks for asking.”
Molly adjusted her bag, undeterred. She’d put up with plenty of crap through the years because of her gifts. She’d graduated medical school at the ripe old age of twenty-four, with dual specialties in Immunology and Internal Medicine, but nothing made a girl feel less welcome and confident than having no friends and no one to sit with at the lunch table.
“Do I have to show my physician’s license or are you going to point me toward the scene, Officer...?”
“Bentz.” He sniffed and looked away. “The EMTs arrived a little while ago. Pretty sure they’ve got it under control.”
“I see.”
The man was dismissing her, but she was used to that too. Her mother had always been present, but aloof, and when her father had been home from performing amazing feats of surgical genius all over the world he’d only wanted to parade Molly around like some prize show pony instead of treating her like his beloved child.
“Molly, solve this impossible equation.”
“Molly, impress my friends with another feat of mental acrobatics.”
“Molly, earn my love by always doing what you’re told, always being perfect, always performing, no matter what.”
Her cell phone buzzed and Molly pulled it from her pocket, hoping for an update from her crew. Instead, all she found was the same dumb message that had been on her screen since before takeoff from O’Hare.
