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Prologue
Airlea walked out of the hospital just after midnight. Her shift had ended an hour earlier, but she’d been so caught up helping her latest patient, Anna, she’d been late leaving work. Anna had been in a fire just over a month ago, and seventy percent of her little, eight-year-old body had been badly burned. Her little arms and legs had the telltale signs of scarring, and even though she was still wrapped up tight in bandages, Airlea knew what was underneath them.
Getting the little girl to trust her had been easy, keeping her happy wasn’t. Airlea knew the road ahead for Anna was going to be a difficult one and she knew by the time she got done, Anna wasn’t going to like her. Tonight Anna had gotten her first glimpse at what was ahead of her. Airlea had pushed the little girl until there were big fat tears rolling down her perfect little cheeks.
Being a physical therapist was what Airlea was born to do. She loved helping others heal and recover after something major had knocked them down. She looked at it as a rebirth experience for her patients. Most of them came out the other side a changed person. Almost all came out a better person than they’d been when they’d experienced their setbacks.
She was walking the same roads she’d walked for the last five years of her life. Her tiny apartment was only two blocks from the hospital in Igoumenitsa, Greece. She’d been born and raised just outside of Venice, Italy, but shortly after finishing school, she’d moved to Greece when she’d been offered a full-time position at the hospital here. She’d enjoyed her time ever since arriving.
She had friends and had even had a few relationships, her latest ending a little over a month ago. Angelo Ernesto had been everything Airlea had ever wanted in a man. He’d been caring, patient, kind, very good looking, and a doctor. That was until she’d allowed him to move in with her after they had been dating for six months. Then everything had changed.
It had taken less than a week for her to see the side of himself that he’d been hiding. The jealousy and temper brought on by the smallest things had been the reason she’d asked him to move out less than a month after he’d moved in. Now when she walked by him in the halls of the hospital, she tried to avoid talking to him.
How could something so beautiful be so rotten on the inside? She’d learned a valuable lesson with him. Angelo still called her sometimes, but she’d gotten to the point where she didn’t answer his calls anymore. Every call she did answer would start out with him apologizing, then it would escalate to him raising his voice about why she wouldn’t take him back. She just didn’t want to deal with him anymore.
She’d made it halfway up the stairs outside her apartment before she saw Angelo sitting on the steps. She rolled her eyes; she wasn’t in the mood to deal with him anymore.
“Hi,” he said, standing up and matching her steps to follow her the rest of the way to her apartment door.
“Listen, Angelo, I’m really tired. I’ve just gotten off my shift and I’m heading straight to bed. Can we talk tomorrow, instead?” She hunted in her bag for her keys, not even glancing in his direction.
When she reached her door, he pushed her until her back was up against the hard wood, the door knob thrust painfully against her hip. His hands held her shoulders back.
“Damn it, Airlea, if you never talk to me, how can we make this all better?” He growled.
“Let go of me!” When he didn’t, she dropped her bag and tried to push him back a step. He didn’t budge. “We are not going to work this out. Don’t you get it? I don’t want to work it out. It just didn’t work, move on.”
“I can’t believe you’re being such a bitch about this. You kick me out with some lame-ass excuse and now you won’t even talk to me.” He held her, looking down into her eyes. “If you’d just give me a chance.” He started moving his head towards her, leaning in as if he was coming in for a kiss.
She turned her head away. “Get off me, Angelo. I’ve told you, it’s over. Get off!” She pushed him again, this time catching him off guard a little. He took two steps back and glared at her as she slid her keys in the door and quickly stepped inside, leaving her bag outside her door.
“You think this is over?” he screamed to her closed door. “I have pull at the hospital. Don’t think I won’t use it.” She watched him through her peep-hole as he picked up her bag and walked away. She relaxed against her locked door, very glad that the scene was over. So she’d lost her scrubs and her extra pair of shoes. She knew she could get them back if she just talked to him, but she didn’t want to and the items didn’t really matter.
The next day at work, she was called into the director’s office. As she stood in front of his large metal desk, she kicked herself for the fool she was.
“Miss Rossi, is this your bag?” Mr. Lutz wasn’t one of those ‘hands-on’ kind of directors. He was strict and very old-school. Any explanation she might have given as to how he’d gotten her bag and who had taken it and why, would fall on deaf ears.
“Yes, sir.” She braced herself for whatever was going to come next.
“Can you explain this?” He opened the bag and she watched as a dozen pill bottles fell out. She recognized some of the names on the labels and her mouth fell open. The bottles of medicine had been missing for over a week. Employees of the hospital had received memos all week long about the missing medication.
An hour later she walked out of the hospital, the contents of her locker in a box tucked under her arm, and her dignity lost forever. She assured herself the entire short walk home that she would never trust a man again.