Dr. Almost: A Pandemic Love Story (Tobin Tribe Book 7) Read online

  Dr. Almost

  Caitlyn Coakley

  Tobin Tribe #7

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dr. Almost (Tobin Tribe, #7)

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 42

  About Dr. Almost

  Beautiful, jet-setting, A-list celebrity Serena Tobin has decided to save the world, or at least a part of it. She’s enrolled in medical school under her full legal name, Rowan S. Cassidy-Tobin, Jr., and has so far managed to keep her alter-ego under wraps. But she’s devastated when a DNA test meant to create an artsy medical family portrait reveals she isn't biologically a Tobin.

  Dr. Jason Akerman is painfully aware of what he is: socially awkward, uncoordinated, and average. Barely average. Not tall. Not muscular. Not handsome. But he also knows he's brilliant and has dedicated himself to practicing medicine. So why in the world would someone like Serena Tobin be interested in him?

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  Other books by Caitlyn Coakley

  The Tobin Tribe Series

  For Pete’s Sake

  Fly Boy

  Lone Wolf

  Doo Wop

  Straight Arrow

  Bulldozer

  Dr. Almost © 2020 Caitlyn Coakley

  Published by Love Knot

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

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  Cover Design by Margo Bond Collins

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  Edited by Margo Bond Collins

  This book is dedicated with love and respect to Margo. Your continued support and friendship mean the world to me. Thanks for saving this book!

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  Special thanks to Janie Crouch for graciously allowing me to use the title Dr. Almost. Read Janie’s book Shadow from her Linear Tactical Series to meet Lyn, the original Dr. Almost. Knowing and working with you, Janie, has made me a better author and a better person.

  CHAPTER 1

  Rowan S. Cassidy-Tobi MD.

  Well, isn’t that par for the course? Rowan Cassidy-Tobin inspected her newly issued name tag. She could count the number of times somebody had gotten the whole thing right the first time on one hand and still have fingers left over.

  You would think by now, some computer whiz somewhere would have figured out a way to accommodate last names with more than twelve characters.

  Apparently not. At least not the computer whizzes who ran the IT department at Christ the Victor–Saint Hugo of the Hills Hospital. Victor Hugo to the locals. Talk about a hyphenated disaster.

  Maybe her name wasn’t so bad after all.

  By the time she’d hit eighth grade, she’d gotten sick of the whole thing and dropped the Cassidy part altogether. But now that she had important paperwork documenting her full, legal name, she was back to dealing with the provision in her parent’s prenuptial agreement mandating all “issue” from their marriage have hyphenated surnames.

  Issue. Like an edition of the newspapers and magazines that had been the Cassidy Empire’s backbone. An empire that had only one heir, her mother. The hyphenated name thing had been the old patriarch’s way of assuring the proud Cassidy name lived on. And now, as an only child herself, that burden fell to Rowan.

  Thanks, Gramps.

  Maybe this time, she should keep the Cassidy and drop the Tobin. It’s not like anyone on that side of the family gave a damn about her. But she had to admit, that was mostly her fault. Hers and her mother’s. And a little bit her father’s. Truthfully, there was plenty of blame to go around.

  But none of that mattered because, as corny as it sounded, today really was the first day of the rest of her life.

  She ran a finger around the edge of the offensive name tag. MD. Pride swelled in her. She’d done it. IQ of a houseplant my ass.

  Technically, she wasn’t an MD yet, but close enough. With the pandemic raging, medical students on the verge of graduating had been pressed into service early.

  No problem. She had never needed much sleep. Working three consecutive twelve-hour shifts punctuated with an eight-hour shift every other week while finishing medical school wouldn’t be any hardship at all. It’s not like she had anything else to do.

  Her ability to not only survive but thrive on three hours of sleep a night had allowed Serena to party until dawn and let Rowan make it to her early morning classes with a clear head. Serena had played the part of the bubble-brained heiress while Rowan had hit the books.

  But it was Rowan’s ability to absorb information, parrot it back verbatim, and retain it practically forever that had helped her sail through medical school under a cloak of anonymity.

  Damn if that didn’t make her sound schizophrenic. But wasn’t she? Wasn’t she really two people? The jet-setting heiress who spent weekends in places like Madrid and Bangkok while spending millions of dollars on whatever caught her eye and the serious medical student with a burning desire to solve the family medical mystery that she alone had escaped.

  As the only female in the family, every doctor had assumed the potentially fatal blood allergy that had killed her uncle Sean and still plagued her father, Uncle Brian, and five male cousins was an abnormality on the Y chromosome.

  It would have been nice if it had been that simple.

  Finding out the real reason she had escaped the family curse still haunted her. Confronting her mother with the discovery had left their relationship in tatters. And then there was Daddy. Rowan tried not to think about him.

  The public and the private. The Jekyll and the Hyde. And so far, no one had been the wiser.

  Serena was dead. Well, not exactly dead. Hibernating might be more accurate. The drunken, slutty, trust fund baby hadn’t been around for a while, much to the dismay of the gossip magazines that had depended on her antics to sell their disgusting rags. Wouldn’t dear old granddad be thrilled to see how his once magni
ficent media empire had degenerated? Score one for the internet.

  Like Santa, every year for the past three seasons Serena had donned her costume, made the cameo appearance necessary to keep the trust fund checks rolling in, then faded into oblivion until next time. But this year, she’d gotten a reprieve from the Christmas extravaganza; it had been canceled due to the highly contagious virus ravaging the planet. Her relief was immeasurable. Chances were slim she’d have the evening free anyway.

  Would Serena’s absence from the social scene catapult her into the realm of illusive curiosities like Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, and UFOs? Would she become this generation’s reclusive millionaire like that old fart, Howard Hughes? Or would she merely become the topic of an occasional “Whatever happened to...?” conversation.

  She didn’t care because Serena was gone, and Rowan had important work to do. Lives to save. Contributions—and amends—to make. And maybe even a family to salvage.

  She slipped into her crisp, new, white lab coat with Dr. Rowan S. Cassidy-Tobi MD neatly embroidered next to the hospital’s stylized cross and caduceus logo. Tobi was marginally better than the Tob or To she’d been forced to endure in the past. Tobi could actually be a real name.

  She clipped the nametag onto the lapel of her lab coat. Oh, who was she kidding? It was just another example of how screwed up her family was.

  She caught her reflection in the mirror on the locker room wall. She’d put on a few pounds. She wasn’t fat by any means, but she no longer had the skeletal look she’d practically killed herself to maintain. She looked pale, but it was November in Philadelphia, and now that the salons were all closed, everyone was pale. And after a class in dermatology, she’d sworn off all forms of tanning. Plus, she wasn’t wearing a drop of makeup. No blood-red lips or fake eyelashes. No elaborate contouring that had taken a makeup artist the better part of an hour to create. Nothing more than a little tinted moisturizer and a bit of lip balm to keep her lips from chapping in the dry winter air.

  She captured a lock of dark-brown hair and tucked it back into the tight bun at the nape of her neck. A far cry from the waist-length, buttery locks Serena had rocked. Oversize glasses covered her serious, pale-gray eyes that had the barest hint of green. Eyes Serena had disguised with whatever colored contacts matched her mood. Or her outfit.

  If she hadn’t known the truth, Rowan would never have believed the reflection staring back at her had anything to do with Serena Tobin. She slipped the N95 mask over her nose and mouth and stared hard into the mirror. Nope, no Serena Tobin here. Only Dr. Almost Rowan Cassidy-Tobi, soon-to-be-MD.

  CHAPTER 2

  “No, man, listen. I know things in the past haven’t exactly worked out the way we’d hoped, but this time, it’s huge.” Jason had to make his friend understand that this time, he really was on the verge of an important breakthrough.

  Like Jonas Salk cures polio important. Like Marie and Pierre Curie isolate radium important. He could practically see himself accepting the Nobel Prize for Medicine. The million dollars in cash that came with it would certainly come in handy. It wouldn’t last long, but it would help.

  “Dude, that’s what you said last time. And the time before that. And the time before that.” His friend was not impressed.

  “You’re right, but the last time you funded my research, I diagnosed your mother-in-law’s rare Asherson’s syndrome and proved to your wife her mother wasn’t a crazy hypochondriac. That has to be worth something.”

  Jason held his breath. He could hear the ball bouncing off the wall through the phone. At least his fraternity brother and previous benefactor was thinking about it.

  “Yeah, you did. And Aubrey and I are very grateful for that, but this damned pandemic is costing us a fortune. Money isn’t flowing the way it used to. Advertising revenue has slowed to a trickle. Knox, Quinn, and I are pouring everything we have into keeping QRK Internet News afloat,” Riley Tobin admitted.

  Jason let out an exasperated breath. “Yeah, my trust funds are way down too.” Like practically non-existent. “The hospital cut my salary. To add insult to injury, they canceled my research trials and assigned me to ICU to treat patients. Infectious diseases might be one of my specialties, but my heart belongs to research. And I can hear your eyes rolling.” Jason didn’t date much. He didn’t date at all. Riley had always ragged on him for being married to the job.

  And he was right.

  “Every damned day, I wonder if my headache is stress, low blood sugar because I haven’t had a chance to eat in more than twelve hours, or the first sign of the plague. Two nurses and a doctor I’ve worked with for years died from this shit last week, and I’m the one who had to call their time of death and extubate them before they were even room temperature because we needed their beds so desperately.”

  “I don’t know how you’re still sane,” Riley sympathized. “Watching helplessly as my brother Quinn flirted with the Grim Reaper about killed all of us.”

  Jason swallowed the lump that formed every time he thought about all the death that surrounded him. “Thanks. But that’s what makes this project so important. I think your blood, all Tobin blood, might be the key to this whole mess. And it might, heavy emphasis on might, lead to a way to treat your medical condition. It could change your whole life. Doo Wop, please.”

  Pulling out the old fraternity nickname was a last-ditch effort. It was playing on loyalty and brotherhood. And was exactly what Riley had done to him the last time he had needed a favor. The weary sigh on the other end of the line gave Jason hope.

  “Night Owl, I can’t do this alone. Not this time. Aubrey’s pregnant again, and Olivia is getting so big...” his voice trailed off.

  “Congratulations on the new addition. I always knew you’d have a houseful of kids someday, and one of them might be a boy. Think of this as giving him a chance at a normal life. The kind of life you couldn’t have.”

  “You’re playing dirty, you rat bastard. Don’t you dare call my mother with that line. You’ll have her selling the company out from under us to save her grandsons.”

  And Mrs. Tobin would undoubtedly do exactly that. Next to his own mother, Debra Clausen-Tobin was the best. “Yeah, that was dirty. I’m sorry, but that’s how important I think this could be.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to the family and see what they think. Send me what you have so we can look it over and decide as a group.”

  “That’s all I can ask.” For the first time in weeks, Dr. Jason Akerman felt like he could take a full breath. “Thank you. I’ll get everything over to you at the end of my shift. I gotta run. I have a new group of...of...huh, I don’t exactly know what to call them. Hell, the newbies I’m expecting haven’t graduated from medical school yet, that’s how desperate we’re getting. But whatever we end up calling them, they won’t be getting their feet wet, they’re getting dumped in the deep end of the pool. And without floaties. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lot of them ran screaming from the building by the end of the week and applied for jobs at Walmart. God knows I’ve wanted to more than once.” But that was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

  “Hang in there, Jase. Doctors like you are the only thing between us mere mortals and the damned virus. I’ll let you know what the family decides, but no matter what, brothers for life.”

  “Brothers for life,” Jason agreed. Regardless of how short that life might be. He punched the disconnect button and slumped back into his chair.

  He wasn’t tall and handsome like Riley and his brothers. Considering himself average might be a tad generous. He’d been christened Night Owl by his fraternity brothers because he did indeed look like an owl, and his freakish ability to function on next to no sleep had him prowling the fraternity house at all hours.

  He couldn’t help his sharp, pointy nose or the way his rusty-red hair naturally parted in the middle and fell around his face making him resemble an Eastern Screech-Owl, but he had to admit his choice of round glasses and full beard accentuated his birdlik
e appearance.

  He’d never cared about how he looked. He was an Akerman, the latest in a long line of healers. He didn’t need what many of his fraternity brothers took for granted. He couldn’t hit a golf ball or sink a basket to save his life. If a woman noticed him at all, it was because she was desperate for his expertise in diagnosing and treating the elusive autoimmune disease other doctors had given up on.

  But he had something much more important: the superior intellect that was going to make a difference. Make the difference between life and death for millions of people.

  Yeah, doctors like him were the only thing standing between the virus and the rest of humanity, but it was the researcher in him, not the physician, that was the real weapon in this battle, and the ammunition he needed to fight that battle was money. Money he didn’t have anymore.

  He stood and paced. Equations and chemical compounds floated through his head almost as if he was watching them parade across the giant flatscreen TV in the massive ballroom-turned-mancave in the antique-filled manor house he’d been raised in. He saw them in vivid colors: shades of green, red, purple, and blue, all falling into place like a giant jigsaw puzzle, forming a kaleidoscope almost too beautiful to be real, but God damn it, it was real. So real he could practically touch it. Every attempt, and subsequent failure, had led him to this. Each miscue had taught him valuable lessons, given him deeper understanding and sharper insight. This was what he had been born to do. What he had trained for.

  But first, he had a flock of lambs to shepherd through their first slaughter. He grabbed his lab coat off the hook behind his door, snatched his tablet from the top of his file cabinet, and took a few deep, slow breaths to mentally prepared himself for whatever waited for him on the other side of his office door before slipping his mask over his face and heading toward ICU.

  CHAPTER 3

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, that was brutal. Rowan wasn’t exactly sure what she had expected, but that wasn’t it. Not even close.