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  SUMMARY

  Bobbi Webster wants nothing more than to be the best family practice doctor for her home town in rural Oregon. To accomplish that, she’s enrolled in a two-year fellowship in rural medicine at Valley View Medical Center in Colorado. Sparks fly when Bobbi meets the Reverend Erin O’Rouke, a petite, feisty priest who meddles in the treatment of Bobbi’s patients. To make matters worse, Bobbi wants nothing to do with any religion, much less the woman she dubs, The Elf.

  Erin serves as vicar at a small church where a few parishioners have stipulated that she must be celibate, reflecting their “love the sinner, hate the sin” tactic. After she clashes with Erin, Bobbi recognizes how a recent breakup of an abusive relationship has falsely colored her perception of Erin’s world and work. Likewise, when Erin understands how Bobbi’s emotional wounds make her vulnerable, her natural empathy moves her closer to Bobbi.

  They find themselves drawn to each other, but how can Bobbi and Erin overcome so many obstacles to find love?

  BOBBI AND SOUL

  A VALLEY VIEW ROMANCE

  BOBBI AND SOUL

  A VALLEY VIEW ROMANCE

  JB MARSDEN

  SAPPHIRE BOOKS

  SALINAS, CALIFORNIA

  Bobbi and Soul - A Valley View Romance

  Copyright © 2019 by JB Marsden. All rights reserved.

  ISBN EPUB - 978-1-948232-42-5

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

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without written permission of the publisher.

  Editor - Kaycee Hawn

  Book Design - LJ Reynolds

  Cover Design - Fineline Cover Design

  Sapphire Books Publishing, LLC

  P.O. Box 8142

  Salinas, CA 93912

  www.sapphirebooks.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition – February 2019

  This and other Sapphire Books titles can be found at

  www.sapphirebooks.com

  Dedication

  In memory of my brother, Ronald, R.N., M.S.N., LTC (ret.) US Army Nurse Corps 1943-2008

  Acknowledgments

  No writer ever makes it on her own, least of all me, who needed many hands to midwife the birth of this novel. As usual, the crew at Sapphire Books made this book palatable for your reading. I thank especially my editor, Kaycee Hawn, publisher Chris Svendsen, graphic designer/ book layout LJ Reynolds, and cover designer Fineline Cover Design.

  As I began writing about Dr. Bobbi Webster, I never intended her to have issues with her past relationship, but one day, while drafting the scene at the dinner with Erin, Yancy, Gen and others, she had a reaction to the conversation. It was then that the character “told” me she was a survivor of spouse abuse. I knew not a thing about this issue. So, first, I combed the research resources of the Burlington (Iowa) Public Library to understand spouse abuse and the potential responses of individuals to post-traumatic stress. Serendipity played the next role. I attended a panel on mental health at the Golden Crown Literary Society annual convention. There I met author and panelist, Rae D. Magdon, who offered to look at my material about Bobbi. She gave generously of her time to read Bobbi’s reactions, both physical and emotional, and assisted in making those portions of the text more realistic and accurate, and I thank her profusely for her feedback. Her input gave me courage to continue with Bobbi’s story. Nevertheless, any errors in interpreting Bobbi’s reactions to spouse abuse are mine.

  I took up writing as a fun thing in retirement from my job as an Episcopal priest. While some of my knowledge of the priesthood appears in the work the character Erin accomplishes in her parish, quite a bit of her character’s ramblings on Christianity are totally mine. I love God and know that God loves me unconditionally, and does not make junk. Because so many of my beliefs are spoken in this novel as Erin’s brand of Christianity, I hope you, the reader, realize the very personal nature of my Christianity. I do not claim to speak for other Christians, even though most of my clergy friends would agree with these beliefs.

  Before being ordained to the priesthood, I held faculty positions in health systems organization and policy, focusing on rural health systems, from whence come the Valley View books about the people in a rural medical clinic. This is the second book set in that setting, and hopefully not the last. Some characters from the first novel, Reclaiming Yancy, have drifted into this novel, but the novel stands on its own.

  I appreciate the relationship I have built with my local independent bookstore, Burlington by the Book, and its owner, Chris Murphy: for his support of local writers like me, for selling my books, and for inviting me to his fun activities for authors in our area of the country. I thank my sisters for their continuing support in this crazy idea to write, for being proud of me, and for giving me unconditional love. I am so grateful for my wife and love, Molly, for her steadfast encouragement, her willingness to watch me write into the night, even while worrying about my sleep, and for understanding when I half listen to her as I type away. She gives good feedback on drafts, too.

  Notwithstanding all the above-mentioned education and the treasured relationships that have underpinnned this book about a priest and a doctor, I thank God for the gifts so richly bestowed upon me, and for the desire to write, which has, in surprising ways, drawn other queer people of faith to me.

  Chapter One

  Buzz, buzz, buzz. Bobbi downed the last dregs of her Hefeweizen, savoring the hints of citrus and clove, while trying to ignore the text coming through from the Babcock County Hospital’s emergency department number. Damn, why did they always call her during a date?

  “Sorry,” she murmured to Amanda, an attractive woman who worked as a nurse at the hospital. Bobbi grabbed the phone and took the call. “Be right back.” She winked and grinned at Amanda, then left their table for the door. “Dr. Webster.”

  “Hi, Dr. Webster.” It was the ER nurse manager. “One of your patients just showed up with vomiting, diarrhea, and a fever. We’ve got him on a saline drip, but Dr. Manning is slammed tonight. A big wreck on the highway. Dr. Lambert already came in to help.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty.” Bobbi ended the call, sighed, and looked back at the cute brunette, who sipped her white wine while listening to the guitar guy playing some folk-Americana music here at the microbrewery. Bobbi had heard about this place and had been wanting to come, being a beer lover. Amanda was a fun person whom Bobbi had dated once before. No strings, no expectations, and no flashbacks to Stephanie—Bobbi’s type of night.

  When she made it back to their table, Amanda looked up with a slight frown. “Gotta run?”

  “Sorry.” Bobbi shrugged and slung her coat across her shoulder.

  “I’ll go too.”

  “No. No need.” Bobbi stilled Amanda with a hand on her shoulder.

  “No fun without you here.” Amanda gave her a sexy smile.

  Bobbi’s libido ramped up. Boy, what a waste of a night, she thought. She helped Amanda on with her coat. They had driven separately, because Amanda said she liked her independence. It had proven to be true when she stayed overnight at Bobbi’s last Saturday night. Bobbi smiled ruefully, sure her disappointment showed on her face.

  But she was here in rural Colorado, not to meet up with women, but to get her skills honed in treating rural patients. Her goal was to open her own family medicine practice in her eastern Oregon hometown or join another one close
by. So, breaking a date to take this patient was a no-brainer. Clinics and hospitals were short-staffed out here on the plains, just like home in the high desert of Oregon. Physicians could not be lured easily to places without amenities. Hell, this town didn’t even have a good place to eat that wasn’t fast food or fried food, barring the local diner that had a pretty good mutton stew occasionally. Thank God for this cute microbrewery, even though they’d had to drive to San Sebastian, a thirty-mile trip from Babcock.

  She put her hand on the small of Amanda’s back as they made their way together to the parking lot. Their breaths fogged as soon as they left the warm brewery. “Thanks for coming with me. I appreciate you making the effort, since you’re not a beer lover.” Bobbi pecked Amanda on the lips. “Can we have a rain check?”

  Amanda returned the kiss and deepened it. “Sure thing, cutie.” She chucked Bobbi under the chin and turned to get into her battered Ford Explorer.

  “Drive carefully.” Even though it was five years old, her own four-wheel drive Honda gave her confidence, but Bobbi was a little concerned about Amanda’s older car making it back to town.

  “Been driving these roads all my life. Don’t worry about me,” Amanda said with a small smile, as if she read Bobbi’s concern over her beat-up car. She closed the door, and started the car. Bobbi watched her pull out onto the snow-packed road.

  When Bobbi arrived at the hospital, the ER looked like a small tornado had swept through two patient treatment bays. Used plastic tubing, bloodied gauze, electrical connectors for the EKG, and surgical gloves littered the floor. A blue ER gown with a large rust-colored stain hung out of the linen bin in the corner. Although it was quiet, Bobbi felt a lingering sizzle in the air from the bustle and drama of the minutes before she arrived.

  “Bobbi.” She turned to the right. Dr. Lambert waved her over. “Our little ER got totally filled up tonight. Your patient is in bay four. We’ve stabilized him, but we’ve been taking care of three MVAs. We had to medevac one to Denver, barely hanging on with internal bleeding from her injuries. The other, her boyfriend, just went upstairs to the OR to have a reduction of a compound fracture of the left tibia. Jaime and I are working on the third victim in bay three. An older man who we think had a heart attack and may have sustained other trauma we’re trying to detect right now.”

  Bobbi nodded. “Wow, you have been busy. Thanks for taking care of my patient, Dr. Lambert.” Dr. Gen Lambert, the medical director of Valley View Medical Care and their two clinics, was also her fellowship director, someone she liked very much, so far. She watched Gen go back into bay three and caught the tail end of Dr. Jaime Garcia-Brown, the fellow on call, talking. “…BP stable. Where’s the x-ray?”

  Bobbi passed their bay, walked down the hall, and pushed open the doors to the staff changing room to don scrubs and a lab coat from the hook at her place. Coming out into the hall, she nearly collided with the gurney whisking through the hall with patient number three from the accident. She swerved and plastered herself against the wall while Jaime and a nurse passed her by. At the nurses’ station, she grabbed a tablet from a charging dock, ran her fingerprint ID across the screen, and scrolled to find the vitals on her patient. She then pushed aside the curtain and began her assessment.

  ****

  Arriving back at her condo in a new development on the outskirts of town around three a.m., Bobbi pulled off her boots, shrugged out of the parka, and tossed it onto the couch. Normal routine: dark house, quiet, alone. The electronic thermostat had already shifted to cooler temperatures for nighttime sleeping and she rubbed her arms as she trudged into her small bedroom. Wearily pulling off her faded jeans, wool sweater, plaid shirt, and jog bra, she nabbed chilled pajama pants and long-sleeved T-shirt from a hook on the bathroom door. She pulled them on, immediately feeling the goosebumps on her body. She stretched her back, which had stiffened from being in the cold after standing some amount of time in the ER.

  Feeling frozen to the bone, the instant cocoa warmed her and also helped her come down from the frisson of excitement. As she sipped her cocoa in bed, she flipped through social media on her phone, but decided it was much too late to send a text to Amanda.

  She’d admitted her patient to Babcock, their local small rural hospital, for overnight observation. He reported eating sushi from a gas station a day ago. A gas station! She couldn’t believe someone would buy uncooked fish at a truck stop on a Colorado highway. He was old enough to know better, but he reported drinking beer before stopping at the station on his way home from his job at a local ranch, which Bobbi reckoned fogged his better judgment. He, like many others she’d treated for food borne illnesses, must have thought, “Alcohol will kill anything bad.”

  She treated him for salmonella even though the labs would not be conclusive until Saturday some time. She sighed into her cocoa, wondering at peoples’ thinking process. Or rather, their lack of thinking. Lots of non-thinking activities brought locals to the ER doors, even at small places like Babcock. Weekend nights especially plagued ERs across the country, as drinking and driving, fights, and other traumatic activities brought people for treatment. She wondered how the wreck on the highway had happened, resulting in three injured people, one very seriously, and hoped impaired driving hadn’t been the culprit.

  Amanda had been a trooper about the call interrupting their date. Bobbi was not on call last night, but in rural areas like this, she expected to have to show up even when she was off, certainly because patients stacked up in small local ERs, but also, her fellowship in rural medicine made demands on her learning that she did not want to treat lightly. Dr. Gen Lambert told the rural medicine fellows on their first day, three weeks ago, to expect unscheduled call-ins just like this.

  As far as Bobbi saw at this early stage of her fellowship, Lambert exemplified the work ethic she expected from her rural medicine fellows. She came into the clinic an hour or more before it started and stayed until all the paperwork had been finished and the labs and other tests were reviewed for each patient. Especially, Dr. Lambert did not treat her rural medical trainees like residents, making them do all legwork for laboratory and medical tests.

  More impressive to Bobbi, her boss’s encounters with the other staff, whether doctors, nurses, or techs, were never anything but professional, and all her communications stayed respectful, even in the throes of an emergency. Dr. Lambert dealt with both physicians and other staff equally, regardless of their credentials.

  Most astounding, Bobbi could not remember hearing her gossip about co-workers, a major accomplishment in the clinic’s bubbling cauldron of cliques, stories, whispers, and innuendo. Bobbi hated gossip, especially since she’d been the focus of it during her earlier residency days in rural Oregon.

  She shouldn’t be surprised; Dr. Lambert’s excellent credentials stood out, as the former director of rural training in the family medicine program at Kentucky. She’d been hired to create a training program for rural family medicine here in this well-funded clinic outpost in eastern Colorado. Bobbi wished she knew Dr. Lambert better and hoped she would as her two fellowship years progressed. But she found her hard to get to know so far. While her boss dropped her own work in a second to consult with the resident fellows, she had a professional distance about her. Bobbi knew the doctor was engaged to Yancy Delaney, a prominent local rancher, but she shared no personal information about herself.

  She had briefly met Dr. Lambert’s fiancée, one of the benefactors of the non-profit that owned and operated two rural clinics, when the fellowship started January 2nd. Delaney, as board president, had formally greeted their group of three resident fellows who initiated the very first physician training program for Valley View Medical Center.

  Bobbi smiled, thinking about the handsome board president and sophisticated Dr. Lambert. They seemed like opposites—Lambert, put-together medical authority, with never a hair out of place; Delaney, relaxed in her boots, jeans, and western shirt. Both good looking in their own way. Both crazy smart. Nice
, Bobbi thought, to be around other women leaders.

  Yawning, Bobbi tipped the cocoa cup to drain it, then put it on the nightstand. This fellowship would be just what she needed to continue her training and set up shop in her hometown. She felt proud and very happy to be here in Babcock County, Colorado.

  Chapter Two

  Erin grabbed everything she needed for her Tuesday clergy group—her travel mug full of her own coffee blend, her lectionary text, and her sermon notebook. No one ever arrived on time, so she dawdled along the snowy highway the twenty minutes it took to reach San Sebastian.

  Her clergy group, composed of leaders of the progressive churches in the two counties, provided a small respite from dealing with the everyday issues of her priesthood. She could put aside her worry about the old furnace that made terrible noises during services, or her fears about the health of her favorite parishioner and lay leader, Charlotte Stephens.

  Today, her mind pondered whether her own church, Holy Spirit, could make it another year with a part-time clergy, or whether she would either lose her job or be put on an even smaller part-time salary. They’d just passed a deficit budget, estimated to be five thousand dollars in the hole by the end of the year.

  No church she knew had it easy these days, as Christianity had entered a new phase of its life in the world. Gone were the halcyon days of big congregations and big pledgers. Nowadays, most churches could barely keep their doors open. Several, teetering on the brink of demise in her home diocese of Chicago, had closed in the last ten years. She’d only been ordained five years, but her theology education prepared seminarians to expect to need other sources of income, even another job, because of the diminishing number of full-time clergy positions around the nation, and indeed, in most industrialized countries.