When a doctor and a filmmaker reconnect…

Just who is healing whom?

Two years ago, Dr. Wyatt Reid shared an unforgettable goodbye kiss with Mia Fiore. Now a scuba diving accident brings the daredevil documentary filmmaker into his San Francisco ER. Could this be their shot at a real relationship? But Wyatt, haunted by family tragedy, saves lives, and Mia risks hers every day. Can they find the way to a future on both their terms?

I’m an animal lover – I can’t walk into a pet shelter or pet store without wanting to bring home every dog and cat waiting for their forever home. If only I had the land and resources to adopt each one. In the meantime, I’ll keep volunteering at the rescue shelter and praying that every animal in need of a home finds one soon.
What is about our four-legged friends that pull on our heart-strings and become one of the family (and in some cases the most spoiled and adored one in the family)? I can tell you that my dog, Bailey instantly lowers my blood pressure when I walk in the house – from her excited greeting with her wide smile to her happy wagging tail, Bailey wipes away any stress from my day. She’s also become my writing partner. Thanks to our long walks every day I’ve been able to work out plotting problems and character issues and resolve conflicts between my heroes and heroines. Even better, Bailey appreciates all my brilliant ideas and solutions to my book problems and hardly ever criticizes or judges. Even now as I write this blog post, Bailey is curled up on the couch next to me, offering support in exchange for an occasional rub on her back.
I’ve often considered training Bailey to become a therapy dog. Unfortunately, she hasn’t quite out-grown the puppy in her and she’s almost seven. She’s under the impression that everyone she meets is a dog-lover and wants to pet her. In her calm, sweet moments, I think she’d make a perfect therapy dog to visit patients in hospitals and nursing homes-to bring comfort and perhaps make someone feel less alone. In her relaxed moments, she’d make the perfect partner for a grade school child struggling with his reading. Bailey would love to lay down in the library and listen to a child reading to her. (Did I mention she can’t get enough attention?) I believe in the power of therapy dogs to provide lasting emotional support for people in hospitals, nursing homes and disaster zones.
Perhaps that is why therapy dogs make several appearances in my new release, The Doctor’s Recovery. My heroine, Mia Fiore, is admitted to the hospital after a serious scuba diving accident. The therapy dogs visit Mia and other patients on her floor at the hospital more than once. Or perhaps I added the therapy dogs after researching life in the critical care unit and I found an article on a hospital that let family pets into the intensive care unit to visit their sick owners. Touched by the emotional story, I immediately realized I’d want Bailey to curl up beside me if I was sick, scared and stressed in a hospital bed alone. Or perhaps it was the story about the nursing home that arranged for a dying patient to see his horse one last time that reinforced the powerful bond between a person and their pet. Or maybe it was this touching picture from Animal Hearts (@trulyanimalhearts) that inspired the therapy pets in The Doctor’s Recovery.