Heal Me Anyway

From the back cover

In the small town of Brindle Cove, everyone once trusted Dr. Nalini Mensah. Then Shubham Rao's mother, Meera, died while giving birth under her care. Shubham was seventeen. He had no one else to blame, so he blamed the doctor. He shouted at her in the street, told the whole town she had failed his mother, and even took the case to the police. Dr. Nalini was cleared, but patients stopped coming, and the clinic that fed her family nearly closed.

Her daughter Aya, now twenty-two, learned to live quietly. She works long hours at the clinic and the town pharmacy, never tells anyone how bad things are, and never asks for help. Years ago, she tried once to calm Shubham down and tell him that anger wouldn't bring his mother back. He sent her away. Since the town was now sneering at her too, she decided it wasn't her job to care about a boy who was hurting her family, and she stopped trying.

Shubham, now twenty-three, runs his family's shop with his silent, grieving father. He has noticed that Aya no longer looks at him, and the silence bothers him more than her pleading ever did. Slowly he starts to wonder if he was wrong, but his pride won't let him say it. When he finally tries to talk to her, she cuts him off: "Do you want to call me the daughter of a bad doctor, or the daughter of the one who killed your mother? I'm not interested."

Then life pushes them together. Shubham's father falls ill and the town clinic is the only place nearby, and Aya is the one who has to help. Through small, awkward moments, they start to see each other clearly. He sees the girl who has been carrying her family alone. She sees a boy who never got to finish grieving. Anger turns into curiosity, then care, then love.

But Dr. Nalini will not allow it. She is hiding something about the night Meera died, and she knows the truth will break Shubham all over again. When Aya finds her mother's private notes, the secret comes out: Meera had been warned to go to the city hospital, and she refused, because she wanted her baby born in the town she loved. Dr. Nalini stayed silent for years to protect Meera's husband and son from that pain.

Shubham is shattered, and in his first instinct he pulls away from Aya again. This time, though, he has learned what pride costs. He clears Dr. Nalini's name in front of the whole town, and it is Aya who has to decide whether love can start from a place this broken.