Women in need of a place to call home

This World is not a perfect place sometimes things turn out wrong on the global scales like say a war, global warming, financial crises and the likes, and sometimes life turn real bad on an individual level when someone looses her health, job, family or home. Loosing everything - even a place to call home, somewhere to lay down in safety and sleep, that has to be a really scary thing. 

When you have got nothing left to lose and see no future, no way to get yourself back on track towards a better life, you need a helping hand, and if you have read your fan fiction, you know that someone WILL come along and help you! Never despair! (I know that this is not the case in RL, but lets enjoy the fantasy for just a little while).

If you have been around fan fiction long enough you must have had a run in with a homeless women and her saviour. Several of these fic’s have a soul mate theme - so if that is something you fancy ,please follow me as I go for a ramble through the dark streets of an unknown city looking for a scrappy girl, sleeping on cardboard and stashing her belongings in plastic carrier bags.

Well the first woman I run into are not really scrappy, she is strong and able to fight for herself, but she does need a bit of a helping hand while she waits for her broken leg to heal, and perhaps she also needs a reason to find a way to solve the conflict, that put her out on the streets in the first place. You can look up Q and her “reason” Dr. Taylor Winslow in J. A. Zollicoffer’s “Street Life”, it’s a good read with a mix of romance and drama.

Now lets move downhill a bit. If you favor a mix of drama and romance, and you like the humorous writing style of Larisa, you could look up “Street People”, but do watch out for the traffic or you might get run down by Jocelyn, a social worker who likes to get her hands dirty trying to help homeless people towards a better life. A better and preferable safer life is something that Sammy needs. Living life on the streets of Washington DC is not safe as dirty cops round up street people and make them disappear. Beware nothing is what it seems to be ;-) Everything moves a bit fast in this short story, but  it is ok for a quick read on a lazy afternoon. 

Let’s move along now and see if there are more souls, that needs saving. I think that it’s time we moved out into the “Cold” by Midget, this is where you will find the rich and idle, but do not worry Joanna Holbrook-Sutherland might be the daughter of a Lord and lead what we deem to be a shallow life, but she is persistent when she sets out to find her soul mate - a young vagrant woman she saw in a photograph. And persistence is something that Jo will need if she wants to help Rocky, as Rocky is not really in the mood to be saved, least of all by someone like Jo. The story is an entertaining and well written mix of romance and  drama - even if the soul mate theme is not a favorite of mine. If you want to explore the future of Jo and Rocky look up the sequels “Remember Me” and “Winter Thaw”.

While Rocky was at the bottom of the pit when Jo found her, Grace is hanging on to a scrappy life just above homelessness when she meets Allison, a rich gallery owner who takes an interest in her sketching and commission a portrait. If you do not mind the rater quick and surprising interest Allison takes in Grace you could tag along and see how the painting is going in “Love's Rendition” by Tragedy88. Even if the meeting with Allison could give Grace the chance she needs to get a firmer hold on life, her declining health gets her on a downward spiral that is hard to break if she keeps questioning Allison’s motives for trying to help her - so maybe she should just follow her heart? The story is entertaining enough even if I never really found out why Allison took such an interest in Grace in the first place.

To finish off this list of stories on the topic of women in need of a place to call home, I will just point you in the direction of DS Bauden’s “A Saving Solace” featuring a young woman who has recently pulled herself out of homelessness with a little help from a kind soul - read the review here.

If you are really fond of the theme on homeless women you can look up “Linger” by Minerva it’s different from the stories mentioned above, and it might linger on you mind awhile longer than the easy romances.

Should I have missed out on a good read that fits with the theme above please leave comment.

White Coats, Warm Hands and Wondrous Hearts

White coats come in many tones of colour and in an infinite number of shapes. You can get a brand new white mink coat - if you can afford one that is - or a shabby woollen one. You can put on a navy dress white uniform - if you earned the right to wear one - or you can put on a lab coat. Clothes make people and the lab coat can - almost - make a doctor.

White coats, warm hands and wondrous hearts or doctors, nurses and the romances they inspire - it’s medical dramas with a romantic twist or perhaps romance with a medical twist. Whatever the case if you are obsessed with bodily welfare or think that trauma and the people who fight to preserve life is entertaining you have probably watched a few episodes of a medical drama or perhaps read one of Radclyffe’s medical lesfic’s. You might even have looked up some E.R. or Grey’s Anatomy fan fiction. Have you had your fill ? Or do you need another fix ? If you need some private time with a capable physician you can look through the list of my favourite medical romances in Listmania.

Still not healed ? Ok then you could visit with some of the doctors and nurses that populate the fic’s mentioned below.

“The Healing Touch” series by K. Darblyne features Trauma Fellow Garrett Trivoli and Trauma Nurse Danni Bossard and a whole lot of ER traumas. The series gives us an in depth description of Garrett’s and Danni’s work to save lives in the ER and as a Flight Surgeon’s team going out by helicopter to give medical help at accidents - so if trauma is your thing, go right ahead and follow the links below. Should you look for a little romance I can assure you that even if the godlike doctor Trivoli do find teamwork and friendship a demanding task  Dannie will inspire the her to take a chance and reach out for something beyond her usual safe zone.

The series consists of two stories “The Fellowship” and “Up in the Air” and you’ll have to read both to work through the infinite number of misunderstandings etc. that the ladies have to endure on the road towards a romantic union - this time it’s above and beyond reason! The series is relatively well rated on The Athenaeum - I on the other hand found the romance to be a bit lacking and rather long winded.

If winter, snow and frost are taking its toll in your neck of the woods you might want to go down south to Louisiana and visit with Harry and Desi. It’s the love of a lifetime come true when Desi is brought into the ER with a broken leg after a fierce beating with a bat swung by her husband. Desi’s high school sweetheart Harry will mend her leg and her heart with her loving. Along the way Harry will find time to perform orthopaedic surgery on the old and wealthy - which will more than pay the bills - as well as the less fortunate with a need for a “do-good-doctor”. If you ask me Harry is too good to be true! Which is probably why I did not find the romance really catching.

And while we are on the subject of Ali Vali who penned “How Do You Mend a Broken Heart” and the sequels “All it Took Was You” and “Bell of the Mist” with Harry and Desi, I might as well mention that my favourite Ali Vali romance is “A Place to Dance”. You won’t find any lab coats in that story but you will be treated to a woman with able hands - give her a tool belt and she will craft the most beautiful furniture you can imagine. If you are a romantic at heart you should not miss this story.

Should you want for a little private healing at the hands of a capable ER physician you could venture out on Dupont Circle in Washington and watch out for Q as she exits the subway always on the look out for the neighbourhood tugs who will beat her up given half the chance. This time the tugs get lucky which lands Q in the able hands of Dr. Taylor Winslow at D.C.Metropolitan Hospital who will eventually provide private care for the homeless Q, who in return will show Taylor a bit of drama and a lot of loving. "Street Life" by J.A.Zollicoffer is drama and romance all in one and I found it catching enough to read a second time.

Now do not think that the world of medical fiction is dedicated to doctors alone - after all what would good doctors do without the warm hands of capable nurses to sooth and comfort the patients and their frightened relatives ? “The Heart of the Matter” by Cephalgia is a romance centred around Davey, a little boy with a heart disorder, and his mother Crystal, who lives her life wondering just when their visit to the hospital will be fatal for Davey. Into this little family enters Lauren an ICU nurse who makes Crystal and her son the subject of her master thesis and in the process gains a family.

This story focuses on the patient and relatives rather than the medical personnel and even if it centres on a boy with a servere heart condition the heart of the matter is the romance between the lesbian nurse and her new found - perhaps not so - straight friend. It’s a sweet and well written story.

There is a time and a place where the white lab coats and the doctors who wear them no longer matters. A time when only warm hands, love and understanding gives you the ease of body and mind needed to face the ultimate challenge in life ... to let go. We cannot play around the medic’s without happening on tragedy at some stage and this seems to be as good a time as any to let Dee introduce Isabelle and her nurse Marty, their friendly and loving banter and their fast rolling romance that starts of in a hospital ward and end a too short time later when there is just no more fighting left to do.

You should not read “Isabelle” unless you have hankies close at hand, and you can handle the big C without getting bad dreams. “Isabelle” is just a short story, but it’s touching and very well written - especially in the dialogue that presents a fun and easy banter between the ladies that you do not come across too often. Do not miss this one - it sort of puts all the medical drama and romance in the right perspective.