Alicias heart a billionaire story

Nathan's POV

"Hello there, Mr. Peters ." I smiled brightly as one of my favorite patients entered my consult. "How are you feeling today?"

"Oh, not so good," he shot back quickly. "I've had this cough for three weeks, my throat hurts like hell, and it's affecting my bad back."

I only half listened as he rattled off his list of symptoms, knowing it wouldn't be anything serious. Mr. Peters had a great personality, and as a person, I got along with him, but as he descended further and further into old age, he started to develop that hypochondria many people seemed to get.

I was convinced it wasn't even about seeing the doctor, not really. I felt like a lot of it was the social aspect of hanging around in the waiting room. I almost wanted to create some kind of club for them all, anywhere but the hospital, just to give me the time I needed to see people who really needed me.

"Okay, well, let me just do some checks. Why don't you tell me how your writing is going while I take your blood pressure and run an ECG?"

I set about to work as he told me all about the book he was working on, the one he was certain would be the next bestseller. I made agreeable noises wherever needed, but I didn't have to fully listen because he'd told me about it a million times before.

"Of course, if I'd won the lottery last night, I wouldn't need to be fussing about with this book now, would I?"

I laughed along, but the thought of that sort of cash really tugged at my heartstrings. I always brought a ticket with the hope of being able to sort out my finances, but so far, I'd had no luck.

I didn't harbor dreams of a jobless future with endless luxuries at my disposal. I didn't think about holidays and mansions and God knows what else. All I wanted to do was to pay off my debts because they were dragging me down. They felt endless, like they would be with me for the rest of my life, and I really wanted to shake them off.

They had started in medical school because I'd had to fund a lot of it with credit. My parents didn't have a lot of money themselves, and I didn't want to pressure them and leave them in debt because of my damn dream. So, I told them I would work through college to fund myself, and that was what I thought I would do.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out like that.

I tried, I did, but it just wasn't possible. I had too much course work, too many hours in placement, and I had stop and get a loan instead – a massive loan no one knew about but me.

I thought that all would be okay when I became a fully-qualified doctor. I was under the illusion that I would be making plenty of money and that I'd be able to easily put all my problems behind me, but again, my thoughts were wrong.