Read Online Prodigal Son by Danielle Steel - Free Book Online Page B

office with his father. He always said it was what he had always hoped for. Dr. Pat, his father, had quickly observed Michael’s talent with the elderly, and had passed on all his geriatric patients to him. They all adored young Dr. Mike even more than his father. He had a compassionate nature and made the transition into the next world easier for them, and their loved ones. Everyone felt safer with Dr. Mike around. Not only did he live by his Hippocratic oath to do no harm, he did more good than any doctor they had ever known, even his father, who had gotten a little cantankerous and less patient as he got old. Michael was infinitely patient, endlessly caring, a skilled doctor, and beloved by all.
    Michael pulled into his driveway just after eight o’clock. He was living in the home that had been his parents’, and had moved into it fifteen years before, when his mother died, and she left it to him. It was a big, rambling old house, and had been wonderful for him andMaggie and their children. Bill had been seven when they moved in, and Lisa a year old.
    Michael had married Maggie twenty-three years before. They had known each other growing up, though he hadn’t paid much attention to her, she’d been closer to Peter. But a skating accident she had at twenty brought them together. She had been in a coma for several months. He’d been in medical school then, and once she began to recover, he had visited her whenever he came home. He evidenced deep concern for her and surprised everyone when he married her a year later, despite her fragile health. It contributed even further to people’s high opinion of him, and still did. After her accident, Maggie had been an invalid for all of their married life. Michael had kept her alive, and they were grateful to have been blessed with two children.
    A third baby had been conceived two years after Lisa, their second-born, but Maggie was so frail by then that Michael had insisted that she have a medically recommended abortion. They had two healthy children, miraculously, and he told her he didn’t want to lose the wife he adored to a third. He was certain she wasn’t strong enough to carry another child to term. And she had been heartbroken, but agreed. She trusted Michael implicitly with her medical treatment. She had total faith that he always knew what was best for her. When their children had been born, he had cared for her during her pregnancies, and only brought an obstetrician in to assist at the delivery. He didn’t trust anyone with her care except himself. She knew that no one loved her as he did, or knew her as well.
    Michael had kept her alive despite the catastrophic effects of her accident. Maggie was only twenty then, and a talented ice skater. Shehad been skating with friends on the pond when a piece of bark frozen in the ice had caught the picks on her figure skates. She had gone flying, and landed backward on her head. She had fractured her skull, and seeing her unconscious on the ice, everyone thought she was dead. She was airlifted to Boston, and lay in a coma for five months. She had surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain, and the doctors had been unable to predict how severe the consequences would be if she survived. Her parents had been overwhelmed with gratitude when she came out of the coma. She was their only child, and they doted on her.
    Her mother had nursed her back to health, and worked hard on her rehabilitation with her. Maggie had been unable to walk at first, and eventually therapists got her walking again, although unsteadily, and stiff legged on one side. Although young and beautiful, she walked like someone who had had a stroke, but she was back on her feet. Her dream had been to walk and dance and wear high heels again, but that was not to be. She was able to walk, but never steadily, and frequently her bad leg gave out. She was good humored and brave about it, but frustrated that she was never able to progress further than that.
    And