Welcome to Code Blue Hearts (Or: Why I Write Romance Novels About People Too Tired for Romance)
If you’ve found your way here, you’re probably one of three people:
- Someone who works in healthcare and Googled “romance novel where the nurse doesn’t make out with a doctor in a supply closet” (valid)
- My mother (Hi Mom!)
- Someone who accidentally clicked while trying to find actual medical information (this is fiction, please see a real professional)
I’m Cari, and I write romance novels about the people who keep you alive at 3am. The ones who can start an IV in a rolling ambulance, who know seventeen ways to use a tongue depressor that have nothing to do with throats, and who’ve perfected the art of eating, peeing, and having an existential crisis in a single 5-minute break.
After nearly two decades as an EMT, firefighter, and then emergency department nurse, I’ve seen love bloom in the most unlikely places. Between codes. During disasters. In that weird twilight hour when the waiting room finally empties and everyone’s too tired to keep their guards up.
These aren’t stories about doctors who somehow have time for elaborate romantic gestures between surgeries. These are stories about the charge nurse who’s rebuilt her life after divorce while keeping an entire ER running. The paramedic who brings her coffee because he knows she takes it strong enough to wake the dead. The single parents juggling teenagers and twelve-hour shifts. The people who’ve seen humanity at its worst and still choose to believe in love.
They’re tired. They’re cranky. They’ve been called “healthcare heroes” while watching healthcare funding get cut. And somehow, against all odds and despite terrible timing, they’re falling in love.
Because that’s what we do. We find light in the darkness. We laugh at inappropriate times. We take care of each other when the system won’t take care of us.
And sometimes, we even get our happily ever after.
Even if we have to get it between traumas, one stolen moment at a time.
Welcome to our world. The coffee’s terrible, the hours are worse, and love is the one emergency we never trained for.
But we’re really, really good in a crisis.
— Cari
P.S. – All medical scenes have been vetted by professionals. Any errors in the romance scenes are entirely my fault. My husband the ER nurse tried to help, but frankly, his idea of romantic dialogue made everyone sound like they were reading from an H&P.