The Queen of Hearts

Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since medical school. Now both are married mothers with demanding careers in Charlotte, North Carolina: Zadie is a pediatric cardiologist, Emma a trauma surgeon. Their home lives are chaotic but happy.

That balance shifts when Nick Xenokostas, a former colleague, returns. He was chief resident when the two women were students, and in Zadie's third year he was the center of her life, at work and beyond it. A tragic chain of events followed, and she has long considered it behind her. Back then, both women fell in love with the same man, and the friendship came close to breaking.

Nick arrives while Zadie is facing a new professional crisis. His presence pushes both women to look again at the hard choices they made at the start of their careers, and at two tragedies that nearly ended those careers.

As the past comes up, it becomes clear that Emma knew more about those events than she ever told. Zadie starts to doubt what she believed about her closest friend.

This is contemporary women's fiction with a medical setting, built around hospital rounds and life-or-death decisions. The tone mixes humor and warmth with weightier questions of trust and forgiveness.