Her head was throbbing and as she set the water glass on the table and leaned back in the bed, she suddenly remembered a face, a man's face. Rugged and rough-hewn with tanned skin, chiseled features, and thick black eyebrows on a ledge over intense, laser blue eyes.
Her throat tightened at the memory.
There had been something about him that was unnerving and rough; an edge about him that she'd sensed. He'd joked, but hadn't smiled. He'd been in this room and he'd said he was Nick. The outlaw . . . That's what he'd called himself. And there was something about him that had been . . . distrustful or sinister; she'd sensed it even in their brief encounter.
Her pulse pounded. He hadn't been lying. He'd looked like some sort of twenty-first century Jesse James with his leather jacket, tanned complexion and jeans.
But this was crazy. She was a married woman. She had only to look at her left hand to prove it. There, winking under the dimmed lights, wrapped around her third finger was a ring that glimmered with diamonds set deep into a wide gold band. Her wedding ring. Staring at the shiny piece she remembered nothing about the day it was placed on her finger or of the man who had presumably said “I do,” and slipped it over her knuckles.
Think, Marla, think!
Nothing.
Not a clue.
She wanted to scream in frustration.
Looking at the band was not unlike staring into Nick Cahill's eyes. No quicksilver flashback of another time and place, not one glimmer of recollection, no reaction other than a keen sense of curiosity. About the man. About her marriage. About her children. About herself.
“So you did wake up.” A tall man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a white lab coat had pushed open the door and was walking inside. He wore a pencil-thin moustache that set off his thin face. Completely bald with too many teeth crammed into a small mouth, he said, “Do you remember me?” then must've read the dismay in her eyes. “Don't worry about it. Amnesia sometimes follows a coma . . . it should clear up.” His smile was meant to instill confidence. “Just for the record, I'm Dr. Robertson.” He leaned down and shone a penlight into her eyes. “How do you feel?”
“Awful,” she admitted. No reason to sugarcoat it.
“I imagine. Any pain in your jaw?”
“Tons.”
“Your head?” He was eyeing the top of her crown.
“It aches like crazy.”
“We'll get you something for it. Now, tell me about your memory.”
“What memory?” she asked, trying not to wince as he moved his light from her left eye to the right.
“That bad?”
She thought, and even the act of concentrating increased the pressure in her head. “Pretty bad. Saying I was foggy would be optimistic.” She forced the words out through teeth that felt clamped into cement.
He leaned back, clicked off his light and folded his arms over his thin chest. “Tell me about yourself.”
Wow. She thought. Dig deep. “It's . . . it's weird. I know some things, like, oh, I can read, understand, think I'm pretty good at math, but I don't remember taking it. I think I like horses and dogs and the beach and scary movies . . . but . . .” She swallowed the lump forming in her throat, and forced her lips to move around her immobile teeth. “. . . I don't remember my family, not my children, not my parents, not even my husband.” Her voice was failing her and tears filled her eyes and she felt absolutely pathetic, a sorry, needy creature without a past. She tried to grit her teeth but they were already locked shut.
“Just remember, this isn't abnormal,” he said with a comforting glance as he double-checked her vital signs, then tested her reflexes. “Here, now hold on to my fingers and squeeze as hard as you can,” he said, holding up the index finger of each hand. She gripped for all she was worth. “Good, now release.” He made another note on her chart. “As for your memory, it should return. Your brain took quite a shock with the concussion and you've been comatose for a while.” He flashed her a grin. “But everything should come back to you.”
“When?” she demanded, desperate to know that she would be all right.
“Unfortunately, I can't predict that.” He frowned and shook his bald head.
Well, it had better be soon
, she thought,
or I'll go out of my mindâor at least what's left of it.
“I wish I could.”
“You and me both.”
“You'll have to be patient. Give yourself time to recover.”
“Why do I think I'm going to get tired of hearing that?” she asked and he shrugged.
“Maybe you know yourself better than you think.”
“That's the trouble, doctor,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “I don't know myself at all.”
True to her word, the nurse had bustled into Marla's room, given her a quick sponge bath, and straightened the sheets. She'd just breezed out the door when Marla's family arrived en masse. Smiles, hugs, kisses that seemed strained were rained upon her by strangers. All strangers. Marla forced a grin she didn't feel and tried like crazy to remember these people, only to fail. Just as their voices had seemed foreign to her, their faces sparked no memory whatsoever.
“It's so good to see you awake and have you back with us,” her mother-in-law said, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of a handkerchief. A petite woman with apricot-shaded hair and small even teeth, she wore high heels that matched her purse, a gray wool suit, pearl-colored silk blouse and a print scarf in tones of red and gold.
“Thanks.”
Eugenia cleared her throat. “That big old house has been empty without you.”
Marla's heart melted.
Cissy, her daughter, planted an obligatory kiss on her cheek and backed away. She was tall for her age, slender, and dressed from head to toe in black. Her skin was somewhat tanned, sprinkled with a few pimples that her makeup didn't quite hide and her eyes were rimmed in thick, black mascara. “Hi,” she offered up tentatively.
“Hi backatcha.” It was all Marla could do to wrap her lips around the words.
This girl
was her daughter? Why didn't she feel something, have any inkling of a memory of . . . anything? Where was the motherly tug on her heartstringsâthe lightning quick flashes of images of giving birth, or of diapering Cissy as an infant, or recollections of skinned knees, the loss of a baby tooth, or the heartache of watching her daughter suffer from her first adolescent crush? Surely all those events had happened, but Marla had no memory of her life at all. It was almost as if she was dead inside. And it was scary. Scary as hell.
“I knew you'd wake up!” Alex's voice boomed across the room. She turned her head, bracing herself for another blank slate, but as she laid eyes upon her husband, she had a faint sense that she'd seen him beforeâan elusive image that nudged at her brain then scampered back to the dark netherworld that was her memory. “Oh, honey, it's so good to see you again.” Dressed in a navy blue suit and an overcoat that was unbuttoned, the belt ends stuffed in his pockets, he was tall and strapping, with gray eyes and a smile as wide as his jaw. He reached over the bed rail and hugged her fiercely. “I . . . we've . . . we've missed you.” His voice was deep and he smelled of smoke and some kind of musky aftershave. Holding her firmly he planted a soft, fervent kiss upon her cheek.
She felt absolutely nothing for him.
Nothing.
Oh, God, she couldn't be this hollow. This unfeeling. Tears burned in her eyes and blurred her vision. Reaching up, she held him close, wanting desperately to feel some twinge of tenderness, some sense of belonging, of loving him, but she could only hope that, soon, she would remember.
It takes time,
she told herself, but was frustrated at the thought. She wasn't given to patience, Marla realized, and along with a smidgen of gladness for divining something of her personality, decided that it might not be such a good trait.
The phone rang sharply and every one of Alex's muscles tightened. “I told the hospital that you weren't to get any calls,” he said, extricating himself from her and reaching for the receiver. As Cissy sat braced against the air-conditioning unit under the window and Eugenia plucked some dead blossoms from a Christmas cactus, he picked up the receiver.
“Hello . . . Hello? Is anyone there . . . shit!” He slammed the receiver down.
“Was no one there?” Eugenia asked and Marla felt a shiver of dread.
“Wrong number,” Cissy said with a bored expression.
“Not when the calls go through a switchboard.” Alex rubbed his jaw and his eyes darkened thoughtfully as Eugenia stopped plucking the brittle pink blooms. “I'll check on that. Have there been any other calls?”
“No . . . well, not that I remember, but then I don't remember too much.” She offered what she hoped would pass for a smile.
He sighed. “We heard. We talked to Phil . . . your doctor . . . Robertson before we came up to see you. He warned us that you might be amnesic for a while. The good news is that it should be temporary.”
“Should be,” she repeated on a note of sarcasm. “Let's hope.”
“Don't worry about it.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You just concentrate on getting better. Phil thinks you'll be able to come home in a couple of days.”
She thought she'd go out of her mind if she spent another day lying around doing nothing. “No. I want to go home now.”
“Of course you do. But it's impossible.”
“Why?”
“I think he wants to run a couple of routine tests. Your vital signs, that sort of thing. No big deal.”
“A big enough deal to keep me in here,” she snapped.
“You just woke up, honey,” he reminded her.
“But I want to go home,” she repeated. “Now.”
No one said a word. Alex glanced at Eugenia, who had moved from the Christmas cactus to a vase of flowers and was removing the dead roses and dropping them into a small wastebasket near the closet. Cissy suddenly found the parking lot interesting and stared out the window, avoiding eye contact with both her parents.
“Listen, dear,” Eugenia stepped closer to the bed. The woman who had been teary-eyed moments before was suddenly all steel and determination. “When you're better, you'll come home, of course you will, but right now you need to concentrate on getting well.” She touched Marla's hand gently, but her eyes, behind her wire-rimmed glasses, silently commanded her not to say a word, as if there was some secret they all shared, a secret that didn't dare be voiced, here, in the hospital, and Marla felt a new sense of dread.
“Where . . . where's my baby?” Marla asked.
“At home. We couldn't bring him here. The pediatrician's orders,” her mother-in-law said and her gaze softened a bit. “You'll see him as soon as you get home.”
“And when will that be?”
“Soon, honey. When the doctor releases you. He's just as anxious for you to go home as you are to get there. We've known Phil and his wife for years.” Alex's voice was meant to sound kind, but there was an undertone she thought she heard and she wondered if he was placating her; keeping the truth from her. There was something about him that just didn't ring quite true.
Or maybe you're just paranoid!
“We have? Then why did he introduce himself as Dr. Robertson?” she asked, trying not to feel paranoid, but beginning to sense that the entire world was against her. Dear God, maybe she was going crazy. Hadn't she thought she'd sensed someone at her bedside, an evil presence . . . for the love of God, was she losing her mind? Sweat dampened her palms and her nerves were jangled, yet she couldn't stop herself from asking, “Why didn't he call himself Phil? Say something?”
“Who knows? Probably out of a sense of professionalism. He has to keep up a certain sense of decorum. He probably just puts on hisâ” Alex held up his hands, signing air quotes with his first and second fingersâ“ âdoctor face' when he's at the hospital.”
“It's odd, if you ask me.”
“Maybe so, but there it is.”
This was getting her nowhere, and she was tired. Weary. Feeling as if she was running in circles on legs made of lead.
As if sensing her despair, Alex hugged her again. “I know this is confusing and exhausting and you still feel like hell,” he said and again she felt the sting of tears. “But slow down, give yourself time. You're going to be fine,” he whispered into her ear and she wanted to believe him, to trust that. Oh, God, if only he was looking into a crystal ball and foretelling her future rather than offering her platitudes to ease her mind. Swallowing her anxiety, she wrapped her arms around his neck and looked over his shoulder to the doorway. The man she'd seen earlier, the outlaw, stood apart from the rest of the family, his jaw dark with a day's growth of beard, one shoulder propped against the door frame.