“She got the boy out,” Mo continued, his voice strained as he struggled with another wave of emotion. “Only it was pretty shaky where they’d been working and...” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “They couldn’t get to her in time, and the whole place came down on top of her.”
“No,” Coop gasped, feeling the floor beneath his feet begin to sway. He touched the wall for support. “God, no.”
“It took almost two days of digging, but they finally managed to reach her. She was unconscious by that time, and remained in a coma for four more days.” He stopped to collect himself again, rubbing his tired eyes. “I have to tell you, Coop, those were the longest six days of my life. I don’t know which was worse—knowing she was under all that rubble or seeing her lying unconscious.” He wiped at the moisture in his eyes. “But thank the Lord it’s over. She’s out of the coma, and the doctors say she’s going to be fine.”
“Can...can I see her?” Coop asked, hoping he had the courage to see her in a hospital bed again.
“Yes, of course, but... we should talk first. There’s something else—”
“Coop!”
Coop and Mo looked up as Kelsey’s brothers and sisters came rushing toward them. There was a blur of regards and introductions and a two-year gap to fill in. Everyone seemed to talk at once—new spouses, new children—and it all was peppered with a flurry of hugs and tears and cries of comfort.
Coop greeted the people who had once been his family with genuine affection. Having grown up an only child, he had envied Kelsey her siblings, and in the four years they’d been married, he’d come to think of them as his family, too. He’d missed them since the divorce—the closeness, the caring. He hadn’t realized how much until this moment.
Still, his joy in being reunited was marred by the reason for it. The thought of Kelsey hurt, in a hospital bed, gnawed at him. He wanted to go to her, needed to see for himself that she was all right.
As soon as he was able, he pulled Mo to one side. “I want to see her, Mo,” he said in a low voice. “I want to see her now.”
“First we need to talk.”
“We can talk later,” Coop insisted, heading in the direction of the elevators.
“No,” Mo said firmly, stopping him with a hand on his arm. “We have to talk now.” He led Coop to a quiet spot away from the others. “There’s something you have to know before you see her.”
“What is it?” Coop asked uneasily, the hair at the nape of his neck starting to prick. “Mo, what is it? What haven’t you told me?”
Mo drew in a deep breath. “The doctors say she has a type of amnesia—”
“What?” Coop felt the blood draining from his face. “What are you saying?”
“They say it was the head injuries, but they can’t be sure. It could be the effects of the coma, too. There are things she can’t remember—things about her life.”
Coop could barely hear through the ringing in his ears. “Kelsey doesn’t know who she is?”
“Not exactly.”
Coop glared at him. “Then what, exactly?”
“There are only certain things she’s forgotten. She knows me and her family. She remembers she’s a nurse, that she worked in a hospital.”
“That doesn’t sound like amnesia to me.”
“No, I know, but that’s what the doctors are calling it. She hasn’t forgotten everything—just some things.”
“What things, Mo?” Had she forgotten him, forgotten what they once had shared? “What doesn’t she remember?”
Mo’s shoulders drooped as he looked up into Coop’s blue eyes. “The divorce. She thinks you’re still married.”
Kelsey took a deep breath and tried again, pushing against the mattress with as much strength as she could muster. She might as well have been tied down with a grappling hook, for all the good it did. She hadn’t moved an inch. The cast on her leg felt more like a block of cement than a state-of-the-art, formfitting vinyl mold, and all she’d succeeded in doing was exhausting herself.
With a sigh, she fell back against the pillows. She hated the weakness that robbed her of her strength, hated being flat on her back and relying on others to get her what she wanted—and what she wanted right now was to sit up, not propped against a bunch of pillows and an electronically aided mattress like a rag doll with no will of her own.
Except she was a rag doll, lying there staring at the ceiling and lacking the energy to even feel frustrated. A heavy wave of fatigue washed over her—an insidious, repugnant fatigue that drained her of strength the way a vampire drained his victims of blood. Weariness moved through her system, permeating every inch of tissue, muscle, blood, bone, causing her eyelids to droop for want of sleep.
Except she didn’t want to sleep—not yet, anyway. She didn’t want to drift into that dark abyss where her dreams took her, that place where sounds and images dazed and confused her and where the things she couldn’t see frightened her far more than those she could.
She brought a weak hand to her eyes and rubbed her heavy lids. Maybe if she gave in for a while, just closed her eyes and rested for a few moments, she’d have enough strength to try again, to sit up and act like a normal person. The last thing she wanted Coop to see when he walked through that door was a helpless woman.
Coop. How she wished he would come. She believed the doctors when they said she was going to be all right, believed everyone who had been telling her that since the moment she had come out of the coma. As a nurse, she’d seen cases like her own before—knew that with a little rest, a little time, her brain would heal, the fog would lift and her life would be back to normal again. She would just believe it a little more if she heard Coop say it.
Letting her eyes drift closed, she drew in a shaky breath. She thought of Coop, imagining his handsome smile and deep blue eyes. Only he wouldn’t be smiling when he walked through that door. He’d be worried. She’d never been sick before, had never been the patient. It was going to bother him to see her like this. It bothered her, too.
Coop wouldn’t want her to see that he was worried. He would mask his concern by teasing and joking. He would find a way to make her laugh. And while she might be the nurse of the family, she knew he would insist on taking care of her, making them both feel better.
The slight sting of tears burned her eyes, and she quickly blinked it away. Where was this urge to cry coming from? Did it have something to do with her injuries? Was it something that would go away? She never cried, never, and yet it seemed she’d been on the verge of tears since she’d awakened from the coma. She didn’t want Coop to see her all weepy and weak, or he really would think something was wrong.
“Coop, where are you?” she mumbled into the darkness. “Why aren’t you here?”
Her voice sounded faint and helpless in her ears, and she hated the weakness in her that made her too tired to care. If only Coop was there, she’d feel better. She wouldn’t have to explain things to him, wouldn’t have to put up a brave front or try to put her feelings into words. He would understand how frightened she was, understand how awful it made her feel.
She turned her head, looking at the small clock on the stand beside the bed. Eight-fifteen. Visiting hours would be over soon—not that anything like that would stop Coop. When he got there, he’d find her, one way or another. It didn’t matter how far he had to travel, or what time of day it was, Coop would find a way to get there. It was the thing she loved about him most—his tenacity, his determination. Coop was a man who would let nothing stop him from getting what he wanted, and she would forever be grateful he wanted her.
The drowsiness was becoming critical, and she felt the dreamy darkness beckoning to her. She hated the black holes in her memory, hated the fact that there were things in her life she no longer remembered—but she remembered Coop, and the love they shared, and that was all that was important. That was all she needed.
“I...I don’t get it.” Coop stared at the doctor sitting on the opposite side of the wide
mahogany desk and shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Dr. Mannie Cohen closed the chart and slipped it onto the stack on the desk. “You’re right, it doesn’t. Head injuries and brain trauma aren’t easy things to understand.”
Coop leaned forward in his chair. “I thought when someone had amnesia they forgot everything.”
“Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t,” the doctor admitted. “These things don’t follow a set pattern.”
“What kind of damn answer is that?” Coop demanded. He was furious, and he wasn’t sure where to direct it. He rose off his chair and leaned across the desk toward the doctor. “I thought you were supposed to be some sort of specialist. I thought you were supposed to know about this stuff.”
“Look, Mr. Reed, there’s nothing more I’d like to do than be able to answer all your questions, but the fact is I can’t—no one can. I’m trying to be honest with you.” He spoke in a calm voice, unfazed by Coop’s anger. He understood the anger and the frustration, had experienced the same things himself. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “I can tell you about the research being done, about advances that have been made. I can cite statistical projections and percentages on rates of recovery and long-term prognosis. But the fact is, when it comes to these kinds of injuries, we’re basically feeling our way in the dark. Each one is different, unique. It’s impossible to say what’s normal and what isn’t.”
Coop pushed himself away from the desk and walked to the window. He stared across the dark parking lot, having a hard time believing what he was hearing. “So in other words what you’re saying is Kelsey remembers everything about her life except that our marriage ended?”
“Well, it’s not quite as simple as that,” Dr. Cohen replied. He rose and walked to the coat stand by the door. He slipped off his white hospital-issue coat, tossed it over a hook and reached for a comfortable and well-worn tweed jacket. “In talking with Mo and the rest of her family, there appears to be a number of breaks in your wife’s—”
“Ex-wife,” Coop pointed out in a flat voice. He’d had two years, but he still found it hard to say.
“Right, sorry, ex-wife,” Mannie conceded, slipping an arm into his jacket. “As I was saying, there seem to be other gaps in your ex-wife’s memory, as well. Obviously the most significant is that particular segment dealing with the divorce. She has no recollection of it. There are some things that have occurred since the divorce she is aware of—even though there are some holes. For example, she doesn’t remember moving to Santa Ynez or working here at the hospital, yet she knew me—knew my name, knew who I was, knew others on staff. She knows she’s a nurse, but she doesn’t remember working, doesn’t remember having a job. She doesn’t remember the apartment she’s lived in for the past two years, but she remembers news events, election results. She has some recollection of how she was injured and about the children she tended, but she can’t remember where she was or why she was there.” He slipped the other arm into the jacket and looked across the office at Coop. “Gaps.”
“Gaps,” Coop repeated. He didn’t know what to think. He felt a little like he’d been buried beneath several tons of rubble himself, and nothing was making sense.
“And no doubt there are other inconsistencies, things she knows about, others she’s forgotten. Things that just haven’t come up yet.” The doctor paused for a moment, studying Coop’s reaction. “Like I said, these sorts of injuries don’t follow a set pattern. There’s no way to know what to expect.”
Coop rubbed his tired eyes. It didn’t surprise him that Kelsey would want to forget that period of her life. That last year they’d been together had been marred with tragedy and pain. He would block it out himself if he could.
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “So basically what you’re saying is that Kelsey still thinks we’re married, still living in Santa Barbara together. Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess?”
Dr. Cohen returned to his desk and sat down. “Basically, that’s it.”
Coop stepped back from the window, feeling restless and uneasy. “Will she get better? Will she get her memory back, or is this a permanent thing?”
“There’s no way to know at this point if the memory loss will be permanent,” Dr. Cohen confessed. “The good news is she suffered no brain damage, nothing physical that would make it impossible for her to remember. She could wake up tomorrow morning and have everything back.”
“And the bad news?”
The doctor shrugged, looking at him. “It could take twenty years. There’s no way to know.”
Coop slowly sat down, suddenly feeling the fatigue of too many hours without sleep. “So what do we do? How do you treat this?”
“We don’t,” Dr. Cohen said simply. “The broken leg and the cuts and bruises we can take care of. She needs rest so that the body and the mind have a chance to heal. There’s a very high likelihood her memory will come back eventually. The overwhelming majority of amnesia victims make a complete recovery, despite how different each case is. If they have a common ground, that’s it.”
Coop thought for a moment, then leaned back in the chair. “So what do we do in the meantime?”
The doctor drew in a deep breath. “That’s the reason I asked Mo to let me talk to you before you saw her.” He sat up, his fingers resting lightly on the desk. “Kelsey’s more than just a patient around here. She may not remember everyone on the staff, but they remember her. She’s a terrific nurse, and a very special person.” He stopped, glancing across the desk at Coop. “But then, I guess I don’t have to tell you that.”
“You’re right, you don’t,” Coop said coolly. Mannie Cohen might have been a balding, middle-aged doctor with a decidedly settled appearance, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. Coop didn’t need another man to remind him how special Kelsey was.
“Yes, well,” Dr. Cohen said, shifting uneasily in his chair. He reached for her chart from the stack and opened it again. “I’ve consulted with all the doctors involved in her treatment. Vince Hamilton is the orthopedist who did the surgery on her leg. Brian Anderson’s the consulting internist, and Gloria Crowell is a psychiatrist we brought in who specializes in amnesia cases. We all feel given the right circumstances, and enough time, Kelsey’s chances for a complete recovery are very good.”
Coop’s gaze narrowed. He suddenly began to feel uneasy. “The right circumstances?”
The older man lowered the open chart to the desk and pushed it to one side. “Memory loss, the kind that Kelsey has suffered, isn’t something we see very often. Her loss deals to a large extent with those memories connected in one way or another with your divorce.” He leaned back in his chair, tenting his hands together. “Granted, there are gaps concerning other facets of her life, but those could simply be her way of explaining why things in her life don’t make sense, and—”
“Wait, wait,” Coop said, raising a hand and cutting him off. “You’ve lost me here. What do you mean, her way of explaining things?”
“Well,” Dr. Cohen said, taking a deep breath. “Take for example her job here at the hospital. It’s not the job she had when she was married to you—different place, different people. There is no way she can explain why she has a different job in a different place, why she works in Santa Ynez when she lives in Santa Barbara.”
“Right,” Coop said, trying to see the logic. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Exactly. So how does she explain it?” He gestured, making his point with palms to the ceiling. “She forgets it—even though she knows she had a job, knows a lot about this particular hospital and recognizes me and others on the staff, she has no memory of where she’d been working. He paused, sitting back in his chair. ”No memory, no need to explain.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Coop sighed, considering what the doctor had said. “As much as any of this does.”
“Which gets us back to circumstances,” Dr. Cohen continued. “I think you’ll see when you talk to he
r that Kelsey finds these gaps in her memory very stressful, very frustrating. It’s understandable. The problem is, she’s still very weak. She needs time to heal, to build up her strength, get healthy again. My colleagues and I have some concerns as to the effect the shock of discovering the truth could have on her.”
“You think it could interfere with her recovery?”
“It’s difficult to say exactly what would happen, but I don’t see it doing her any good—not right now, anyway.” He paused, searching for the right words. “She needs to be ready to remember, needs to be strong enough to handle the truth. We go to her now, tell her everything, there’s a chance the shock would push those memories so far back she’d never be able to retrieve them.”
Coop was quiet, trying to understand and absorb. “So what are you suggesting?”
“We’re suggesting she be given the chance to remember on her own.”
“You don’t want me to see her, then?”
“Oh, no, on the contrary.”
Coop felt the hair on the back of his neck start to tingle again. “You mean, you want me to lie to her? Let her believe we’re still married?”
“I don’t see it as lying, exactly.”
“No? You’re asking me to keep the truth from her. If that’s not lying, what would you call it?”
“I’d call it giving her a chance—the best chance she has to get better.” Dr. Cohen leaned forward in his chair, staring at the man who sat opposite him. “Look, I know this is a lot to take in right now. It’s unusual, to say the least, but if it could help Kelsey, isn’t it worth a chance?”
Coop sat back, feeling a little like he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and had ended up in the Twilight Zone. Maybe he was suffering from a lack of sleep. The whole situation sounded so fantastic, surreal.
Mind Over Marriage Page 3