by Fiona Roarke
“Others? Are you accusing me of being unfaithful?” Talk about irony and clichés—her pretend-husband worrying about other men when the reality of the total lack of romance or dates in her life was laughable.
“No. I just can’t remember anything before coming to this town. To be honest, you look at me oddly sometimes and I wondered if we’d had a fight or a disagreement before the accident.”
I didn’t even know you.
“But whenever I do try to remember anything, the pain takes my breath away.”
She turned toward him. “What? Oh no. I’m so sorry. Do you need anything? A pain pill?”
He propped his head on one palm. Pure satisfaction filled his grin. “No. I already got what I needed to take care of any lingering pain, thanks to you. I feel great.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
Holden reached for her hand, kissing the back of her fingers. “So did we?”
“Did we what?”
“Have a fight or anything before this accident.”
“No. I promise you, Holden. We never had a fight before.” Finally some truth, even though the reason they hadn’t fought was because they’d never met.
She’d take it. She needed it.
“You’re good for me. I’m so glad you’re in my life.” She slapped a smile in place, but it cost her. They might not be together much longer.
Victoria stared at Holden, wanting to tell him the truth. The words were on the tip of her tongue, ready to spill the beans and let the chips fall where they may. Every foolish cliché she could think of came running from the hills, and into her mind, waiting to be uttered.
If she told him they weren’t married, what would he do? What would he say? Would he be angry she’d tricked him? Relieved he didn’t have to spend the rest of his life with her? Either reaction was heartbreaking from her point of view.
“I’m anxious to get back to our regular lives,” he said. The sweet smile on his face was the last straw. She couldn’t lie to him any longer.
“Listen, Holden. I need to tell you something.”
Before she could frame the words to confess, a familiar noise from across the room stopped her. Her communicator made a beep. And then another. She rose from bed, dragging the top sheet with her, grabbed her device and hid in the bathroom like the coward she was, having not revealed the truth. “Hello,” she said. Her tone sounded as miserable as her guilt.
“Victoria, this is Dr. Moss from Alienn.”
She perked up. She had expected it to be Cam wanting a detailed report of how she’d kept the truth about aliens from being discovered by the Nocturne Falls General Hospital human employees. “Yes. Dr. Moss. Did you get my e-mail last night?”
“I did. That’s why I’m calling. Is the patient still at the hospital?”
“No. I had to get him out of there before they tried to take any more blood samples, CT scans or X-rays. Why?”
There was a long sigh at the other end of the line.
“What’s wrong? I’d planned to leave today and bring him to you for treatment.”
“No! No, don’t do that!” he practically screamed.
Spuds! What is his deal? “Why?”
“Has the patient experienced pain when he tries to access certain memories?”
“How did you know?”
“Oh, dear. I’m afraid there is a dangerous problem at hand.”
Victoria sat down on the closed toilet seat to prepare herself for more bad news, wondering at her capacity for more difficulties.
“Okay. Tell me. What’s the problem?”
“From the CT scans you sent, it looks as though there is a very slender piece of shrapnel lodged in the bone near the long-term memory center near Holden’s left temple. He should not move. Not at all. Not even a little. He should keep his head perfectly still at all times until that foreign object can be removed.” Victoria closed her eyes as she thought about what they’d just been doing with regard to movement. It was a wonder he wasn’t dead from all the moving they’d just done.
“Should I take him back to the human hospital?”
“No. I’m afraid you shouldn’t take him anywhere at all until that shrapnel is removed.”
“What’s at stake? Will he die if he moves?”
“No, not death, but maybe worse than death. Depending on your point of view, I guess.”
Great, a philosophical doctor. “What do you mean, Dr. Moss?”
“I mean that his memories are at stake. My understanding from your previous reports—and the human hospital records I read—is that Holden has no memory before the accident. If he moves and the foreign object exerts more pressure on his memory center the damage to his long term recollections might be destroyed permanently.”
“What should I do?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to talk you through the removal of this foreign object. It needs to be done as soon as possible. Immediately, really.”
“You want me to do surgery on him? In a motel room?!” She laughed out loud. “I’m a security specialist, not a med tech. I can’t do surgery on him.” I love him. What if I hurt him?
“Yes, you can and you will, but you’ll need help. I understand there is a Royal Magistrate Guard in town with you. Is that right?”
“Sort of. He’s off hunting down a stowaway. I didn’t actually expect to see him again.”
“Call him back. He’ll have to help you. One of you will have to hold the patient down while the other removes this sliver in his head. Unfortunately, it may be quite painful depending on exactly where the splinter is, but if he’s already experiencing headaches, I’d expect the removal will also hurt. The good news is that once the foreign object is removed, his Alpha healing abilities should kick in and he should be ready to travel in a day.”
“If I can get it out.”
“Yes. But I have every faith in you. I know you’ll do your best.” Victoria was less convinced of her skills, medically speaking, but she would do everything in her power to help Holden heal.
Dr. Moss proceeded to rattle off a list of several items she’d need to acquire before performing what amounted to home surgery on the man she was desperately in love with. Bubba would have to pick them up on his way back to the seedy motel they were about to make into a temporary surgical center.
Victoria wrote the list down on a tissue with a stubby pencil she found in a drawer beneath the sink, but then something occurred to her.
“Once the sliver is removed, will he remember everything from before and after the crash?” Or will he forget everything about me and all that we’ve done together?
“I’m not certain. The danger is more for his older memories, before the coma ensued. His body was trying to heal, but the splinter is very small and narrow. It’s barely visible even on a CT image and his Alpha healing ability couldn’t fix this. Call the RMG Alpha for help. Tell him it’s an emergency. The longer you wait, the more danger the patient remains in with regard to his life before the crash.”
Super spuds! “Okay. I’ll call him to come back. Stand by. I’ll contact you when we’re ready to begin the procedure.”
Victoria hung up and went out to tell Holden the bad news. When she stood next to the bed, she saw he’d already fallen back to sleep. He looked peaceful. He looked perfect. She wanted him to be healed, but she didn’t want to be responsible for making him lose any of his older memories, or especially his new ones with her.
She silently dressed and slipped outside so as not to disturb Holden, messaging Bubba’s communicator with the universal Alpha code that was the same thing as using 911 to call for help.
Bubba didn’t message back as quickly as she thought he should, so she sent two more messages in rapid succession to ensure he understood the urgency. She was about to connect to the other device to use the voice application when he finally messaged back.
A little busy currently. What’s the problem?
Victoria messaged about the surgery and that she needed him to hold the patient down. She
also sent the list of things for him to pick up at the store on the way back. Another interminable length of time went by before he messaged back.
On my way. Will stop for supplies.
Bubba was a man of few words, but he’d certainly helped her during this unusual mission. She was going to owe him big for helping with Holden before finishing his assigned task here. She vowed to save Holden no matter what she had to do, even if saving him meant he’d learn the awful truth about all her lies.
Or worse, fail to remember anything after the crash. Including her.
Chapter Eleven
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Holden woke after a very satisfying nap where he’d been dreaming of all the wonderful moments he’d shared with Victoria. Even though most of them had been in a hospital and in a less than optimal motel room, he enjoyed every second he’d spent with her. He took a deep breath, ready to yawn and stretch, but realized he was unable to move. It felt like he was tied to the bed, but he couldn’t even turn his head. What the…?
“Hey!” he called in a panicked tone. “Hey. I can’t move.”
Victoria was in his view in seconds. “Shh. Don’t move, Holden. Please don’t move.”
“What is going on?”
“Okay. This is going to be strange and maybe difficult to understand at first, but please listen to me before you say or do anything or try to move. It’s especially important you don’t move.”
Holden took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Explain.”
“The wound on your head, the one that has been causing you pain when you try to remember things, is because there is a tiny splinter lodged there from the accident. And we have to take it out as soon as possible so it won’t hurt you any longer.”
“A splinter.”
“That’s right.”
“In my head.”
“That is correct. And if you move it could do more damage.”
“What kind of damage?”
“Damage to your memories. And it could be permanent. I don’t want that.”
“Oh.” He was quiet for a moment. He looked back at Victoria and tears filled her eyes.
“Okay. Don’t cry, love. I’ll behave,” he said. “I won’t move. I don’t want to risk losing a single memory of our life together before this accident.” Victoria cried even harder, sobbing out loud before shaking her head and trying to look strong. He loved her so much.
“Are you okay, Victoria?” Bubba’s voice sounded like it came from across the room, out of Holden’s immediate view.
“What’s he doing here?” Holden asked, trying not to sound sullen about the other man in Victoria’s life.
“Bubba came back to help. I can’t fix you all on my own. If I could, trust me, I would.” More tears streamed down her face. “But I can’t. So please don’t be upset or jealous. There is no reason for it, I promise you.” Another heart-wrenching sob. Another quick recovery, another forceful shake of her head. She swiped her eyes with the back of one hand.
“Please believe me when I tell you that I love you. I don’t love anyone else. Just you, okay?”
Holden smiled. “Okay. I believe you and I love you, too. Don’t worry, everything will be fine. You’ll take this little splinter out and all will be right with the world.”
“I hope you still feel that way after I do what amounts to home surgery on you in a low-rent motel.”
“Surgery?”
“Minor surgery,” Bubba said. He moved to where Holden could see him. “Basically we have to take a splinter out of your head, but there will be a doctor on the other end of the communicator line talking us through it.”
“What are you going to do?” Holden hoped he wasn’t going to owe Bubba his life or anything. What if he and Victoria had to name their first child after him? Bubba Gregg? No. he wasn’t naming any of their children Bubba.
Bubba lifted one corner of his mouth. “My job is to hold you down and keep you from moving, because apparently it’s going to hurt—a lot.”
“I see.” There were worse things. “Well, I want to be able to remember my past, so go for it.”
Victoria pushed some buttons on her communicator device. “I’m putting it on speaker,” she said.
A man’s voice came through. “Holden, this is Dr. Moss.” The doctor then proceeded to explain what they were about to do to him.
“Do you understand?” the tinny sound of the doctor’s voice asked.
“Yes,” Holden said. “I just want to remember my life before without all the pain, especially my wife.”
“You’re married?” Dr. Moss asked.
“Yes. Victoria is my wife,” he said. He couldn’t move and he couldn’t see her from his current vantage point, but the sharp intake of her breath was troubling, to say the least.
Dr. Moss sounded shocked when he said, “The security specialist sent from Alienn is your wife? I wasn’t told that. Perhaps Bubba should do the surgery.”
“I’m doing the surgery,” Victoria said.
“On your husband?” Dr. Moss said, obviously stricken. “That’s highly irregular. Spouses should not operate on each other.”
“We aren’t married, Doctor.”
“We aren’t married?” Holden was now the one stricken.
Victoria said, “It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to everyone later. Just talk me through this before I lose my nerve.”
“Wait. I want to see you, Victoria.”
She leaned into his view. Her face looked like how he felt.
“What do you mean we aren’t married?” he asked. His head was beginning to pound like tiny soldiers were inside jamming ceremonial swords into his brain.
“Please just let me get through this and then I’ll tell you everything, I promise.” The tears in her eyes were real. She swiped the back of her hand across them once more.
“Fine.” Holden closed his eyes. He didn’t know what hurt worse, the pounding in his head or the shattering of his heart into a thousand tiny pieces.
Victoria wasn’t his wife. For some unfathomable reason she’d lied, repeatedly. His thoughts zoomed back to the night before. Maybe they weren’t officially married, but they loved each other, didn’t they?
He didn’t have time to answer that question, even in his head. Bubba moved into place and held him down firmly. Victoria did everything the doctor told her. She had to make a small incision. That hurt. Holden didn’t make a noise.
Victoria then had to employ a magnet to determine if the splinter was metal and if it was she was supposed to use tweezers to extract the splinter.
The splinter was metal. However, the pull of the magnet moved the object in his head. It hurt so much, Holden grunted and passed out cold from all the pain. In his head. In his heart. In his soul. All of those spaces were filled with one level of pain or another.
When Holden woke, he had no idea how long he’d been out. The first thing he noticed was the pain and how, miraculously, it was mostly gone.
The agony in his head he would have described as excruciating had subsided to merely a very manageable dull ache, like he’d worked too hard doing seemingly endless paperwork. The RMG pilot core loved paperwork.
Wait. He remembered. He was a pilot for the Royal Magistrate Guard on Alpha-Prime. He was Holden Grigori. He remembered. He remembered everything.
Streams of facts, memories and the faces of people he knew from before crash-landing on Earth surged through his mind, but it didn’t hurt. He was cured. What a relief to have saved his past. The next thought in his mind was the ill-fated flight to gulag XkR-9 with a stop on the Earth colony in Alienn, Arkansas.
The crash. He remembered. All of it. Everything.
He and Riker Phoenix were escorting Riker’s brother, Draeken, to the worst gulag in three galaxies, XkR-9. The powers in charge of this mission had wanted Draeken there so fast they had authorized a very expensive, very fuel-rich mission to use the express wormhole near Earth. It cut a week off the trip from Alpha-Prime to Earth, but also us
ed one thousand times the bauxite fuel. Most times no one wanted to spend so much.
Holden remembered the crash. He remembered Riker asking if it was sabotage as they spiraled toward the planet’s surface. He’d answered no. He told Riker it was something else. What was it? He searched his memory and it came to him, pain free. The moment they exited the wormhole, Holden saw the ship’s weight differential number on his console. It was off. He had a good head for numbers and the number was wrong.
The moment the spacecraft spun out when they hit Earth’s atmosphere at the wrong angle, he knew why. They were heavy by more than a hundred pounds. He was able to employ a dangerous reverse thruster move to keep from smashing the ship into the ground at top speed.
Someone had put something on board, not expecting they were going to use the express wormhole tunnel. Who would do that?
Riker had been a last-minute replacement. As The Calderian, he wielded some say in who transported prisoners across the galaxies.
In fact, Riker exerted all of the say in every aspect of the RMG. He would never have put extra weight on the ship, endangering not only himself, but his brother.
Guardsman Jason Pepperdine was scheduled to make the flight before Riker bumped him. If he had added something to the cargo hold, he should have been forthcoming about it. But Holden had spoken to him right before Riker had boarded. Pepperdine had said nothing about extra weight or putting anything aboard. Pepperdine said they were prepped and ready for transport. No additional information had been given.
That meant Pepperdine had some explaining to do. He might have caused the crash by failing to report whatever illegal plunder he’d loaded onto the flight.
Holden opened his eyes. A startled female voice said, “He’s awake. Holden? How do you feel?”
Victoria.
He remembered her, too.
He recalled absolutely everything, both before and after crash-landing on Earth.
Victoria was the woman who was not his wife.
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Astrid ran. She extricated herself from the situation with the Royal Magistrate Guard as quickly as possible when her disguise basically melted away and ran.