Under The Mistletoe With John Doe

by Judy Duarte

  She wasn’t exactly sure what had just happened in there. But she blamed it on a lack of sleep.

  And a lack of sex, a small voice whispered.

  Oh, for Pete’s sake. Her self-imposed celibacy had been working out just fine. So why him?

  And why now?

  She’d be darned if she knew-or dared to pursue-the answer.

  John Doe slept off and on the next morning, hoping that eventually he’d wake up with his memory intact. But so far, nothing had come to mind.

  Just before lunch, Dr. Kelso came in to perform some kind of mental evaluation, this one more complex than what he’d had so far. John had passed most of it with flying colors. He had some basic knowledge, although he certainly wouldn’t try his luck on Jeopardy or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

  But memories of anything prior to his arrival at the E.R., anything of actual value, had been lost to him.

  “So what’s the verdict?” he asked the neurologist.

  “Well, the good news is that the MRI has ruled out a skull fracture, but you have a cerebral contusion.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a bruise on the brain tissue,” Dr. Kelso had explained. “I don’t think you need surgery at this point, but we’ll keep an eye on it. If it worsens, we may have to go in and relieve the pressure. But for now, we’ll be giving you steroids to lessen any swelling.”

  “What about my memory?” he asked.

  “You have retrograde amnesia.”

  “How long is it going to last? When will I remember who I am?”

  “It’s hard to say. The causes and symptoms of amnesia vary from patient to patient. And so does the recovery process. I’m afraid we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in your case.”

  Great. “How long will I have to stay in the hospital?”

  “That depends, too. I’d say at least a couple of days, maybe a week. But that could change if there are complications.”

  He wondered how he was going to pay the bill. Did he have health insurance? A job?

  Of course, that was the least of his problems now. As it was, he was stuck in limbo-and in Brighton Valley-until his brain healed and his memory returned.

  “I’ll be back to see you later this afternoon,” Dr. Kelso said. “In the meantime, get some rest.”

  There weren’t many other options, John decided, as he settled back into his pillow, hoping to find a comfortable spot. Besides the outside wounds from the tire iron, his brain was bruised. No wonder his head ached.

  As he dozed off and on during the afternoon, he periodically glanced at the clock that hung on the wall across from his bed, wishing that the hours would pass quickly. Dr. Nielson had said that she’d be back around dinnertime, and he couldn’t help looking forward to her return.

  Sure, she was an attractive woman, in spite of the blue scrubs she wore. He wondered what she’d look like dressed in street clothes-maybe a pair of tight jeans and a slinky blouse. A splash of makeup to highlight the color of her eyes. Her auburn curls hanging soft and loose around her shoulders.

  But it was more than the redhead’s pretty face and intense green eyes that appealed to him.

  As he’d watched her leave his bedside this morning, he’d felt as if he’d just lost his best friend.

  But why the heck wouldn’t he? Besides his neurologist and the floor nurse, John didn’t know-or remember-another soul on this planet.

  And each time that dark realization struck, a heavy cloak of uneasiness draped over him, weighing on him until he was ready to throw off his covers, jump out of bed and tear out of this place.

  But where would he go? What would he do? How would he support himself?

  Did he have any skills? A degree? A job that was pressing?

  He’d be damned if he knew.

  Dr. Nielson had said that he’d been asking about someone named Pedro. But who was the guy? And why did he want to find him?

  Maybe he was a private investigator working on a missing-person case, but that didn’t seem likely. For some reason, the real missing person in the whole scenario seemed to be him. And no matter how hard he tried to think or to focus on his name or his past, he drew a complete blank.

  He didn’t even know what day it was, although he suspected it was late November or December because of the Frosty the Snowman trim on the bulletin board in his room.

  The Christmas season, he thought. A time for home and hearth, for family and friends.

  Did he have anyone special in his life? Was there someone who’d been counting on him to come home last night? A wife? Kids? Maybe even a dog or a cat?

  The questions came at him like a volley of rubber bullets, but he had no answers.

  A sense of frustration rooted deep in his gut, making it hard to relax, to sleep, to heal. And no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to wrap his battered brain around anything. All he had were the details Dr. Nielson had given him, and right now, she seemed to be his only connection to the outside world.

  No wonder he looked forward to seeing her again, to talking to her.

  Maybe, with some time, a little rest and another visit from the pretty E.R. doctor, everything would start falling into place.

  At five-thirty that evening, just before her next shift began, Betsy rode the elevator up to the third floor to look in on John Doe, just as she’d told him she would.

  Again she pondered the wisdom of following up on a patient who was no longer her responsibility. But what was the harm in making one last trip upstairs?

  As she walked along the corridor to the west wing, her rubber soles squeaked upon the polished linoleum floors, announcing her arrival. There was still time to turn around and head back to the E.R., with no one the wiser, but she pressed on.

  Upon reaching the nurses’ desk, where Jolene Collins was talking to someone on the telephone and scratching down notes, Betsy caught a whiff of the dinner cart before she actually saw it. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she probably should take time to pick up a bite to eat in the cafeteria before starting her shift.

  In fact, maybe that’s where she ought to be now, but it was hard to backpedal when she’d already come this far.

  She could reach for her pager, check it and pretend she’d been called to another floor, but the hospital didn’t get amnesia victims every day.

  Or handsome young patients who piqued a single doctor’s interest.

  It was at that realization that she almost did an about-face, no matter how abrupt it might seem to anyone observing her behavior.

  She had no business even imagining anything remotely romantic with a patient, especially John Doe, whose background was a complete unknown. After her divorce, she’d made up her mind to focus on work and to look after her aging parents, the loved ones who had never let her down-and who never would.

  So she shook off the misplaced attraction to John, telling herself that the brief visit would never amount to more than that.

  As she neared John’s room, she scanned the corridors but didn’t see Molly, who was undoubtedly with a patient, which was just as well. There wouldn’t be any need to come up with a good reason for her return to the third floor.

  As Betsy reached the open doorway of 314, she spotted John sitting up in bed, his meal spread out on the portable tray in front of him.

  “Hey,” he said, brightening as he spotted her. “Finally, there’s a familiar face.”

  She supposed that meant he was still struggling to regain his memory.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, returning his smile.

  “Better, I guess.” He pointed to the IV that dripped into the vein in his arm. “The stuff they’re putting in here must be working. My head isn’t aching quite as bad as it was earlier.”

  “That’s good.”

  “But I still don’t remember anything of substance.”

  “Do you remember anything at all?”

  He shrugged. “I turned on the television earlier, and as I flipped through t
he channels, I came to a college football game. The USC fight song was familiar, and I knew the words.”

  “So you think you might be an alumnus?”

  “Or I could be a dropout. Who knows?”

  She made her way to his bedside and peered at his plate. “Roast beef?”

  He nodded. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.”

  “Actually, Brighton Valley Medical Center has a great cafeteria. I usually prefer to eat here more times than not.”

  “And where do you eat when you’re not working?”

  “At home.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Normally, she didn’t offer her patients any details about her personal life, but for some reason, she felt like opening up to John. Maybe because she felt sorry for him. “I live on a small ranch outside of town.”

  “Oh, yeah? That surprises me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You’re a doctor, and I figured you for a place in the city and close to good restaurants and all the cultural haunts.”

  She laughed. “In Brighton Valley? You’re definitely new in town.”

  “Which means there probably isn’t any reason to post a picture of me on the back page of the newspaper and ask residents to call in if they recognize me.” The smile he’d been wearing faded, and she figured that he’d been trying to make the best of a bad situation but wasn’t having much luck.

  “Well, we have some clues that we didn’t have before. You might be from California. And you might have once attended USC.”

  His shrug indicated that her guess wasn’t much to go on.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “Originally? I’m from Houston. After my…” She caught herself, realizing she didn’t want to mention her divorce-certainly not with a stranger whose gaze was enough to set off a flurry of hormones. So she altered her explanation by saying, “Well, after my internship I had an opportunity to take over a medical practice in a small town, so I moved to Brighton Valley and worked with Dr. Graham until he retired.”

  “And so you liked it here and purchased property.”

  It was a natural assumption, she supposed. And there was no reason to set him straight, but she did so anyway. “I’d planned to get a place of my own, but Doc invited me to stay in the guesthouse at his ranch until I got settled.”

  They’d both thought it would be a temporary arrangement, but Betsy had never moved. She’d blamed it on being too busy to look for a house, but it had been more than that. Living so close to Doc had provided her with an opportunity to learn from an old-school physician who was a natural diagnostician and who was still making house calls up until the day he took down his shingle.

  Sometimes, in the evenings when she wasn’t on call, she would brew them both a pot of tea, and they would sit before the fireplace and talk. On those cozy nights, she would laugh at his anecdotes and soak up his wisdom like a child sitting on his knee.

  She might have learned the modern methods of treating illness and disease in med school, but Doc had taught her how to deal with people-and not just the patients.

  “Are you still living on his ranch?” John asked, as he shifted one of the pillows behind his back.

  She nodded, and a slow smile stretched across her face as she thought of the little decorative touches she’d added to make her bedroom warm and cozy, the green-and-lavender quilt she draped over the foot of the bed, the picture of a lilac bush that hung on the wall. “Yes, I’m still there. And even though his guesthouse is just a little bigger than a studio apartment, it’s home to me.”

  Sure, every now and then she thought about buying a place of her own, one that was closer to the hospital and to Shady Glen, the retirement community in which her parents lived. But even if she wanted to move, she’d have to rent at this point in her life. She’d used almost every dime of her savings to buy stock in the medical center-something very few people knew.

  “And you have no plans to move to a place of your own?”

  “No, not now. Doc is getting older, and his health isn’t as good as it once was. Since his wife died, he’s all alone.”

  “And you feel an obligation to look after him?”

  “It’s more of an honor.” And she felt the same about looking after her parents, too.

  “You’re not only a good doctor,” John said, “you’ve also got a good heart.”

  She wasn’t sure what made her more uneasy-his praise or her self-disclosure-and she wondered if she ought to back away. After all, she didn’t know this man from Adam.

  “So,” John said, connecting the dots, “in a way, you’ve become Doc’s personal physician.”

  “I guess you could say that.” She glanced at the clock on the wall, then drew up as tall as her five-foot-two frame would allow. “My shift will be starting soon, so I’d better go. I just wanted to check in on you.”

  “I like having my own personal physician, too.”

  That wasn’t the impression she’d wanted to give him, but what did she expect? She’d stopped by his bedside for the second time today.

  And if truth be told, her interest in him had drifted beyond that of physician-patient and bordered on female-male.

  But she’d be darned if she’d admit that to anyone, especially to him.

  She glanced at her pager, even though she hadn’t heard a sound or felt a single vibration. “Well, I’d better go. Enjoy your dinner.”

  “Will you be back in the morning?” he asked.

  Would she?

  She shouldn’t-and she hadn’t planned on it.

  Yet she found herself agreeing anyway.

  Chapter Three

  Two days later, after closing up the cozy little house she’d called home for the past two years, Betsy strode across the yard to where she’d left her car.

  The brisk wintry air and an overcast sky suggested a storm was on its way, so she turned up the collar of her jacket. Most women who worked a day shift would be ready to put on a pot of soup and batten down the hatches for the night. But not Betsy. She was heading to the hospital to start another twelve-hour shift.

  As she reached the driver’s door of her white Honda Civic, she spotted Doc walking out of the barn and heading toward her. Nearly ninety, his gait was more of a shuffle these days.

  “You’re leaving earlier than usual,” he said.

  She smiled at the man who’d become a mentor, a second father and a friend. “I want to check in on a patient before I start work.”

  “A child?” he asked, knowing that she had a heart for kids, especially those who were seriously ill or injured.

  “Actually, it’s a man who was robbed and assaulted outside the Stagecoach Inn Wednesday night. He’s got amnesia.”

  “Oh, yeah?” The old man leaned his hip against her vehicle, as though intrigued by the case, too.

  “He’s a stranger in town,” Betsy added, “but the expensive clothing he wore tells me that he has ties to a community somewhere.”

  “That’s too bad. I had a case of amnesia once, back in the late seventies. A father of three fell off a railroad trestle near Lake San Marcos and damn near broke his neck. When he came to, he didn’t know who he was or where he came from.”

  “Did he ever get his memory back?”

  “Eventually. Once his wife reported him missing, police were able to put two and two together.”

  Betsy sobered. Did John have a wife? The possibility sent an uneasy shudder through her veins.

  “So how old is this fellow?” Doc asked.

  “My age or a little younger.”

  “How’s he look?”

  “Medically speaking? He’s got a gash on his head that’s healing. And his rib cage is bruised.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Do you think he’s good-looking?”

  Uh-oh. So Doc was more intrigued by Betsy’s interest in an adult male patient. But she’d have to put his mind to rest, even if she couldn’t completely deny her budding attraction
.

  “I suppose he’s handsome,” she said, downplaying the fact that the current John Doe was drop-dead gorgeous. “I talked to Jim Kelso, the resident neurosurgeon, and he’s planning to discharge him soon. He’ll need to stay in town, I suspect. But at this point, he has no place to go or any resources.”

  Doc fingered his chin and furrowed his craggy brow. “That’s too bad. Not only is the poor guy struggling with the memory loss and a lack of cash or credit, but he’s also backed into a corner.”

  Betsy nodded, glad Doc seemed to think her interest in John was strictly professional.

  Okay, so maybe it was a little of both. No one needed to know that.

  “I thought I would talk to Sadie down at the Night Owl Motel. She might be able to give him a discount on a room.”

  “You can’t ask Sadie to run a tab like that for a stranger. What if he isn’t financially set? What if he can’t pay for his keep?”

  “I plan to cover the cost,” she admitted. But Doc was right. They didn’t know anything about John. Nor did they know how long he’d have to stay in town.

  “Under the circumstances, I can’t let you do that. You could be left holding the bag for a very long time. And your savings can’t take another hit like that.”

  Betsy had received a solid financial settlement after her divorce, thanks to her ex-husband’s innate ability to invest their money wisely. And she’d made a risky investment herself, one that had nearly tripled her funds overnight. Then she’d used the proceeds to buy stock in the medical center.

  Doc had made a sizable investment in the facility himself. And with the hospital struggling financially… Well, Betsy wouldn’t think about that now.

  “Tell the patient he can stay here,” Doc said. “I’ve got room in the house. And you and I can keep an eye on him that way.”

  Have John stay at the ranch?

  Her heart ricocheted in her chest. Just the idea was…

  What? Brilliant? Perfect?

  Reckless?

  “Knowing that he has a place to stay and a way to support himself ought to help put his mind at ease,” Doc said.