by Olivia Gates
“Tell me, please. The details of his injuries.”
He didn’t want to tell her how terrible it had all been.
But he had to. He inhaled a stream of what felt like aerosolized acid, then told her.
Her tears flowed steadily over a face gone numb with horror throughout his chilling report.
She finally whispered, “How did the accident happen?”
He needed this conversation to be over. He gritted his teeth. “That is one thing only you can know for sure. And it’ll probably be the last memory to return. The crash site and plane were analyzed for possible whys and hows. The plane shows no signs of malfunction and there were no distress transmissions prior to the crash.”
“So the pilot just lost control of the plane?”
“It would appear so.”
She digested this for a moment. “What about my injuries?”
“You should only concern yourself now with recuperating.”
“But I need to know a history of my injuries, their progression and management, to chart my recuperation.”
He grudgingly conceded her logic. “On site, you were unconscious. You had a severely bleeding scalp wound and bruising all over your body. But your severest injury was comminuted fractures of your left ulna and radius.”
She winced as she looked down on her splinted arm. “What was my Glasgow Coma Scale scoring?”
“Eleven. Best eye response was three, with your eyes opening only in response to speech. Best verbal response was four, with your speech ranging from random words to confused responses. Best motor function was four with flexion withdrawal response to pain. By the time I operated on you, your GCS had plunged to five.”
“Ouch. I was heading for decorticate coma. Did I have intracranial hemorrhage?”
He gave a difficult nod. “It must have been a slow leak. Your initial CTs and MRIs revealed nothing but slight brain edema, accounting for your depressed consciousness. But during the other surgery, I was informed of your deteriorating neurological status, and new tests showed a steadily accumulating subdural hematoma.”
“You didn’t shave my hair evacuating it.”
“No need. I operated via a new minimally invasive technique I’ve developed.”
She gaped at him. “You’ve developed a new surgical technique? Excuse me while my mind, tattered as it is, barrels in awe.”
He grunted something dismissive. She eyed him with a wonder that seemed only to rise at his discomfort. Just as he almost growled stop it, she raised one beautifully dense and dark eyebrow at him. “I trust I wasn’t the guinea pig for said technique?”
Cybele gazed up at Rodrigo, a smile hovering on her lips.
His own lips tightened. “You’re fine, aren’t you?”
“If you consider having to get my life story from you as fine.”
The spectacular wings of his eyebrows snapped together. That wasn’t annoyance or affront. That was mortification. Pain, even.
Words couldn’t spill fast enough from her battered brain to her lips. “God, that was such a lame joke. Just shows I’m in no condition to know how or when to make one. I owe you my life.”
“You owe me nothing. I was doing my job. And I didn’t even do it well. I’m responsible for your current condition. It’s my failure to manage you first that led to the deepening of the insult to your brai-”
“The pilot’s worst injuries were neurological.” She cut him short. It physically hurt to see the self-blame eating at him.
“Yes, but that had nothing to do with my decision-”
“And I bet you’re the best neurosurgeon on the continent.”
“I don’t know about that, but being the most qualified one on hand didn’t mea-”
“It did mean you had to take care of him yourself. And my initial condition misled you into believing my case wasn’t urgent. You did the right thing. You fought for this man as he deserved to be fought for. And then you fought for me. And you saved me. And then, I’m certain my condition is temporary.”
“We have no way of knowing that. Having total memory loss with the retention of all faculties of language and logic and knowledge and no problem in accumulating new memories is a very atypical form of amnesia. It might never resolve fully.”
“Would that be a bad thing, in your opinion? If the idea of regaining my memories is almost…distressing, maybe my life was so bad, I’m better off not remembering it?”
He seemed at a loss for words. Then he finally found some. “I am not in a position to know the answer to that. But I am in a position to know that memory loss is a neurological deficit, and it’s my calling to fix those. I can’t under any circumstances wish that this wouldn’t resolve. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to tend to my other patients. I’ll be back every three hours to check on you.”
With a curt nod, he turned and left her, exiting the huge, opulent suite in strides loaded with tense grace.
She wanted to run after him, beg him to come back.
What could possibly explain all this turmoil and her severe attraction to him? Had they been lovers, married even, and they’d separated, or maybe divorced…?
She suddenly lurched as if from the blow of an ax as a memory lodged in her brain. No…a knowledge. She was married.
And it was certainly not to Rodrigo.
Three
Rodrigo did come back in three hours. And stayed for three minutes. Long enough to check on her and adjust her medical management. Then he repeated that pattern for the next three days. She even felt him come in during her fitful sleep.
She hadn’t had the chance to tell him what she’d remembered.
No. She hadn’t wanted to tell him. Discovering she was married, even if she didn’t know to whom, wasn’t on her list of things to share with him of all people.
And he probably already knew.
She could have told him that she’d also remembered who she was. But then, she hadn’t remembered much beyond the basics he’d told her.
This boded well for her memory deficit, if it was receding so early.
She didn’t want it to recede, wanted to cling to the blankness with all her strength.
But it was no use. A few hours ago, a name had trickled into the parting darkness of her mind. Mel Braddock.
She was certain that was her husband’s name. But she couldn’t put a face to the name. The only memory she could attach to said name was a profession. General surgeon.
Beyond that, she remembered nothing of the marriage. She knew only that something dark pressed down on her every time the knowledge of it whispered in her mind.
She couldn’t possibly feel this way if they’d been on good terms. And if he wasn’t here, days after his wife had been involved in a serious accident, were they separated, getting divorced even? She was certain she was still married. Technically, at least. But the marriage was over. That would explain her overriding emotions for Rodrigo, that she innately knew it was okay to feel them.
On the strike of three hours, Rodrigo returned. And she’d progressed from not wanting to bring up any of it to wanting to scream it all at the top of her lungs.
He made no eye contact with her as he strode in flanked by two doctors and a nurse. He never came unescorted anymore. It was as if he didn’t want to be alone with her again.
He checked her chart, informed his companions of his adjustment of her medications as if she wasn’t in the room much less a medical professional who could understand everything they were saying. Frustration frothed inside her. Then it boiled over.
“I remembered a few things.”
Rodrigo went still at her outburst. The other people in the room fidgeted, eyed her uncomfortably before turning uncertain gazes to their boss. Still without looking at her, he hung her chart back at the foot of the bed, murmured something clearly meant for the others’ ears alone. They rushed out in a line.
The door had closed behind the last departing figure for over two minutes before he turned his eyes towar
d her.
She shuddered with the force of his elemental impact.
Oh, please. Let me have the right to feel this way about him.
The intensity of his being buzzed in her bones-of his focus, of his…wariness?
Was he anxious to know what she remembered? Worried about it? Because he suspected what it was-the husband she remembered only in name? He’d told her of her long-dead father, her existing family, but not about that husband. Would he have told her if she hadn’t remembered?
But there was something more in his vibe. Something she’d felt before. After she’d kissed him. Disapproval? Antipathy?
Had they been on bad terms before the accident? How could they have been, if she felt this vast attraction to him, untainted by any negativity? Had the falling out been her fault? Was he bitter? Was he now taking care of her to honor his calling, his duty, giving her extra special care for old times’ sake, yet unable to resume their intimacy? Had they been intimate? Was he her lover?
No. He wasn’t.
She might not remember much about herself, but the thought of being in a relationship, no matter how unhealthy, and seeking involvement with another felt abhorrent to her, no matter how inexorable the temptation. And then, there was him. He radiated nobility. She just knew Rodrigo Valderrama would never poach on another man’s grounds, never cross the lines of honor, no matter how much he wanted her or how dishonorable the other man was.
But there was one paramount proof that told her they’d never been intimate. Her body. It burned for him but knew it had never had him. It would have borne his mark on its every cell if it had.
So what did it all mean? He had to tell her, before something beside memories short-circuited inside her brain.
He finally spoke. “What did you remember?”
“Who I am. That I’m married.” He showed no outward reaction. So he had known. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I asked about family.”
“I thought you were asking about flesh-and-blood relatives.”
“You’re being evasive.”
“Am I?” He held her gaze, making her feel he was giving her a psyche and soul scan. Maybe trying to steer her thoughts, too. “So you remember everything?”
She exhaled. “I said I remembered ‘a few things.’ Seems I’m a stickler for saying exactly what I mean.”
“You said you remembered who you were, and your marriage. That’s just about everything, isn’t it?”
“Not when I remember only the basics about myself, the name you told me, that I went to Harvard Medical School, that I worked at St. Giles Hospital and that I’m twenty-nine. I know far less than the basics about my marriage. I remembered only that I have a husband, and his name and profession.”
“That’s all?”
“The rest is speculation.”
“What kind of speculation?”
“About the absence of both my family and husband more than a week after I’ve been involved in a major accident. I can only come up with very unfavorable explanations.”
“What would those be?”
“That I’m a monster of such megaproportions that no one felt the need to rush to my bedside.” Something flared in his eyes, that harshness. So she was right? He thought so, too? Her heart compressed as she waited for him to confirm or negate her suspicions. When he didn’t, she dejectedly had to consider his silence as corroboration, condemnation. She still looked for a way out for herself, for her family. “Unless it is beyond them financially to make the trip here?”
“As far as I know, finances are no issue to your family.”
“So you told them I was at death’s door, and no one bothered to come.”
“I told them no such thing. You weren’t at death’s door.”
“It could have gone either way for a while.”
Silence. Heavy. Oppressive. Then he simply said, “Yes.”
“So I’m on the worst terms with them.”
It seemed he’d let this go uncommented on, too. Then he gave a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t know about the worst terms. But it’s my understanding you’re not close.”
“Not even with my mother?”
“Especially with your mother.”
“Great. See? I was right when I thought I was better off not remembering. Not knowing.”
“It isn’t as bad as you’re painting it. By the time I called your family, you were stable, and there really was nothing for any of them to do but wait like the rest of us. Your mother did call twice for updates, and I told her you were doing very well. Physically. Psychologically, I suggested it might not be a good thing in this early phase for you to be jogged by their presence or contact, any more than you already are.”
He was making excuses for her family, her mother. If they’d cared, they wouldn’t have been satisfied with long-distance assurances. Or maybe he had discouraged them from coming, so he wouldn’t introduce an unpredictable emotional element into her neurological recovery?
The truth was, she didn’t care right now how things really stood with her family. What she was barely able to breathe from needing to know was her status with her husband.
“And that’s my not-so-bad situation with my family. But from my husband’s pointed absence, I can only assume the worst. That maybe we’re separated or getting divorced.”
She wanted him to say, Yes, you are.
Please, say it.
His jaw muscles bunched, his gaze chilled. When he finally spoke it felt like an arctic wind blasting her, freezing her insides with this antipathy that kept spiking out of nowhere.
“Far from being separated, you and your husband have been planning a second honeymoon.”
Cybele doubted the plane crashing into the ground had a harder impact than Rodrigo’s revelation.
Her mind emptied. Her heart spilled all of its beats at once.
For a long, horrified moment she stared at him, speech skills and thought processes gone, only blind instincts left. They all screamed run, hide, deny.
She’d been so certain…so…certain…
“A second honeymoon?” She heard her voice croaking. “Does that mean we…we’ve been married long?”
He waited an eternity before answering. At least it felt that way. By the time he did, she felt she’d aged ten years. “You were married six months ago.”
“Six months? And already planning a second honeymoon?”
“Maybe I should have said honeymoon, period. Circumstances stopped you from having one when you first got married.”
“And yet my adoring husband isn’t here. Our plans probably were an attempt to salvage a marriage that was malfunctioning beyond repair, and we shouldn’t have bothered going through the motions…”
She stopped, drenched in mortification. She instinctively knew she wasn’t one to spew vindictiveness like that. Her words had been acidic enough to eat through the gleaming marble floor.
Their corrosiveness had evidently splashed Rodrigo. From the way his face slammed shut, he clearly disapproved of her sentiments and the way she’d expressed them. Of her.
“I don’t know much about your relationship. But his reason for not being at your bedside is uncontestable. He’s dead.”
She lurched as if he’d backhanded her.
“He was flying the plane,” she choked. “You remember?”
“No. Oh, God.” A geyser of nausea shot from her depths. She pitched to the side of the bed. Somehow she found Rodrigo around her, holding her head and a pan. She retched emptily, shook like a bell that had been struck by a giant mallet.
And it wasn’t from a blow of grief. It was from one of horror, at the anger and relief that were her instinctive reactions.
What kind of monster was she to feel like that about somebody’s death, let alone that of her husband? Even if she’d fiercely wanted out of the relationship. Was it because of what she felt for Rodrigo? She’d wished her husband dead to be with him? No. No. She ju
st knew it hadn’t been like that. It had to have been something else. Could her husband have been abusing her? Was she the kind of woman who would have suffered humiliation and damage, too terrified to block the blows or run away?
She consulted her nature, what transcended memory, what couldn’t be lost or forgotten, what was inborn and unchangeable.
It said, no way. If that man had abused her, emotionally or physically, she would have carved his brains out with forceps and sued him into his next few reincarnations.
So what did this mess mean?
“Are you okay?”
She shuddered miserably. “If feeling mad when I should be sad is okay. There must be more wrong with me than I realized.”
After the surprise her words induced, contemplation settled on his face. “Anger is a normal reaction in your situation.”
“What?” He knew why it was okay to feel so mad at a dead man?
“It’s a common reaction for bereaved people to feel anger at their loved ones who die and leave them behind. It’s worse when someone dies in an accident that that someone had a hand in or caused. The first reaction after shock and disbelief is rage, and it’s all initially directed toward the victim. That also explains your earlier attack of bitterness. Your subconscious must have known that he was the one flying the plane. It might have recorded all the reports that flew around you at the crash site.”
“You’re saying I speak Spanish?”
He frowned. “Not to my knowledge. But maybe you approximated enough medical terminology to realize the extent of his injuries…”
“Ya lo sé hablar español.”
She didn’t know which of them was more flabbergasted.
The Spanish words had flowed from a corner in her mind to her tongue without conscious volition. And she certainly knew what they meant. I know how to speak Spanish.
“I…had no idea you spoke Spanish.”
“Neither did I, obviously. But I get the feeling that the knowledge is partial…fresh.”
“Fresh? How so?”
“It’s just a feeling, since I remember no facts. It’s like I’ve only started learning it recently.”