She put her hand to her face, trying to remember, trying to sort through what she remembered of the night before.
Jared turned to sit behind her and wrap an arm around her. “You had a good bump, Libby. If you’re confused, there’s good reason for it. It’s okay. Tell us what upset you.”
She winced and leaned into him gratefully. He was here—wherever he’d come from. He was here. She hadn’t lost him. That knowledge drew all her concentration for a moment, then she tried again to put the past in order. But where was it? And had it been real?
“She looked in the mirror,” the nurse said, “and that seemed to upset her. And she asked for Farthingale.”
Farthingale! Libby sat up and asked the doctor, “How many years has Farthingale been retired?”
He raised an eyebrow. “She isn’t retired. Not for another month.”
Libby uttered a gasp of surprise and reminded the nurse, “You said she’d been gone for ages.”
“She has,” the nurse replied, mildly defensive. “She worked three to eleven. She’d been gone almost twelve hours when you asked. To me that seemed—” she shrugged apologetically “—ages. I never thought you’d think I meant years.”
“Okay.” She pointed to the spot on the opposite wall where the smiling graffiti had been. “Where’s the red smiley face that used to be there?”
“It still is,” the nurse replied. “In room 231. This is 237.”
Oh, dear. Libby leaned back against Jared with a thunk. “You’re going to think this is a crazy question but…how old am I?”
“Twenty-five,” he replied. “I saw it on your birth certificate when we got our marriage license.”
“I was born in…”
“Nineteen seventy-one. Twenty-five years ago. On Saint Patrick’s Day.”
She frowned and rubbed her forehead. “But I…used to be…thirty-five.” She looked up at Jared, pleading with him to understand. “I missed my appointment with John Miller because I was hit by a bicycle, and I went back ten years in time to find that you’d taken the kids and…”
The doctor smiled and tipped his head back as though he’d just had a revelation. “Is that it?” He leaned toward Libby and said earnestly, “I took care of you three weeks ago when you had that first bump, remember? You dreamed about being thirty-five. I remember because I was reading your chart while you were still out of it, and you were singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to yourself, then I heard you say, ‘Thirty-five! God, that’s ancient.’ I recall that clearly because, being fifty-five, I was amused by it.”
She closed her eyes and tried to absorb that. “You mean, I dreamed being older? That I never was twenty-five? But it was so real. When I woke up, I thought I’d gone backward in time to…to get the children.”
Jared held her tightly. “Why would a dream confuse her like that?”
The doctor shrugged. “Dreams can seem very real. We can wake up from scary ones perspiring and with our hearts pounding. And she wanted something very desperately at the time—the children. There was talk about her in Pediatrics, how she’d bonded with the children and wanted to adopt them. That was probably all on her mind when she sustained the blow.”
He sighed and spread his hands—an indicator, Libby guessed, that some things couldn’t be completely explained.
“The brain is complex and mysterious. Even the specialists don’t know how or why it sifts and organizes data. My guess is that the blow combined with the trauma of the children caused a glitch. And it could very well be that this second blow straightened it out. But it might be a good idea to set her up with a therapist to be sure.”
Libby wanted to believe that this was her present, had always been her present, but there were a few problems remaining.
“How do you account for my hair?” she asked, arms folded. “It was short when I was thirty-five. It’s short now.”
She felt Jared’s light laughter against her and turned her head to look up at him. He was smiling. He hadn’t smiled since he’d walked into the room.
“When you went down with the bike,” he explained, “the wheels were still spinning, and your hair got caught in the spokes. There wasn’t time to untangle it, obviously, so I told the EMT to cut it and get you in the ambulance.”
She stared at him for a moment, struggling to regain her emotional equilibrium.
“I actually did dream being thirty-five?” she asked, unable to believe it was all still hers. “And we’re really married? And the judge…gave us the children?”
He held up her left hand, where a wide gold band circled her third finger. “See?” He held up his own left hand. “Matches mine. And the kids are right outside. Want me to bring them in?” He looked at the doctor for an okay.
“Sure.” The doctor stood. “I’ll make her an appointment for sometime next week with Dr. Gilder to talk over what happened and track the next few weeks, but she can go home. She’s fine.”
The doctor and the nurse left, but Libby caught Jared’s arm before he could go to the door to get the children.
“Wait,” she said. “There’s one more thing.”
He came back to her and took her hand, his eyes gentle. “What is it?”
“Well…when I was…when I thought I was thirty-five…there was a man. We weren’t intimate or anything, but I thought of him as…real.”
“Real enough to have a name?”
“Yes. Boris Pushkin.” Even as she said the name, she knew she’d had some connection with him in the past.
Jared smiled again, even laughed. “The brain is mysterious.” He pinched her chin. “He’s your editor.”
She winced, trying to remember. “I don’t have an editor.” But…was that the name to whom she’d addressed her manuscript?
“You do now,” he corrected. “I called home this morning to get my messages, and he had called. Wants you to call him to talk about your book.”
She felt her eyes grow wide. “To…buy it?”
“He didn’t say that, but I imagine that’s the kind of news they don’t like to leave on an answering machine.”
“Ohmigod!”
He wrapped his arms around her and rubbed gently between her shoulder blades. “Now, don’t get your pulse up again, or the doctor won’t let me take you home. And if I have to live another night without you, I’ll go berserk.”
“Oh, Jared.” She sighed against him, leaning into his embrace, feeling everything clarify and stabilize for her in his arms. “I love you so much. I thought I was going to die when I woke up and thought I’d left you and the children behind.”
He kissed her neck and held her tighter. “You couldn’t lose me, Libby. Even in time. I’d go backward, forward, sideways, even to Hell for you. But I intend to hold you so tightly you won’t get away from me—ever.”
She could think of no sweeter, more reassuring promise than that.
“Want to see the children now?”
“Please.”
Jared stood back while Savannah scrambled onto the bed and into Libby’s arms, chattering nonstop about the nurses she remembered from three weeks ago and the teddy bears they’d given her and Zachary that morning.
Libby’s face lit up, her earlier confusion apparently vanquished by the child’s obvious delight in being with her again.
Darren put Zachary in Libby’s arms, and he and Justy, his mother and Julio and Sara and Charlene crowded around her, pouring love over her in invisible, healing buckets.
His happiness was so complete he almost couldn’t believe his good fortune. But it was such a boisterous happiness it had to be real.
He wondered for a moment about what Libby had experienced, then dismissed it as she reached a hand out for him to draw him toward her. Past. Future. Dream. Reality. It didn’t matter what this was. It had his wife and children in it—and the rest of his family. He claimed it as his.
eISBN 978-14592-7507-2
THE COMEBACK MOM
Copyright © 1996 by Muriel Jensen.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, Is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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The Comeback Mom Page 21