by Kailin Gow
“Hi Nurse May, technically I am, but I have to stop by my office to get a few things. Look, Drew’s here, too.”
No one at this hospital knew about Drew and I not being engaged. Everyone outside of Rachel, Nat, Luis, Hector, and Dr. Turk knew Drew’s memory loss basically broke us up.
“Is this Mr. Donovan?” Nurse May asked. “Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials. We’re all so excited for you both.”
“Oh,” I said. “Hasn’t happen yet, but when it does, I’ll let the staff know.”
“Alright,” Nurse May said. “After hearing so much about Mr. Donovan, we all think you’ll be very happy with him.” She smiled warmly at Drew and left.
I reached my office and pulled Drew in, immediately closing the door.
“I take it Nat doesn’t visit you at the hospital often,” Drew said. “Nurse May thought I was Nat, didn’t she? And engaged? Are you two secretly engaged? Nat and Rachel didn’t say anything about that.”
“No, Nat doesn’t visit me here at all. And no, we’re not secretly engaged. No need to get worked up about that.”
I pointed at the chair across from my desk. “Sit there and take off your shirt.”
“Okay, Doc,” Drew said, doing as I asked.
He sat down, and took off his jacket first while I went over to a cabinet and unlocked it. I took out a few basic medical equipment and turned around.
Drew was sitting down, but his shirt was off completely, showing off his tanned skin and gorgeous perfectly proportioned body. I couldn’t help taking in every inch of him. I remembered every part of him from exploring his entire body thoroughly for years as his lover and fiancé.
I gulped. He was breathtaking.
Drew seemed to know it. He smiled a slow sly smile. “Now now, Summer, I know how I must look to you since you’ve been with my fuddy dud brother for so long, but you are with my brother. I don’t think he would like how you’re looking at me right now.”
I blushed and turned around. What a cocky arrogant bastard.
“I was not looking at you like…” I began.
“Like you want to touch me? Put your mouth on my skin? Make love to me?” Drew asked arrogantly.
“No! Not at all, Drew. That’s all your imagination filling in some kind of fantasy you have of you being a sex god.”
Drew got up and walked up to me, backing me up into the corner. I tried to look away, but his bare body was pressed against me. “Tell me, Summer, if you are not tempted to touch me.”
“I can’t believe you, Drew,” I said. “I will not.”
Drew pressed harder against me. “Tell me you don’t want some of this.”
I scrunched up my face in disgust. “Again with the 1980s sleazy man one-liners.”
“Suit yourself, Summer,” he said. “I like teasing you and watching you turn pink around your cheeks and nose. It’s pretty cute.”
“Not funny,” I said pushing him back into the chair. I took out my first equipment and began working on him.
He was just another one of my patients I kept telling myself as I pinch, touched, and jabbed at him.
“You are taking out your anger on me, aren’t you, Doc?” Drew asked trying to look into my eyes. “Why? Why are you so angry at me? What did I do?”
I stopped fussing with my equipment on Drew and stood quiet for a few seconds. How could I tell him that my whole world had suddenly changed because of him? How could I tell him about a loss we have when he couldn’t even remember it?
“You’re right,” I finally said. “I was angry at you, but it wasn’t your fault, Drew. I think I was just frustrated at the situation. I’m sorry I took it out on you.”
“That’s alright, Summer,” Drew said. “Is there any way I could help?” He stood up and wrapped his arms around me.
It felt so good to have him hold me, to touch me again. I rested my face against his chest and began crying. He was here with me, but he was also so far away.
“I just need you to remember your life more, Drew,” I finally said, pulling away and wiping my eyes. “I’m worried about you…these blackouts and memory loss. But I have hope you will recover. I know you don’t even know what I’m talking about, but I swear, Drew, I will do everything I could to help you. I will.”
Drew hugged me tighter and said, “Thank God for you, Summer. You really are a Godsend to the Donovans. Nat is one lucky guy.”
Don’t you know it, I thought sadly.
Chapter 10
Nat
It was bright and early in the morning when I woke up Summer from her bed. Last night she came back to the compound late, was quiet for the entire night before she went to her own room and fell asleep.
Seeing Drew again and having him act like almost a stranger to her was painful to see. No doubt she must’ve gone through a lot when she went back with him to their place to pack up her things. I don’t know what happened, but she returned empty-handed. So her belongings were still at Drew’s, which to Summer, must have been a hopeful sign.
Considering what happened between Summer and I, I was torn about Drew’s chances of recovery.
Yes I wanted Summer for myself. I always did, but when it came to making Summer happy and wanting what I wanted, her happiness was more important to me than anything. It tugged at my heartstrings seeing her so sad. Although I was happy to be with her as lovers, even pretending to be, I knew she had a long history with Drew. Probably happy ones too since they were about to get married before Summer was kidnapped.
By the Dragon, who had kidnapped her because he was trying to get to me.
Drew loved Summer more than anything and anyone too. If Summer had not been kidnapped…Drew would not have been shot, fallen into a coma, and subsequently lose his memory of Summer.
I poured coffee into my cup and prepared Summer’s while she took a hot shower to wake up. It was an ungodly hour to wake up at 2 in the morning to fly out, and I guessed she would be used to the lack of sleep, but she still stumbled out of bed looking sleepy-eyed but adorable.
I took a sip and tried to focus. If this and if that had not happened, we wouldn’t be here. If I kept thinking about what led to this and what led to that, I would be too immobilized with guilt and self-loathing that we would never move forward.
You didn’t cause Drew’s loss of memory. You would never have wanted that for Summer.
But you’ve always wanted Summer. She would always be the only girl you loved.
I shook my head clearing all the negative and self-defeating thoughts out of my head. Thinking of them now would only defeat me, cause me to lose my focus and mojo.
This mission was larger than Drew’s memory loss and winning the girl, it was about preserving the brilliant talent and minds out there, who had been lost and abandoned by the system because one program lost funding or someone had messed up.
There was a man out there called The Yeti whose talents were sought after, but by the wrong people. Andrew Knight Hockings Industries or AKH would at least try to recruit him so we could use his talents for good. At the same time, we would delve deep into the coma drug he created to see how to salvage it. It was miraculous if it worked perfectly…the drug had the ability to bring many of our body and mind’s functions back near death.
It even had the ability to wipe out memories, if we looked at what happened to Drew in a positive light. Very useful in changing human behavior, rehabilitating criminals and prisoners of war, and victims from traumatic pasts.
The question was, how do you reverse the memory loss or pinpoint what to lose?
I packed up one of my small portable laptop, set the cameras outside my compound to another frequency so only I could see the coverage, while playing another footage for the main security quarters at the compound; and set up a random timer to time a few events to go off while I was away.
Like everything I do, I try to accomplish more by killing two birds with one stone. This mission was that one stone. To find and recruit a new medical fugitive for AHK Industries, to
find a solution to Drew’s memory loss, to find the mice in the compound who had betrayed me and my men’s trust by trying to kill us with the warehouse explosion, and to keep Summer close to me.
The Dragon was out there, and although we had a gentleman’s understanding between us to not harm Summer, I still didn’t trust him. He was obsessed with her. He may have treated her decently while she was his hostage, according to her, but he still kidnapped her. I’ve known him far too long to take a man like that on his word.
One thing I didn’t show Summer when I was going through The Dragon’s servers were the thousands of footage he had of her from the time she was 18 years old living at Aunt Sookie’s Pad to now. Everything that pervert stalker had of Summer from her running on the beach, to her going to the Acting Academy, even of her taking a shower, and of her with me making out on the porch of the Pad; The Dragon had on those servers. The Dragon was the stalker’s boss at the top of the food chain, which made his obsession with Summer even far more dangerous than the stalker’s.
“I could use a gallon of this,” Summer said, plopping down on the bar stool at the kitchen counter and gulping down her coffee. She was dressed in the black sweater, jeans, and black boots I laid out for her. With her hair swept off her face into a wavy side ponytail and dressed from head to toe in black, she looked very stylish despite her sleepy face. “I feel as though a truck hit me, and I could barely get up.”
“It’s all the emotional exhaustion,” I said. “You’ve been through and are still going through a lot. On top of that, worrying about Drew could be exhausting.”
Summer perk up when I mentioned Drew’s name so something must have happened between them yesterday after dinner.
“How’s Drew?” I asked. “He seemed chipper,” I said, “At dinner.”
Summer sighed. “Drew had dumbed down 10 years, Nat. It’s as though he was back to being the dumb jock guy who just cared about scoring it with the ladies, in high school. I was concerned about how his mental illness could have affected the coma medicine, and I took him to my hospital to check him out. I’ll get the results in a few days when we get back, and I could go pick them up. Otherwise, being with Drew yesterday was like being with a spoiled and arrogant teenager.”
I laughed. Drew was still Drew, only when he had started going out with Summer and had become serious about her, he grew up. He wanted to be the kind of man she wanted to be with not just for a while, but for years and years to come. Being with Summer changed him for the better. Anyone could see that. The question was, did Drew see that now?
My phone buzzed, and I saw it was Luis.
Luis: All Set.
Me: Ready in 10.
Luis: I’ll wait for your signal.
“Summer,” I said, pouring her coffee into a steel canister shaped like a camera lens and stuffing it into a black backpack, “we have to head out now.”
“But I haven’t packed,” Summer said. “I’m sorry. I was planning to last night, but I just…”
“All packed,” I said, pointing to a black Louis Vuitton duffle bag next to another one. Our black Loro Piana leather jackets were on top of them.
I helped her with her jacket and slipped into mine while tugging on a black wool newsboy cap on her head. “Cute,” I said, kissing her on the nose. My eyes laid on her full glistening lips. I bent down again, pulled her tight against me and kissed her mouth, plunging my tongue in to taste hers.
She moaned as she pressed closer to me, lifting her leg to wrap against my thigh.
As much as I wanted to go further, we didn’t have time. I pulled away from her and picked up our bags before heading out of my quarters.
At 2 in the morning where we were close to the California coastline, a dense grey fog covered the grounds of the compound, and we were able to head over to the jet where Luis was rolling a large steel locker on board. On the side of the locker, it had a sticker saying “Meals To Go”.
We walked alongside the rolling locker and was onboard the jet without being seen.
Luis secured the locker, closed the jet’s door, and walked over to us.
“Sir, we’re all fueled up and ready to go. Now if you’ll take your seat along with Ms. Jones…”
“Summer,” I said to Luis. “No need to be so formal. Just call me Summer.”
“Summer,” Luis gave a small smile. “We’ll be on our way.”
I led Summer to a cushy seat as wide as a love seat and said, “You can sit here. There are all kinds of movies, tv shows, games, music you could watch if you press this button. And you’ll find cold drinks in this wall in front of you, underneath the tv screen.”
Summer looked around in awe. “This is like a posh luxury living room. I thought it would be a military-like jet but this…”
“I had it designed like the penthouse suite of a hotel,” I said, glad to show Summer one of my favorite jets. I bent down and whispered into her ear, “I even have a bedroom built in where you could sleep, take a full shower, have a change of clothing. Some of your clothes are in there.” My voice became husky as I watched Summer’s eyes light up. “And we can finish what we began back at my place.”
Summer looked down, blushing, but when she looked up, she said, “I was hoping you’d say that.”
I kissed her softly and went up to the cockpit, checking to see if everything was in place. Although I had hired good people who knew what they were doing, I always made sure to check things out myself, especially on critical missions like this one.
Luis was sitting in the cockpit next to Hector, who was the main pilot. “Hey, Boss,” Hector said. “Everything looks good?”
“So far so good,” I said, picking up the tablet next to him and checking all the logistics. I checked all the gauges and reports. The jet was constantly maintained and was in top condition.
With a lean team like this one, we all pull our weight, especially me. “Let’s take off. The fog is about to lift, and we can’t risk letting the rest of the guys in on the mission. I checked the weather report, and there will be some strong wind around the Pacific. Don’t worry about serving Summer or I anything. We’ll get everything ourselves. When the weather is good, I’ll come back to brief you on what I find.”
“Yes, Sir,” Luis said. “Go and do what you have to do. We got this. Don’t worry.”
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Hector said, starting to move the jet down the short runway. “You better go take a seat now.”
I patted the shoulders of both my men and made my way back to Summer.
She was not watching a film or television show, but had a notepad in front of her, scribbling away with formulas and charts.
“Do you need a tablet or laptop?” I asked, approaching her.
Summer looked up and smiled. “Nah. I work best with these equations when I can write them out.”
I went to get my laptop and sat down next to her, buckling up. “What are you working on?”
Summer smiled and kept scribbling away, “I got back some test results from a patient earlier than I expected. It came through on my phone just now, and I was doing some calculations. That’s all.”
I glanced over at her paper. “That looks extensive.”
“It’s also formulations for multiple possibilities. Statistics and the probability of a possible event.”
I nodded, opening up my laptop. Secretly, I was impressed with how smart Summer really was, despite having the face and body of a Victoria Secret model. What she was working on looked like the equations to some chemical formula.
After a while, and curiosity got to me, I turned to her and asked, “What are you working on?”
Summer paused and faced me, saying, “What if the coma medication really isn’t the medication we thought it was. I took a sample of the medication last night when I got back, with the help of Dr. Turk. He asked me to help him analyze it before meeting the Yeti and to see if his theory of the medication was right. I myself was curious as to what could create such a side effect like Drew�
��s memory loss with a medication meant to cure comas. So…” her face lit up with excitement. “This is my area, Nat! I’m a neurosurgeon who specialize in brain surgery, reconstruction, and function. Memory is a brain function, and if I can figure out how this medicine works with the brain, whether or not it interacts negatively and even severely with a pre-existing condition or medication; it may not be the fault of this medication after all, but how we had used it.”
Alright, Summer had just proven to be one of the smartest women, no – one of the smartest people I knew. “That sounds credible, Summer,” I said.
“Look, Dr. Turk is the expert on developing new medicines and biotechnology so I’d leave it up to him, but since he asked me to represent him and his team on this mission, especially when meeting the Yeti, I would try my best to represent the team, which meant that I needed to understand the coma medicine as much as I could beforehand.”
“True,” I said.
Summer laughed. “I even brought some of my medical equipment with me – my small compact medical bag. I always fancy myself with a doctor’s bag, only this one’s a nice smaller size, that I’d carry on housecalls when I first enter medical school. Now I’ll get my chance to bring it.”
I laughed too. Summer’s enthusiasm even for non-sexy things was contagious.
She bent down to work on her paper once again, and I turned to my laptop, finishing up a set of instructions to my top team handling issues and accounts all over the world. I also did a check on my cameras placed around my quarters to see if everything looked normal. It did.
No one had visited my quarters, letting me be undisturbed as I had asked everyone. I punched in a few codes, and the sound of myself talking loudly on the phone came on, simulating me in my place. A few lights turned on and after a while, off again. Then I checked my cameras outside. A shadow crossed the front garden and was at my door. I almost swore out loud when I saw who it was, dressed in a sparkly baseball hat pulled down halfway on the face, and a Juicy Couture purple velour tight track suit. Rachel. What the hell was she doing in front of my house when she knew Summer and I would be gone?