A Forever Christmas

Chapter Three

His first thought was to stop driving and just pull over to the side. But then what? It wasn’t as if he knew what to do—he didn’t. And neither, he was fairly certain, did his sister. As for the mechanic who was behind them towing in the burned remains of the woman’s sedan, if it didn’t have an engine in it, Mick had no clue what to do or not do, so he’d be less than no help in this situation, either.

No, the best thing that he could do for this mystery woman was just to drive and get her to the doctor as fast as possible. At least Dan could cauterize her wound and patch it up. And maybe the former New York surgeon knew how to tell whether or not the blonde was telling the truth when she claimed not to know who she was.

It began to rain heavier.

Squaring his shoulders, Gabe pressed down on the accelerator and sped up. Having lived here all his life, he knew the terrain in and around Forever like the back of his hand. If need be, he could drive to town with his eyes shut, so the threat of more obscuring rain had absolutely no effect on him.

But, in an odd sort of way, the woman in the passenger seat did.

What was it like not knowing who you were?

If this woman was actually telling the truth and not just being evasive for some reason, he imagined that it had to be pretty damn scary, not knowing your own name. When life got tough, a person was supposed to be able to rely on himself or herself. But if you didn’t even know who you were, how were you supposed to depend on yourself?

“Who are you?” Gabe asked softly as he spared the unconscious blonde a long glance. “Is there someone somewhere worrying about you? Wondering why you didn’t come home, or call, or even…?”

His voice trailed off as more and more questions popped up in his head. Questions that would have to go unanswered for the time being. With any luck, most of them would be addressed when the woman regained her consciousness again.

For all he knew, there might be a missing-persons file on her waiting for them by the time he got into the office.

“I know I’d be looking for you if you were mine,” he murmured under his breath.

Even disheveled, with her light blond hair plastered against her face, he could see that she was beautiful. Genuinely beautiful, not one of those women whose looks came out of jars and containers and the clever application of makeup.

He put the windshield wipers on high and drove a tad faster.

* * *

WITH HIS WINTER COAT thrown carelessly over his shoulders to impede the bone-freezing weather from getting to him, Dr. Dan Davenport stood outside his single-story clinic, waiting for the patient that Alma had called him about. The November chill was creeping into his bones when he finally saw the three-vehicle caravan approaching.

Finally, he thought, moving to meet them.

“Slow day at the clinic, Doc?” Gabe called out as he jumped out of the cab of his truck and rounded the hood, crossing over to the passenger’s side.

“Everyone’s healthy at the same time for a change,” Dan answered.

Which, as far as he was concerned, was a good thing. It balanced out the days when it seemed as if his waiting room was stuffed with patients from first light to way beyond the last.

Reaching the vehicle, the doctor opened the passenger door before Gabriel had a chance to. He frowned as he peered into the truck, then looked at Gabe. “She hasn’t regained consciousness yet?”

“No, she did,” Gabriel said. He was unaware that he had elbowed the doctor out of his way to get to the woman, but Alma noticed as she came to join them. In the background, Mick was driving on to his garage, the barbecued sedan in tow behind him. “For about two, three minutes,” Gabe qualified, “and then she lost consciousness again.”

“Did she tell you her name while she was still conscious?” Alma asked.

Gabe backed out of the truck’s cab slowly, gently holding the woman he’d just lifted out of the seat. Earlier, when he ran carrying her in his arms, he’d been much too intent on making sure they survived to notice just how light she actually felt in his arms.

It was as if she barely weighed anything at all.

The trite saying “light as a feather” seemed rather appropriate in this case. Light as an unconscious feather, he added ruefully.

“No,” Gabe said aloud, following the doctor back into the clinic. “She doesn’t know her name.”

The answer stopped Alma in her tracks. “Doesn’t know her name?” she repeated, puzzled. “What do you mean, she doesn’t know her name?”

“Just what I said,” Gabe told her. He didn’t turn around, but continued to follow Dan once they were inside the clinic. “She said she didn’t know her name. Looked a little panicked when she said it, too.”

Dan led them straight to the only examination room that was attached to another small room in the rear of the building. The latter doubled as a makeshift overnight recovery room where people who Dan performed minor surgeries on stayed the night to recuperate.

In New York, where he’d done his residency, Dan had been a very promising up-and-coming surgeon. But because of a promise he’d made to his late younger brother, also a surgeon, he’d come out to Forever to take his place. His brother had firmly believed in “giving back.” After a while, Dan began to understand what his brother had meant. And so, what was supposed to have been just a short-term mission turned into his life’s work.

Dan was surprised to discover that he’d never felt better about himself than he had this past year.

“You think she’s telling the truth?” Alma asked her brother skeptically. She looked down at the unconscious woman as Gabe placed her on the exam table, per Dan’s instructions.

It was Dan, not Gabe, who answered.

“Very possibly,” the doctor allowed. “She took a pretty good blow to the head,” he judged, sizing up the head wound on her forehead just above her right eye. “That can really shake a person up.”

“But she’s going to snap out of it, right?” Gabe asked. “It’ll all come back to her, won’t it? I mean, she’ll remember her name and why she wound up tottering on that ledge the way she did. Right?”

Dan raised his shoulders in a wide shrug. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve heard of some amnesia cases going on for years, with the patient not any closer to getting any answers than they’d been at the very beginning. With other patients, it’s only a matter of a few hours. There’s really no telling how long it could actually take.”

Years?

The single word echoed in his head as Gabe looked at the still, unconscious face. The very idea sent a chill down his spine. He couldn’t picture enduring something like that himself. It was like a virtual prison sentence that extended to eternity.

Gabe turned to the doctor. “So what do we do?” he asked.

Dan could only give him the most general of terms. Everyone was different and healed at their own pace—if they healed at all.

“We go slow,” he counseled. “Give her some space and make sure that she doesn’t feel pressured, just secure. Sometimes, the harder you try, the less progress you actually make.” Shrugging out of his coat and switching to a clean lab jacket, Dan paused to wash his hands. “Now, if you two don’t mind, I need you to leave me alone with my patient so I can attend to her wounds.”

As Gabe reluctantly began to leave, Dan raised his voice and called after him. “Stick around, though. After I get done, I think it would be a good idea to take this woman to the hospital in Pine Ridge and get a CT scan of her head to make sure that everything’s all right.” Drying his hands, he looked from one deputy to the other. “I’ll need one of you to drive her over there.”

Gabe surprised Alma by speaking up first. “I’ll do it.

“Who do you think she is?” Gabe asked her once they were in the waiting room. For now, the room appeared to be empty.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Alma told him. “We could try going through the county’s recent missing-persons files posted on the internet. If there’s no match for her, I can widen the search. With any luck, she’ll probably get her memory back before then.”

“What makes you say that?” he asked, curious.

“Well, I’d say that having a car blow up a couple of seconds after you escape out of it can be pretty traumatizing. That kind of thing can cause temporary amnesia because the person isn’t able to deal with it right when it happened. It’s the brain’s way of protecting you,” she added by way of an explanation. Alma abruptly stopped talking when she saw the quizzical way her brother was staring at her. “What?”

Gabe shook his head, clearly impressed. “I never realized you knew so much.”

“I’m not quite sure whether to be flattered that you’re impressed, or insulted because you thought I was dumb.”

“Not dumb,” he quickly corrected, and then lost some steam as he added, “just, well, my little sister.”

“And consequently, dumb,” she concluded. Alma gave him a reproving look. “You might recall that I took college courses online and that I do have a degree in criminology.”

Going to college online had been the only way she could have gotten her degree and still worked to help pay off her father’s huge pile of bills. Both causes were equally important to her.

“Must’ve slipped my mind,” Gabe confessed, then focused on what she’d said. “So you really think she’ll remember who she is?”

“If you mean is she suddenly going to pop up like toast and have total recall, probably not right away,” Alma judged, “but in time, I think it will all come back to her.”

“And in the meantime?” he asked, sounding rather eager.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Gabe,” Alma cautioned. “Just take one step at a time.”

“You’re the one who always said to be prepared,” he reminded her. “What if she never remembers who she is? Or it takes her a long time before she does? What if no one’s out there looking for her, or they didn’t have enough sense to file a missing-persons report? What’ll we do with her until then?” he asked. “There’s no motel or boardinghouse to put her up in.”

“Forever’s a nice, friendly town,” Alma pointed out and then went on to assure her brother that, “We’ll think of something. But first things first. The doc said to have her checked out at the Pine Ridge hospital once he’s finished. So we need to get her there.” Ever the protective one, especially now that her mother was gone, Alma said, “I know you volunteered, but if you’re having second thoughts, I can take her to the hospital.”

That might mean that she wouldn’t be back until morning. A newlywed, his sister belonged home at night.

Gabe laughed, turning down her offer. “And have that lawyer husband of yours with his hundred-dollar words come looking for me? No, thanks. I’ll take the mystery woman to the hospital.”

Alma’s protective streak instantly rose to defend her husband. “He only uses those words when he’s in court. You’re family.”

“And I’d like to keep on being family,” Gabe informed her. “So I’ll be the one taking her to Pine Ridge.” When he saw Alma smiling at him knowingly, it was his turn to ask, “What?”

“You’re really taken with her, aren’t you?” she asked, pleased.

Gabe stared at her. In his opinion, his sister had just made one hell of a leap—and it led to nowhere. “She’s the first person I ever rescued from a car that was about to go over the side of a ravine, and then it burst into flames, so if that’s what you mean by ‘taken,’ then, yeah, I guess I’m ‘taken’ with her.”

His eyes narrowed as he reminded her of an important point. “You were the one who thought that I should get involved in this—and by ‘this,’” he clarified, knowing how prone Alma could be to misinterpreting things if it suited her purposes, “I mean the sheriff’s department.”

“I did and I still do,” Alma was quick to agree. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. You don’t usually pay attention to anything I say.”

“That’s because, up until now,” Gabe deadpanned, “you weren’t saying anything really worthwhile listening to or going along with.”

“According to you,” she qualified.

“According to me,” he agreed with the most unreadable expression he could muster.

Alma glanced at her watch and rose to her feet.

“I’m going to go and update Rick about what’s going on with our mystery woman and then I’ll be back. If you decide that you’ve changed your mind about going to Pine Ridge—”

He cut her off. “I won’t,” Gabe assured her.

“Then never mind,” Alma said cheerfully. “Call me if something comes up,” she instructed just before she left the clinic.

“Yes, ma’am,” he called after her.

“That’s ‘Deputy Ma’am’ to you,” she tossed over her shoulder with a laugh. And then the front door closed after her.

* * *

DAN FINISHED HIS examination as well as stitching up the gash on the blonde’s forehead. His patient had remained unconscious through it all. For the time being, it was better that way for her. He was sufficiently certain that she would come around by-and-by.

Stripping off his rubber gloves and tossing them into the wastebasket, he came out into the waiting room to fill Gabe in on his findings.

“As far as I can tell, other than that gash on her forehead I had to stitch up, everything else seems all right. But I still think, just to be safe, she should get a CT scan of her head, make sure that there’s no internal bleeding that we’re overlooking.”

“Wouldn’t there be other signs if there was internal bleeding?” Gabe asked. It seemed to him that there should be, but then, that was only a guess on his part.

“Yes, but not always,” Dan told him. “Like that old saying goes, better to be safe than sorry.”

Gabe shrugged. “I’m not going to argue that, but if she doesn’t know who she is and she has no ID, she sure as hell doesn’t have any medical insurance—”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this covered,” he assured the town’s newest deputy.

Gabe only accepted so much on faith, the rest he questioned. “How?”

Dan smiled. The man wasn’t very trusting. He could relate to that. He’d been the same way before he came to Forever, holding everything suspect until proven otherwise. It was an exhausting way to live.

“I pulled a few strings. Turns out the head of the radiology department graduated in my class the same year I did. We even threw back a few together at a handful of parties.” He saw Gabe’s frown and guessed what the man was probably thinking. “Don’t worry, this job keeps you sober.”

Gabe took the man’s word for it. “Did she wake up at all?” he asked.

Dan shook his head. “She’s still unconscious, I’m afraid.”

Gabe would have thought that the doctor would have looked a bit more concerned about that. “Shouldn’t we be worried by now?” Gabe asked.

“Not necessarily, she’s had—”

Whatever reassuring sentiment he was going to express was drowned out by the scream that pierced the air. It came from inside the exam room that Dan had just left.

“Maybe we should start worrying now,” Gabe commented as both he and Dan rushed back into the exam room.

They found the woman standing unsteadily before a mirror, her hands braced on either side of it to keep from falling to the floor. The expression reflected back appeared absolutely horrified.

Seeing the men coming in behind her, the woman turned to face them. The movement was just a tad too sudden and it threw her equilibrium—still wobbly—off. She looked as if she was about to fall, but Gabe reached her first, catching hold of her and helping her remain vertical.

Her eyes were wild as they went from the man holding on to her, to the slightly shorter man in the white lab coat. It was obvious that she was trying to place them—and couldn’t.

“Why did you scream? What’s wrong?” Gabe asked her sharply.

He’d come very close to drawing his service revolver. He had a feeling that would have frightened the blonde even more. She needed to trust him if they were ever going to get to the bottom of this.

In response to his question, the woman pointed at the image in the mirror as if she was pointing at someone she didn’t know. There was uncertainty in her voice as she asked, “That’s me, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Dan answered, his tone calm, low.

She continued staring as disbelief sank in. “I look like hell.”

“That’s because you’ve been through hell,” Gabe replied.

A shaky sigh escaped her lips. Then, unable to stand what she saw, the blonde turned away and looked at the two men who’d burst into the room, searching their faces. “What happened to me?”

“You were in a car accident,” Gabe said gently, mimicking the voice his brother Eli used when he was training the quarter horses he sold. “When I found you, your car was on the verge of going over into a ravine. You’re a very lucky woman,” he concluded.

She didn’t know about that. Tears stung her eyes, but her rising anger kept them back.

“If I’m so lucky, why can’t I remember anything?” she demanded. “Why don’t I even know my own name or who I am?”

“Hysterical amnesia,” Dan told her. Her eyes shifted toward him, waiting—hoping—for answers. Any answers. The desperation inside her needed something to hold on to. “It happens after an accident sometimes. Victims block things out until they can handle processing them.”

“Victims,” she repeated.

Was that what she was? A victim? Did she feel like a victim? she wondered, trying to examine her feelings. Nothing came to her. She honestly didn’t know. What did victims feel like?

“Am I all right?” she asked the man in the white lab jacket.

“So far,” he replied cautiously. “But Gabe is going to take you to the hospital, to make sure.”

“Gabe?” she repeated. The name meant nothing to her. Should it have? “Who’s Gabe?”

“That would be me.” Gabe raised his hand a little, drawing her attention to him as he gave her his most reassuring smile.