“Thank you,” she said genuinely. Then her gaze returned to me.
It was hard to describe how I felt when she looked at me. It didn’t matter if it was a lingering gaze or just a swift glance. I’d only been with her mere moments, but already her stare was as essential to me as air.
“You’ll stay?” she asked, her voice unsure and shy.
Always. “I’ll be right there.”
The second the door latched behind her, putting a barrier between us, I levelled my eyes on the doctor. “I won’t stay away from her.”
“Yes. You’ve made that abundantly clear.”
“I won’t hurt her.”
He sighed, defeated. “I know that, Eddie. You and your family are good people. This isn’t about you.”
“It is.” I lashed out quietly. “I’m part of this, too.”
The doctor pinched the bridge of his nose. “She has a severe case of amnesia. The kind that’s brought on by trauma.”
“Will her memory come back?” I had to know.
“I have no way of predicting that.”
I stepped closer, lowering my voice. “Do you think it’s her?”
“You know it’s not,” he said sadly.
“But is it possible?” I pressed. I was probably the last person in this town, on this planet, who refused to give up hope.
He didn’t want to say it, but he couldn’t lie. Not to me. Not to himself. Hell, the entire town was speculating. “There are several similarities, and the age does seem to be about right.”
“And the fact no one has come to claim her.”
I’ll claim her. I’ll claim her right now.
“Don’t get your hopes up, son.” Dr. Beck put his hand on my shoulder. “Even if by some slim chance this is her, she isn’t the same. She never will be.”
I couldn’t hear that. I didn’t want to.
I turned to go into the room, but Dr. Beck stopped me. “You can’t tell her, not yet. She’s fragile. Her mind is still coming to terms with her new reality. Too much, too soon will only hurt her further.”
Frustration welled within me. I wanted to march in there and pour it all out. Tell her everything and then hope recognition brimmed in her eyes.
I couldn’t.
Actions like that, words like the ones bubbling inside me were pollution to her. She needed a friend. Someone to be there. No pressure to be anything other than who she was in that moment.
I didn’t know how to do that, but I also couldn’t stay away.
My head bobbed. “I can do that. I won’t say anything.”
“Keep her calm. Be her friend. Take it slow. Any signs of memory recovery, call me immediately.”
I nodded.
Dr. Beck moved to walk away. I grabbed his wrist. “How, um… how bad was it for her?”
His eyes darkened and his mouth pulled into a taut line. “You mean whatever it was that caused the complete dissociation?”
I nodded.
“Severe. So severe…” He stopped and shook his head.
“What?” I cajoled.
“So severe it may be better if she never gets her memory back.”
The last thing I expected was to fall into the arms of a dark-haired, blue-eyed man with dimples for days.
Not that I really expected anything. I mean, that’s all there was for me. Nothing.
I thought maybe the man who found me was a fisherman or someone older… less attractive.
I guess there was something else I could add to my ever-growing list of character traits. I liked men. Or rather, I found one in particular attractive.
Eddie was attractive; I couldn’t deny it. So handsome it filled in some of that stark silence in my mind. His face was exactly what I needed to mull over when nothing else was there. The blue of his eyes was almost startling, reminding of what the sky looked like on a summer day. The blue was accentuated by dark, long lashes and a head of hair so dark it made me think of midnight. It was thick and curly, kind of unruly in the sense it flopped over his forehead and ears. I liked his jawline, too, the strength in it, the clean line. I bet when he got angry and it flexed, it would make my stomach flip.
And he was tall, too. So tall. I had to crane my neck back to study him. When I almost fell and he was there, I noted the warmth of his skin, how alive he felt, even the erratic beating of his heart.
Settling back into the bed, I marveled at my own thoughts. It amazed me how effectively my mind was whirling, how noticing mere details on someone sprang alive parts of me that I thought were gone, too. It gave me hope. Hope that maybe I wasn’t as lost as everyone assumed.
Surely if I suspected the flexing of a man’s jaw would cause my tummy to quiver and understood a summer sky was blue and the midnight sky was black, then there was so much more buried inside me.
Right?
I had no idea. The things I was thinking could just be common knowledge, things my brain didn’t feel necessary to dump. I was overwhelmed, and it embarrassed me. I’d walked a few feet down the hall for crying out loud. I saw one person. One. Yet here I was trembling in my bed as if I’d seen a ghost, trying to figure out the meaning of life.
The door opened slowly. Eddie poked his dark, curly head inside. A little bit of my anxiety melted away. Enough so I was able to breathe.
“Still okay if I come in?” he asked.
I nodded.
I liked the way he didn’t stride right in, allowing the heavy door to slam behind him. Instead, he slid in, turned around, and guided the door shut softly. My eyes couldn’t depart from him even when he was turned away. Eddie was lean and long. His shoulders were broad, but they would have to be to support his height. He was dressed in a pair of faded jeans that were frayed at the hems, like he’d owned them a long time and barely wore shoes so they dragged the ground.
His shirt was navy blue and written on the back in white were the words “Loch General.” I had no idea what that was. There was also what looked like a picture of the Loch Ness Monster. The shoes on his feet were plain sneakers, all white with some blue stripes down the sides.
He ignored the rolling stool all the doctors used, instead reaching for the chair against the wall, and dragged it over beside the bed. It was like he planned to stay a while. The chair was more permanent than the stool. With a heavy sigh, he sat down, leaned back, and propped his shoes on the side of my bed.
“Your shoes are dirty,” I said, glancing down at the soles.
He made a small laughing sound and grinned. He had an ornery grin, the kind that said he got away with basically everything. Eddie pulled his feet off the blankets and made a show of kicking off the shoes. The sound they made on the tile was distinct. When it was done, his feet reappeared on my bed, this time covered in white socks.
“Better?” he asked, not bothered in the least.
I nodded once. “Much.”
He smiled again, and even though I barely knew anything, I understood the twinkle in his eyes was something rare. Something pure.
“So how are they treating you in here? How’s the food?”