This was all too much but he had more to share and he was her only link to reality.
She tried to concentrate as he went on when all she wanted to do was sleep.
‘You married last April. Your husband, my brother, died in a car accident on New Year’s Day, eight weeks ago.’
Now she was a widow? Her heart was turning somersaults in her chest and she felt sick. ‘There’s no memory of anything beyond waking up a short time ago.’ She fought against rising panic and stared around the walls of the room, as if the secret of her lost life could be found there.
She felt abandoned, confused, and at the mercy of these people she didn’t recognise. She heard the shake in her voice but there was nothing she could do about it because she was doing well to avoid lapsing into hysterics.
She shook her head and then grimaced at the discomfort. Maybe she should worry about all this later. She didn’t think she could do it now. ‘Whatever. I can’t remember anything. My head hurts.’
She shut her eyes and then opened them again. This had to be a big mistake. ‘Do I know you well? Are you sure you’re right?’
She hadn’t fazed him. How could he be so calm when her whole past life had disappeared? His voice was even and unruffled as he went on. ‘Except for the accident, we’ve never met. Your identification was in the backpack.’
She glanced at the bag on the shelf again. ‘How do you know it’s my backpack?’
‘It was on your back when I found you.’
‘You were there?’
She nodded and then stared at him. His kind blue eyes kindled a flame of recognition and a strange feeling of comfort and safety finally seeped into her.
He was a good man. She felt it, so she supposed she’d have to believe him and trust in his word. As she looked into his eyes, a strange, deeper recognition began to shimmer between them, and she couldn’t look away.
She remembered. He had been there in the wreckage. ‘So it was you and not a dream.’
He cleared his throat and his hand tightened on hers. ‘It’s a miracle you can remember anything. The scene was chaotic.’
‘I don’t remember much, but I remember…’ Her eyes widened and she remembered the pain in her stomach. Her voice dropped to a whisper as the ache of realisation hit her. Her baby. ‘I was pregnant!’
She pulled her hand out of his hold and slid her fingers slowly under the covers to her flat stomach. It was then she felt the loss of her baby within. Her rounded stomach had gone, replaced by emptiness, and she hadn’t been awake to know.
Her hand returned above the sheets and searched for his. ‘Did I lose my baby?’
‘No.’ He let that answer seep in slowly.
Desiree didn’t understand. ‘What month is this?’ She swallowed the ball of fear and grief in her throat and prepared herself for the worst. Tears pricked her eyes as she sucked in her flat stomach. My poor baby.
With her fingers clutched around his, a small measure of comfort warmed the sudden coldness of her soul.
‘No, your baby is alive but it is the twenty-sixth of February, so she has some growing to do,’ he said.
She paused before she looked at him again, afraid that if she saw his face he would retract that tiny hope she’d heard him correctly.
His fingers tightened their grip on her hand. ‘After the accident you went into premature labour. We didn’t know you were in labour until just before she was born.’
Desiree remembered the pain in stomach. ‘You said she. I had a girl?’
‘We estimate your daughter was born eleven weeks early but she is stable at the moment. She will need to stay in a large hospital like this one, if all goes well, for the next few months. She’s in our neonatal intensive care two floors down.’
Her daughter was alive. There was hope. ‘Eleven weeks is very early. I’m sure of that.’
‘Your daughter is breathing for herself and seems to be adapting to the outside world well, considering she wasn’t ready for us—and you had lost a lot of blood. She weighed just over a kilogram and is a fighter.’
He smiled and Desiree remembered his eyes again from the train crash. How could she remember that and not her own name? But there was something infinitely reassuring about sharing that one memory at least.
‘Your daughter has already shown she has the will to survive, like her mother.’ There was no mistaking he admired her baby for that. ‘And she is in the next best place to grow.’
Desiree’s heart pounded. She had a baby daughter. ‘When can I see her?’
He produced a digital print of a tiny baby in a humidicrib and passed it over to her. A thin red-faced skinned rabbit looked back at her.
A lost baby, a lost pregnancy, a baby she would have dreamed of meeting in a wondrous birth surrounded by people who loved her. Too many losses to cope with. Tears welled as she thought of her daughter alone, in a crib, and she couldn’t be with her. ‘When…?’
‘Perhaps you can see her this evening. You’ve only just regained consciousness. I’m not your doctor, but he’d agree it’s too soon to go riding around the hospital, even in a wheelchair.’
She sagged back. Even that small exertion had tired her.
‘We are taking good care of your daughter and she is stable at the moment.’
She could hardly believe her pregnancy was over before it had even been remembered.
Then he said something even more frightening. ‘It worries me you haven’t asked about your other child.’
Desiree watched his lips move but the words seem to come from a long way off as she wondered what her tiny daughter looked like.
He spoke again. ‘Do you remember I said you were a widow with another child? You have a twelve-month-old. Shall we bring Sophie to you? They have her down in the children’s ward for observation.’
She tore her thoughts away from the picture of her tiny baby and looked at him blankly.
He explained again. ‘Your other daughter? You told me to keep her safe when we first met.’
The other baby? What else had she forgotten? Had another child been mentioned? Perhaps. ‘You may have said that before but I don’t remember.’
Desiree frowned as she tried to remember. She had heard a baby crying in the wreckage. Had that baby been hers? ‘I heard her cry.’
How could she not recall her own flesh and blood? Was that possible? It didn’t make senses. What if it was a mistake, or a conspiracy, or a bad dream? ‘I wish I remembered.’
The first of his revelations rose to stun her again. ‘I can’t believe I was married and don’t remember.’
Stewart
