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
