“Since you were six or seven, I believe.”
She seemed to have trouble swallowing again. He had to fist his hands against the need to rush to her side again.
His heart still hammered in protest against his restraint when she finally whispered, “Do I have a mother? A family?”
“Your mother remarried and you have four half siblings. Three brothers and one sister. They all live in New York City.”
“D-do they know what happened to me?”
“I did inform them. Yesterday.” He hadn’t even thought of doing so until his head nurse had stressed the necessity of alerting her next of kin. For the seventh time. He hadn’t even registered the six previous times she had mentioned it. He waited for her next logical question. If they were on their way here to claim responsibility for her.
His gut tightened. Even with all he had against her, not the least of which was the reaction she wrenched from him, he hated to have to answer that question. To do so, he’d have to tell her that her family’s response to her danger had been so offhand, he’d ended the phone call with her mother on a barked, “Don’t bother explaining your situation to me, Mrs. Doherty. I’m sure you’d be of more use at your husband’s business dinner than you would be at Cybele’s bedside.”
But her next question did not follow a logical progression. Just as this whole conversation, which she’d steered, hadn’t. “So …what happened to me?”
And this was a question he wanted to avoid as fiercely.
No way to do that now that she’d asked so directly. He exhaled. “You were in a plane crash.”
A gasp tore out of her. “I just knew I was in an accident, that I wasn’t attacked or anything, but I thought it was an MVA or something. But …a plane crash?” She seemed to struggle with air that had gone thick, lodging in her lungs. He rocked on his heels with the effort not to rush to her with an oxygen mask and soothing hands. “Were there many injured o-or worse?”
Dios. She really remembered nothing. And he was the one who had to tell her. Everything. “It was a small plane. Seated four. There were only …two onboard this time.”
“Me and the pilot? I might not remember anything, but I just know I can’t fly a plane, small or otherwise.”
This was getting worse and worse. He didn’t want to answer her. He didn’t want to relive the three days before she’d woken up, that had gouged their scars in his psyche and soul.
He could pretend he had a surgery, escape her interrogation.
He couldn’t. Escape. Stop himself from answering her. “He was flying the plane, yes.” “Is—is he okay, too?”
Rodrigo gritted his teeth against the blast of pain that detonated behind his sternum. “He’s dead.”
“Oh, God ….” Her tears brimmed again and he couldn’t help himself anymore. He closed the distance he’d put between them, stilled the tremors of her hand with both of his. “D-did he die on impact?”
He debated telling her that he had. He could see survivor’s guilt mushrooming in her eyes. What purpose did it serve to tell her the truth but make her more miserable?
But then he always told his patients the truth. Sooner or later that always proved the best course of action.
He inhaled. “He died on the table after a six-hour surgery.”
During those hours, he’d wrestled with death, gaining an inch to lose two to its macabre pull, knowing that it would win the tug-of-war. But what had wrecked his sanity had been knowing that while he fought this losing battle, Cybele had been lying in his ER tended to by others.
Guilt had eaten through him. Triage had dictated he take care of her first, the one likely to survive. But he couldn’t have let Mel go without a fight. It had been an impossible choice. Emotionally, professionally, morally. He’d gone mad thinking she’d die or suffer irreversible damage because he’d made the wrong one.
Then he’d lost the fight for Mel’s life among colleagues’ proclamations that it had been a miracle he’d even kept him alive for hours when everyone had given up on him at the accident scene.
He’d rushed to her, knowing that while he’d exercised the ultimate futility on Mel, her condition had worsened. Terror of losing her, too, had been the one thing giving him continued access to what everyone extolled as his vast medical knowledge and surgical expertise.
“Tell me, please. The details of his injuries.”
He didn’t want to tell her how terrible it had all been.
But he had to. He inhaled a stream of what felt like aerosolized acid, then told her.
Her tears flowed steadily over a face gone numb with horror throughout his chilling report.
She finally whispered, “How did the accident happen?”
He needed this conversation to be over. He gritted his teeth. “That is one thing only you can know for sure. And it’ll probably be the last memory to return. The crash site and plane were analyzed for possible whys and hows. The plane shows no signs of malfunction and there were no distress transmissions prior to the crash.”
“So the pilot just lost control of the plane?”
“It would appear so.”
She digested this for a moment. “What about my injuries?”
“You should only concern yourself now with recuperating.”
“But I need to know a history of my injuries, their progression and management, to chart my recuperation.”
He grudgingly conceded her logic. “On site, you were unconscious. You had a severely bleeding scalp wound and bruising all over your body. But your severest injury was comminuted fractures of your left ulna and radius.”
She winced as she looked down on her splinted arm. “What was my Glasgow Coma Scale scoring?”
“Eleven. Best eye response was three, with your eyes opening only in response to speech. Best verbal response was four, with your speech ranging from random words to confused responses. Best motor function was four with flexion withdrawal response to pain. By the time I operated on you, your GCS had plunged to five.”
“Ouch. I was heading for decorticate coma. Did I have intracranial hemorrhage?”
He gave a difficult nod. “It must have been a slow leak. Your initial CTs and MRIs revealed nothing but slight brain edema, accounting for your depressed consciousness. But during the other surgery, I was informed of your deteriorating neurological status, and new tests showed a steadily accumulating subdural hematoma.”
“You didn’t shave my hair evacuating it.”
“No need. I operated via a new minimally invasive technique I’ve developed.”
She gaped at him. “You’ve developed a new surgical technique? Excuse
