She shot him a tired look. “Yeah. Your favorite is the one you happen to be with at the moment. And do I need to remind you of the messes you’ve gotten me into? That time—”
“We don’t have time to go into my transgressions now, sis,” Brady interrupted as he urged his sister toward the nearest elevator. “I promise I’ll make everything up to you. Someday.”
The cubicle behind the plain beige curtain was cold and smelled faintly of disinfectant. Standing a few feet away, at the foot of the narrow, railed bed, a middle-aged doctor with dark blond hair and black rimmed glasses was scratching notes on a clipboard, while barking orders at the attending nurse.
Since arriving in the emergency unit, she’d been stripped of her boots and clothing, sponged clean and dressed in a blue cotton gown that tied at the back. The doctor had poked and prodded, asked her questions that she couldn’t answer and generally done little to assuage her fears.
Now that he’d ended his examination and was conversing with the nurse, her mind vacillated between sheer panic and a pit of total emptiness.
Scans. Sutures. Neurological tests. The medical words she managed to catch here and there made little to no sense to her.
Oh, God, who was she? Where was she? The questions pounded through her head, adding to the horrible throb in her right temple.
Thinking was like bouncing herself off a black wall where there was no door or crack of light to lead her either forward or backward. Other than waking up to see a deputy sheriff hovering over her, there was nothing in her mind, except icy, paralyzing fear.
She tried to push the terror back and keep from sobbing as the doctor exited the cubicle and the young nurse with a kind face bent over her. The name tag pinned to the left side of her chest said her name was Lilly.
“All right, miss,” she said warmly. “Let’s get some pain medication started and then we’ll see about taking you down to radiology. When that’s done someone will come around to put some stitches in your scalp.”
During the ambulance ride, the paramedics had started an intravenous drip. Now the nurse simply pushed a syringe full of medication into the tube already affixed to her hand.
“Why am I going to radiology?”
“To take pictures of your skull and brain,” the nurse replied. “Dr. Richmond needs to see if you have internal injuries.”
“Oh.” She didn’t want pictures or stitches, she wanted to scream. She wanted her memory back. “Will that take long? The tests?”
“No,” the nurse assured her. “They won’t hurt, either.”
She closed her eyes. “Um—the deputy who found me. Is he here?”
Lilly answered, “I saw Hank Ridell out in the corridor a few minutes ago. Is that who you mean?”
She opened her eyes to see the nurse was writing something on the chart the doctor had left behind.
“No. His name was Donovan, I think. He was tall and had on a gray hat and he had a little scar right here.” She touched a finger to a spot on her cheekbone near her eye.
Lilly suddenly smiled a knowing smile. “Oh. That’s Brady. He’s the chief deputy of Lincoln County. And considered quite a catch by most of the young women around here.”
The pain medication was beginning to course rapidly through her bloodstream, easing the pounding in her head. “Including you?” she asked the nurse.
Lilly blushed and laughed. “No. I have a boyfriend. Besides, I’m not in Brady Donovan’s league.” She placed the chart in a holder at the foot of the bed, then studied her more closely. “Did you need to talk with the deputy for some reason?”
There were a thousand things she wanted to ask the man, things that might help jar her memory. But that wasn’t entirely the reason she wanted to see the deputy again. He’d been nice and gentle. He’d held her with strong hands and soothed her with his low voice. At some point during their wait for the ambulance, he’d become her light in a heavy fog. She’d not wanted to leave him and now she fervently wished he was back by her side.
“I would like to speak with him. If you think that’s possible.”
Smiling, Lilly winked at her. “While you’re in radiology I’ll do my best to find him.”
The nurse quickly swished out the door and as she watched her go, she desperately prayed the woman would find the deputy.
Her world had gone crazy and he was the only person, the only thing her memory had to go back to. She was totally and utterly lost. And without Deputy Donovan, she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to find her way back home.
Chapter Two
More than an hour later, Brady and Hank were sitting in the hospital coffee shop, finishing off huge slices of pie when Bridget walked up to their table.
Shaking her head, she looked at the crumbs on their plates. “Looks like both of you are really worried about good nutrition,” she said wryly.
“Pecan pie must be good for you or the hospital wouldn’t serve it, right?” Hank asked.
“Wrong. But it looks delicious,” she said with a weary sigh.
Immediately, Hank jumped from his seat and pulled out a chair for her.
“Did you see our Jane Doe?” Brady questioned before she had time to get comfortable.
The doctor thanked Hank, then pushed a hand through her tumbled hair. “I did,” she said to Brady. “And I’ve become her doctor. For the time being.”
“I’m glad. So what about her condition?” Brady questioned.
His sister frowned at him. “I can’t give you details, Brady. You know that’s invading a patient’s privacy.”
Brady muttered a curse word under his breath. For the past two hours he’d not been able to think about anything except the gray-eyed woman he’d held in his arms. Now his sister wanted to act all professional with him.
“Damn it, Brita, just tell me—is she going to get better? Is she going to be able to remember? Tell us who she is?”
Bridget studied him keenly, and then glanced pointedly at Hank. “What has he done, had a love-at-first-sight experience?”
Hank grinned. “You mean another one?”
Normally Brady liked to joke. In fact, Fiona Donovan had often called him her most lighthearted child, full of happiness and humor. But at the moment he wasn’t feeling anything of the sort. In fact, he was getting a tad angry at both his sister and his partner.
Scowling, Brady muttered to the both of them, “I’m not in the mood for this!”
Seeing he was serious, Bridget relented. “Okay, brother, I’ll be straightforward. Your Jane Doe will get better. The good news is that physically she’s fine. She wasn’t raped, and aside from some bruising on her arms and legs she isn’t seriously injured. As for her memory, how long that might take is a question I can’t answer.”
“Are you kiddin’ me?”
Reaching across the table, she patted the back of his hand. “No. Medicine is not always an exact science. And head injuries are sometimes tricky. She might remember everything in the next few minutes, years from now, something in-between, or never.”
The picture of awful uncertainty his sister was painting hit Brady like a fist to his mouth. No matter the circumstances that caused the injury, the woman didn’t deserve this.
“Isn’t there something you can do to make her remember? Give her some sort of drug?”
“Trust me, Brady. If she doesn’t improve quickly,