What had happened to her? She had seen no cast on her legs or her arms; nothing ached in her body or her limbs. Except for the slender plastic tubing snaking into her arm, she might have awakened from a nap.
Was there a bell to ring? She lifted her head from the pillow. Surely there was a way to call some...
“Ahh!”
Pain lanced through her skull with the keenness of a knife. She fell back and shut her eyes against it.
“Mrs. Adams?”
Joanna’s breath hissed from between her teeth.
“Mrs. Adams, do you hear me? Open your eyes, please, Mrs. Adams, and look at me.”
It hurt, God, it hurt, but she managed to look up into a stern female face that was instantly softened by a smile.
“That’s the way, Mrs. Adams. Good girl. How do you feel?”
Joanna opened her mouth but nothing came out. The nurse nodded sympathetically.
“Wait a moment. Let me moisten your lips with some ice chips. There, how’s that?”
“My head hurts,” Joanna said in a cracked whisper.
The nurse’s smile broadened, as if something wonderful had happened.
“Of course it does, dear. I’m sure the doctor will give you something for it as soon as he’s seen you. I’ll just go and get him...”
Joanna’s hand shot out. She caught the edge of the woman’s crisp white sleeve.
“Please,” she said, “what happened to me?”
“Doctor Corbett will explain everything, Mrs. Adams.”
“Was I in an accident? I don’t remember. A car. A taxi...”
“Hush now, dear.” The woman extricated herself gently from Joanna’s grasp and made her way toward the door. “Just lie back and relax, Mrs. Adams. I’ll only be a moment.”
“Wait!”
The single word stopped the nurse with its urgency. She paused in the doorway and swung around.
“What is it, Mrs. Adams?”
Joanna stared at the round, kindly face. She felt the seconds flying away from her with every pounding beat of her heart.
“You keep calling me...you keep saying, ‘Mrs. Adams...’”
She saw the. sudden twist in the nurse’s mouth, the dawning of sympathetic realization in the woman’s eyes.
“Can you tell me,” Joanna said in a broken whisper, “can you tell me who... What I mean is, could you tell me, please, who I am?”
The doctor came. Two doctors, actually, one a pleasant young man with a gentle touch and another, an older man with a patrician air and a way of looking at her as if she weren’t really there while he poked and prodded but that was OK because Joanna felt as if she wasn’t really there, surely not here in this bed, in this room, without any idea in the world of who she was.
“Mrs. Adams” they all called her, and like some well-trained dog, she learned within moments to answer to the name, to extend her arm and let them take out the tubing, to say “Yes?” when one of them addressed her by the name, but who was Mrs. Adams?
Joanna only knew that she was here, in this room, and that to all intents and purposes, her life had begun an hour before.
She asked questions, the kind she’d never heard anywhere but in a bad movie and even when she thought that, it amazed her that she’d know there was such a thing as a bad movie.
But the doctor, the young one, said that was what amnesia was like, that you remembered some things and not others, that it wasn’t as if your brain had been wiped clean of everything, and Joanna thought thank goodness for that or she would lie here like a giant turnip. She said as much to the young doctor and he laughed and she laughed, even though it hurt her head when she did, and then, without any warning, she wasn’t laughing at all, she was sobbing as if her heart were going to break, and a needle slid into her arm and she fell into oblivion.
It was nighttime when she woke next.
The room was dark, except for the light seeping in from the hushed silence of the corridor just outside the partly open door. The blackness beyond the windowpane was broken by the glow of lights from what surely had to be a city.
Joanna stirred restlessly. “Nurse?” she whispered.
“Joanna.”
She knew the voice. It was the same masculine one that she’d heard an eternity ago when she’d surfaced from unconsciousness.
“Yes,” she said.
She heard the soft creak of leather and a shape rose from the chair beside her bed. Slowly, carefully, she turned her head on the pillow.
His figure was shrouded in shadow, his face indistinct She could see only that he was big and broad of shoulder, that he seemed powerful, almost mystical in the darkness.
“Joanna,” he said again, his voice gruff as she’d remembered it yet tinged now with a husky softness. His hand closed over hers and this time she had no difficulty flexing her fingers and threading them through his, clasping his hand and holding on as if to a lifeline. “Welcome back,” he said, and she could hear the smile and the relief in the words.
Joanna swallowed hard. There was so much she wanted to ask, but it seemed so stupid to say, “who am I?” or “who are you?” or “where am I?” or “how did I get here?”
“You probably have a lot of questions,” he said, and she almost sobbed with relief.
“Yes,” she murmured.
He nodded. “Ask them, then—or shall I get the nurse first? Do you need anything? Want anything? Water, or some cracked ice, or perhaps you need to go to the bathroom?”
“Answers,” Joanna said urgently, her hand tightening on his, “I need answers.”
“Of course. Shall I turn up the light?”
“No,” she said quickly. If he turned up the light, this would all become real. And it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. “No, it’s fine this way, thank you.”
“Very well, then.” The bed sighed as he sat down beside her. His hip brushed against hers, and she could feel the heat of him, the strength and the power. “Ask away, and I’ll do my best to answer.”
Joanna licked her lips. “What—what happened? I mean, how did I get here? Was there an accident?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“I seem to remember... I don’t know. It was raining, I think.”
“Yes,” he said again. His hand tightened on hers. “It was.”
“I stepped off the curb. The light was with me, I’d checked because... because...” She frowned. There was a reason, she knew there was, and it had something to do with him, but how could it when she didn’t...when she had no idea who he...
Joanna whimpered, and the man bent down and clasped her shoulders.
“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s all right, Joanna.”
It wasn’t, though. The touch of his hands on her was gentle but she could feel the tightly leashed rage in him, smell its hot, masculine scent on the carefully filtered hospital air.
“The taxi...”
“Yes.”
“It—it came flying through the intersection...”
“Hush.”
“I