“I’m sorry. But you want your husband back as strong and healthy as before, don’t you?”
“Of course. Thank heaven it went well,” she cried, grasping his hand. “Thank you for everything.”
“Your husband is a fortunate man,” he said, eyeing her slender curves and fine-boned, delicate features with obvious and very masculine appreciation. “I can’t say I blame him for wanting to marry you on the spot. I’ve got a hunch you’ll be the reason he recovers in record time, too. My advice is that you get some rest now, Mrs. Mendez. I’ll be around to see both you and your husband in the morning.”
After he left the desk the chaplain turned to her, smiling. “I told you that you had nothing to worry about, didn’t I? Are you ready to leave? I’m on my way home, and I’d be happy to drop you some place.”
“Thank you. I appreciate your kindness more than you know, but our rental car’s outside with the luggage. It was hardly damaged—just a dent. I’ll find a motel and manage just fine.”
The chaplain recommended a nearby motel and wished her good-night and a safe drive.
But Kit hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to get back in the car, to sit where Rafe had been sitting when he was injured. It brought back the horror of his accident all too clearly. A new rush of pain almost immobilized her, and she arrived at the motel too distressed to think of resting.
She’d never known a night could pass so slowly. Her sleep, when it did come, was fitful. In her anxiety she got up repeatedly to pace the motel room floor, staring at Rafe’s gold and ruby seal ring, which was too large for her finger and kept slipping off. It had been passed down to the first-born son through four generations of Mendezes and given to him by his father, Don Fernando. Afraid of losing something so priceless, she reached for her handbag and put it in one of the zippered compartments where it would be safe.
By eight o’clock the next morning, she’d had some juice and a sweet roll provided by the motel, then gone straight to the hospital’s emergency room desk. Relief flooded through her when she was given permission to go straight to the ICU. Dr. Penman met her at the door and took her aside.
“Your husband had a good night and is resting comfortably. So far, there are no complications, no fever. Even so, I’m only allowing you to see him for a moment because he’s a little hazy and confused.”
“Is that normal?” Kit asked in alarm.
He nodded. “Quite often we see post-op head-injury patients experience this reaction. It doesn’t usually last very long. But every case is unique and no two patients respond the same way. I wanted you to be aware of this so you wouldn’t say or do anything to upset him. Just behave naturally. Shall we go in?”
Her emotions ranged from longing and anticipation to fresh anxiety as she hurried into the room ahead of the doctor. Rafe lay perfectly still in the hospital bed, his head swathed in a white bandage, his hard-muscled body hooked up to monitors. He was awake, following their progress with his eyes.
The relief of knowing he’d come through the operation so well and that his color was so much better had her rushing to his side. “Darling?” she whispered. She reached out to touch his upper arm where the bronzed skin was exposed below the hospital gown. “How are you? I’ve missed you,” she said anxiously.
His interested gaze wandered over her mouth and eyes, the shape of her face. But there was no hint of recognition. Until this moment she’d never seen him look at her with anything but desire and passion. And anger, when she’d told him she couldn’t see him anymore because their relationship was destroying his family.
The change in him staggered her.
She rubbed his arm gently, hoping the physical contact might help. “Darling? It’s Kit. I love you.”
“Kit?” He said her name experimentally, with that light Spanish accent she loved.
“Yes. Do you remember we were married last night? I’m your wife now.” He still didn’t respond. She fought to quell her rising panic. “How do you feel? Are you in pain?”
He muttered some Spanish phrases she couldn’t understand, then closed his eyes. Dr. Penman signaled to her from the other side of the bed, where he’d been conferring with the nurse. In acute distress Kit followed him into the hall.
“He didn’t know me!” She choked on the words. “When you told me he was confused I thought—” She shook her head. “I had no idea he wouldn’t even recognize me.”
The doctor looked at her with compassion. “This is only temporary. Do you remember the skier last year who fell during a race in Switzerland? She suffered a concussion and temporary amnesia after her fall. Give your husband another twenty-four hours and he’ll be himself again, just like she was.
“Call the desk tonight after I’ve made rounds. If he’s more lucid, you can visit him for a few minutes. If not, call again in the morning after eight.”
Kit phoned twelve hours later but there’d been no change in Rafe’s condition. When seventy-two hours passed and he still had no memory of her or what had happened to him, Dr. Penman ordered another CT test, along with blood tests and a toxicology screen. But the results indicated that nothing was organically wrong.
Feeling as though she were in the middle of a nightmare, Kit met with Dr. Penman and a Dr. Noyes, the staff psychiatrist who’d been called in for consultation.
“Why doesn’t he remember me, Dr. Noyes? What’s going on? I’m frightened.”
“I don’t blame you,” the psychiatrist replied. “Memory loss is not only disturbing to the patient, but to his loved ones, as well.”
“Have you ever seen a patient take this long to snap out of it?”
He nodded. “At the end of the Vietnam era, I was finishing up my residency in California. I worked with several patients who’d lost their memories as a result of a closed head injury during the war. These were men like your husband who had no prior physiological problem and no other complications.”
“How long did it take them to recover their memories?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and Kit gasped quietly. “Please allow me to explain, Mrs. Mendez. That was years ago and I only worked with them for a three-month period. Most likely all have regained their memories by now.”
“Three months?” She sat forward in the chair. “How can you compare war injuries to an accident as straightforward as my husband’s?”
He studied her for a long moment. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In my opinion, your husband could be suffering from what we call psychogenic loss of memory. What that means in lay terms is memory loss when there is no organic disease present. In other words, the onset of amnesia by a head injury because of a stressful event prior to the injury. With soldiers, it’s battle fatigue, terror, isolation—all things the mind would want to suppress.”
Taking off his glasses to rub his eyes he said, “With most other people, the stress generally comes from serious financial problems or an insoluble family crisis such as a disturbed parent-child or sibling relationship. In such cases, the patient’s amnesia serves to help him escape from an intolerable situation. He can’t find a rational way to deal with the circumstances, so he retreats. Is there anything in your husband’s past like that? A problem so serious that he’d want to suppress it?”
“Dear God,” Kit mused aloud and she sprang to her feet.
“What is it, Mrs. Mendez?”
Without pausing for breath she told the doctor everything about her association with the Mendez family, leaving out