Free If She Only Knew by Lisa Jackson Page B

looked around the room. A window offered a view of a parking lot, and farther away stretched an expanse of green water, probably part of the Bay, considering the name of the hospital. She reached over and thumbed through the cards left at the bedside, reading them and wondering who the people were who had signed their names. Bill and Sheryl, Gloria and Bob, Joanna and Ted, Anna, Christian, Mario. Not one rang a bell, but then neither did her own. Marla Amhurst Cahill. Dear God, why did she wear the name like a pair of oversized shoes?
    Her head was throbbing and as she set the water glass on the table and leaned back in the bed, she suddenly remembered a face, a man’s face. Rugged and rough-hewn with tanned skin, chiseled features, and thick black eyebrows on a ledge over intense, laser blue eyes.
    Her throat tightened at the memory.
    There had been something about him that was unnerving and rough; an edge about him that she’d sensed. He’d joked, but hadn’t smiled. He’d been in this room and he’d said he was Nick. The outlaw . . . That’s what he’d called himself. And there was something about him that had been . . . distrustful or sinister; she’d sensed it even in their brief encounter.
    Her pulse pounded. He hadn’t been lying. He’d looked like some sort of twenty-first century Jesse James with his leather jacket, tanned complexion and jeans.
    But this was crazy. She was a married woman. She had only to look at her left hand to prove it. There, winking under the dimmed lights, wrapped around her third finger was a ring that glimmered with diamonds set deep into a wide gold band. Her wedding ring. Staring at the shiny piece she remembered nothing about the day it was placed on her finger or of the man who had presumably said “I do,” and slipped it over her knuckles.
    Think, Marla, think!
    Nothing.
    Not a clue.
    She wanted to scream in frustration.
    Looking at the band was not unlike staring into Nick Cahill’s eyes. No quicksilver flashback of another time and place, not one glimmer of recollection, no reaction other than a keen sense of curiosity. About the man. About her marriage. About her children. About herself.
    â€œSo you did wake up.” A tall man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a white lab coat had pushed open the door and was walking inside. He wore a pencil-thin moustache that set off his thin face. Completely bald with too many teeth crammed into a small mouth, he said, “Do you remember me?” then must’ve read the dismay in her eyes. “Don’t worry about it. Amnesia sometimes follows a coma . . . it should clear up.” His smile was meant to instill confidence. “Just for the record, I’m Dr. Robertson.” He leaned down and shone a penlight into her eyes. “How do you feel?”
    â€œAwful,” she admitted. No reason to sugarcoat it.
    â€œI imagine. Any pain in your jaw?”
    â€œTons.”
    â€œYour head?” He was eyeing the top of her crown.
    â€œIt aches like crazy.”
    â€œWe’ll get you something for it. Now, tell me about your memory.”
    â€œWhat memory?” she asked, trying not to wince as he moved his light from her left eye to the right.
    â€œThat bad?”
    She thought, and even the act of concentrating increased the pressure in her head. “Pretty bad. Saying I was foggy would be optimistic.” She forced the words out through teeth that felt clamped into cement.
    He leaned back, clicked off his light and folded his arms over his thin chest. “Tell me about yourself.”
    Wow. She thought. Dig deep. “It’s . . . it’s weird. I know some things, like, oh, I can read, understand, think I’m pretty good at math, but I don’t remember taking it. I think I like horses and dogs and the beach and scary movies . . . but . . .” She swallowed the lump forming in her throat, and forced her lips to move around her immobile