LITMIR.BIZ

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I compare them to the memories I’ve been accumulating since I regained consciousness. I remember those in Technicolor, frame by frame, each accompanied by sounds and scents and sensations. But the things I just recalled came in colorless, soundless and shapeless, like skeletons of data and knowledge. Like headings without articles. If that makes any sense.”

      He lowered his eyes to his feet, before raising them again, the surgeon in him assessing. “It makes plenty of sense. I’ve dealt with a lot of post-traumatic amnesia cases, studied endless records, and no one described returning memories with more economy and efficiency than you just did. But it’s still early. Those skeletal memories will be fleshed out eventually….”

      “I don’t want them fleshed out. I want them to stop coming, I want what came back to disappear.” She squeezed her shoulder, inducing more pain, to counteract the skewer turning in her gut. “They’ll keep exploding in my mind until they blow it apart.”

      “What did you remember this time?”

      Her shoulders sagged. “That Mel was a paraplegic.”

      He didn’t nod or blink or breathe. He just held her gaze. It was the most profound and austere acknowledgment.

      And she moaned the rest, “And I’m pregnant.”

      He blinked, slowly, the motion steeped in significance. He knew. And it wasn’t a happy knowledge. Why?

      One explanation was that she’d been leaving Mel, but he’d become paralyzed and she’d discovered her pregnancy and it had shattered their plans. Was that the origin of the antipathy she had felt radiating from him from time to time? Was he angry at her for leading him on then telling him that she couldn’t leave her husband now that he was disabled and she was expecting his child?

      She wouldn’t know unless he told her. It didn’t seem he was volunteering any information.

      She exhaled. “Judging from my concave abdomen, I’m in the first trimester.”

      “Yes.” Then as if against his better judgment, he added, “You’re three weeks pregnant.”

      “Three weeks …?. How on earth do you know that? Even if you had a pregnancy test done among others before my surgery, you can’t pinpoint the stage of my pregnancy that accurate—” Her words dissipated under another gust of realization. “I’m pregnant through IVF. That’s how you know how far along I am.”

      “Actually, you had artificial insemination. Twenty days ago.” “Don’t tell me. You know the exact hour I had it, too.” “It was performed at 1:00 p.m.”

      She gaped at him, finding nothing to explain that too-specific knowledge. And the whole scenario of her pregnancy.

      If it had been unplanned and she’d discovered it after she’d decided to leave Mel, that would still make her a cold-blooded two-timer. But it hadn’t been unplanned. Pregnancies didn’t come more planned than that. Evidently, she’d wanted to have a baby with Mel. So much that she’d made one through a procedure, when he could no longer make one with her the normal way. The intimate way.

      So their marriage had been healthy. Until then. Which gave credence to Rodrigo’s claim that they’d been planning a honeymoon. Maybe to celebrate her pregnancy.

      So how come her first reaction to his death was bitter relief, and to her pregnancy such searing dismay?

      What kind of twisted psyche did she have?

      There was only one way to know. Rodrigo. He kept filling in the nothingness that had consumed most of what seemed to have been a maze of a life. But he was doing so reluctantly, cautiously, probably being of the school that thought providing another person’s memories would make reclaiming hers more difficult, or would taint or distort them as they returned.

      She didn’t care. Nothing could be more tainted or distorted than her own interpretations. Whatever he told her would provide context, put it all in a better light. Make her someone she could live with. She had to pressure him into telling her what he knew….Her streaking thoughts shrieked to a halt.

      She couldn’t believe she hadn’t wondered. About how he knew what he knew. She’d let his care sweep her up, found his knowledge of her an anchoring comfort she hadn’t thought to question.

      She blurted out the questions under pressure. “Just how do you know all this? How do you know me? And Mel?”

      The answer detonated in her mind.

      It was that look in his eyes. Barely curbed fierceness leashed behind the steel control of the surgeon and the suave refinement of the man. She remembered that look. Really remembered it. Not after she’d kissed him. Long before that. In that life she didn’t remember.

      In that life, Rodrigo had despised her.

      And it hadn’t been because she’d led him on, then wouldn’t leave Mel. It was worse. Far worse.

       He’d been Mel’s best friend.

      The implications of this knowledge were horrifying.

      However things had been before, or worse, after Mel had been disabled, if she’d exhibited her attraction to Rodrigo, then he had good reason to detest her. The best.

      “You remembered.”

      She raised hesitant eyes at his rasp. “Sort of.”

      “Sort of? Now that’s eloquent. More skeletal headlines?”

      There was that barely contained fury again. She blinked back distress. “I remember that you were his closest friend, and that’s how you know so much about us, down to the hour we had a procedure to conceive a baby. Sorry I can’t do better.” And she was damned if she’d ask him what the situation between them had been. She dreaded he’d verify her speculations. “I’m sure the rest will come back. In a flood or bit by bit. No need to hang around here waiting for either event. I want to be discharged.”

      He looked at her as if she’d sprouted two more sets of eyes. “Get back in bed, now, Cybele. Your lucidity is disintegrating with every moment on your feet, every word out of your mouth.”

      “Don’t give me the patronizing medical tone, Dr. Valderrama. I’m a license-holding insider, if you remember.”

      “You mean if you remember, don’t you?”

      “I remember enough. I can recuperate outside this hospital.”

      “You can only under meticulous medical supervision.” “I can provide that for myself.”

      “You mean you don’t ‘remember’ the age-proven adage that doctors make the worst patients?”

      “It has nothing to do with remembering it, just not subscribing to it. I can take care of myself.”

      “No, you can’t. But I will discharge you. Into my custody. I will take you to my estate to continue your recuperation.”

      His declaration took the remaining air from her lungs.

      His custody. His estate. She almost swayed under the impact of the images that crowded her mind, of what both would be like, the temptation to jump into his arms and say Yes, please.

      She had to say no. Get away from him. And fast. “Listen, I was in a terrible accident, but I got off pretty lightly. I would have died if you and your ultra-efficient medical machine hadn’t intervened, but you did, and you fixed me. I’m fine.”

      “You’re so far from fine, you could be in another galaxy.”

      It was just wrong. That he’d have a sense of humor, too. That it would surface now. And would pluck at her own humor strings.

      She sighed at her untimely, inappropriate reaction. “Don’t exaggerate. All I have wrong with me is a few missing memories.”

      “A few? Shall we make a list of

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