A Forever Christmas. Marie Ferrarella

of a promise he’d made to his late younger brother, also a surgeon, he’d come out to Forever to take his place. His brother had firmly believed in “giving back.” After a while, Dan began to understand what his brother had meant. And so, what was supposed to have been just a short-term mission turned into his life’s work.

      Dan was surprised to discover that he’d never felt better about himself than he had this past year.

      “You think she’s telling the truth?” Alma asked her brother skeptically. She looked down at the unconscious woman as Gabe placed her on the exam table, per Dan’s instructions.

      It was Dan, not Gabe, who answered.

      “Very possibly,” the doctor allowed. “She took a pretty good blow to the head,” he judged, sizing up the head wound on her forehead just above her right eye. “That can really shake a person up.”

      “But she’s going to snap out of it, right?” Gabe asked. “It’ll all come back to her, won’t it? I mean, she’ll remember her name and why she wound up tottering on that ledge the way she did. Right?”

      Dan raised his shoulders in a wide shrug. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve heard of some amnesia cases going on for years, with the patient not any closer to getting any answers than they’d been at the very beginning. With other patients, it’s only a matter of a few hours. There’s really no telling how long it could actually take.”

      Years?

      The single word echoed in his head as Gabe looked at the still, unconscious face. The very idea sent a chill down his spine. He couldn’t picture enduring something like that himself. It was like a virtual prison sentence that extended to eternity.

      Gabe turned to the doctor. “So what do we do?” he asked.

      Dan could only give him the most general of terms. Everyone was different and healed at their own pace—if they healed at all.

      “We go slow,” he counseled. “Give her some space and make sure that she doesn’t feel pressured, just secure. Sometimes, the harder you try, the less progress you actually make.” Shrugging out of his coat and switching to a clean lab jacket, Dan paused to wash his hands. “Now, if you two don’t mind, I need you to leave me alone with my patient so I can attend to her wounds.”

      As Gabe reluctantly began to leave, Dan raised his voice and called after him. “Stick around, though. After I get done, I think it would be a good idea to take this woman to the hospital in Pine Ridge and get a CT scan of her head to make sure that everything’s all right.” Drying his hands, he looked from one deputy to the other. “I’ll need one of you to drive her over there.”

      Gabe surprised Alma by speaking up first. “I’ll do it.

      “Who do you think she is?” Gabe asked her once they were in the waiting room. For now, the room appeared to be empty.

      “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Alma told him. “We could try going through the county’s recent missing-persons files posted on the internet. If there’s no match for her, I can widen the search. With any luck, she’ll probably get her memory back before then.”

      “What makes you say that?” he asked, curious.

      “Well, I’d say that having a car blow up a couple of seconds after you escape out of it can be pretty traumatizing. That kind of thing can cause temporary amnesia because the person isn’t able to deal with it right when it happened. It’s the brain’s way of protecting you,” she added by way of an explanation. Alma abruptly stopped talking when she saw the quizzical way her brother was staring at her. “What?”

      Gabe shook his head, clearly impressed. “I never realized you knew so much.”

      “I’m not quite sure whether to be flattered that you’re impressed, or insulted because you thought I was dumb.”

      “Not dumb,” he quickly corrected, and then lost some steam as he added, “just, well, my little sister.”

      “And consequently, dumb,” she concluded. Alma gave him a reproving look. “You might recall that I took college courses online and that I do have a degree in criminology.”

      Going to college online had been the only way she could have gotten her degree and still worked to help pay off her father’s huge pile of bills. Both causes were equally important to her.

      “Must’ve slipped my mind,” Gabe confessed, then focused on what she’d said. “So you really think she’ll remember who she is?”

      “If you mean is she suddenly going to pop up like toast and have total recall, probably not right away,” Alma judged, “but in time, I think it will all come back to her.”

      “And in the meantime?” he asked, sounding rather eager.

      “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Gabe,” Alma cautioned. “Just take one step at a time.”

      “You’re the one who always said to be prepared,” he reminded her. “What if she never remembers who she is? Or it takes her a long time before she does? What if no one’s out there looking for her, or they didn’t have enough sense to file a missing-persons report? What’ll we do with her until then?” he asked. “There’s no motel or boardinghouse to put her up in.”

      “Forever’s a nice, friendly town,” Alma pointed out and then went on to assure her brother that, “We’ll think of something. But first things first. The doc said to have her checked out at the Pine Ridge hospital once he’s finished. So we need to get her there.” Ever the protective one, especially now that her mother was gone, Alma said, “I know you volunteered, but if you’re having second thoughts, I can take her to the hospital.”

      That might mean that she wouldn’t be back until morning. A newlywed, his sister belonged home at night.

      Gabe laughed, turning down her offer. “And have that lawyer husband of yours with his hundred-dollar words come looking for me? No, thanks. I’ll take the mystery woman to the hospital.”

      Alma’s protective streak instantly rose to defend her husband. “He only uses those words when he’s in court. You’re family.”

      “And I’d like to keep on being family,” Gabe informed her. “So I’ll be the one taking her to Pine Ridge.” When he saw Alma smiling at him knowingly, it was his turn to ask, “What?”

      “You’re really taken with her, aren’t you?” she asked, pleased.

      Gabe stared at her. In his opinion, his sister had just made one hell of a leap—and it led to nowhere. “She’s the first person I ever rescued from a car that was about to go over the side of a ravine, and then it burst into flames, so if that’s what you mean by ‘taken,’ then, yeah, I guess I’m ‘taken’ with her.”

      His eyes narrowed as he reminded her of an important point. “You were the one who thought that I should get involved in this—and by ‘this,’” he clarified, knowing how prone Alma could be to misinterpreting things if it suited her purposes, “I mean the sheriff’s department.”

      “I did and I still do,” Alma was quick to agree. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. You don’t usually pay attention to anything I say.”

      “That’s because, up until now,” Gabe deadpanned, “you weren’t saying anything really worthwhile listening to or going along with.”

      “According to you,” she qualified.

      “According to me,” he agreed with the most unreadable expression he could muster.

      Alma glanced at her watch and rose to her feet.

      “I’m going to go and update Rick about what’s going on with our mystery woman and then I’ll be back. If you decide that you’ve changed your mind about going to Pine Ridge—”

      He cut her off. “I won’t,” Gabe assured