A Forever Christmas. Marie Ferrarella

old saying goes, better to be safe than sorry.”

      Gabe shrugged. “I’m not going to argue that, but if she doesn’t know who she is and she has no ID, she sure as hell doesn’t have any medical insurance—”

      “Don’t worry, I’ve got this covered,” he assured the town’s newest deputy.

      Gabe only accepted so much on faith, the rest he questioned. “How?”

      Dan smiled. The man wasn’t very trusting. He could relate to that. He’d been the same way before he came to Forever, holding everything suspect until proven otherwise. It was an exhausting way to live.

      “I pulled a few strings. Turns out the head of the radiology department graduated in my class the same year I did. We even threw back a few together at a handful of parties.” He saw Gabe’s frown and guessed what the man was probably thinking. “Don’t worry, this job keeps you sober.”

      Gabe took the man’s word for it. “Did she wake up at all?” he asked.

      Dan shook his head. “She’s still unconscious, I’m afraid.”

      Gabe would have thought that the doctor would have looked a bit more concerned about that. “Shouldn’t we be worried by now?” Gabe asked.

      “Not necessarily, she’s had—”

      Whatever reassuring sentiment he was going to express was drowned out by the scream that pierced the air. It came from inside the exam room that Dan had just left.

      “Maybe we should start worrying now,” Gabe commented as both he and Dan rushed back into the exam room.

      They found the woman standing unsteadily before a mirror, her hands braced on either side of it to keep from falling to the floor. The expression reflected back appeared absolutely horrified.

      Seeing the men coming in behind her, the woman turned to face them. The movement was just a tad too sudden and it threw her equilibrium—still wobbly—off. She looked as if she was about to fall, but Gabe reached her first, catching hold of her and helping her remain vertical.

      Her eyes were wild as they went from the man holding on to her, to the slightly shorter man in the white lab coat. It was obvious that she was trying to place them—and couldn’t.

      “Why did you scream? What’s wrong?” Gabe asked her sharply.

      He’d come very close to drawing his service revolver. He had a feeling that would have frightened the blonde even more. She needed to trust him if they were ever going to get to the bottom of this.

      In response to his question, the woman pointed at the image in the mirror as if she was pointing at someone she didn’t know. There was uncertainty in her voice as she asked, “That’s me, isn’t it?”

      “Yes,” Dan answered, his tone calm, low.

      She continued staring as disbelief sank in. “I look like hell.”

      “That’s because you’ve been through hell,” Gabe replied.

      A shaky sigh escaped her lips. Then, unable to stand what she saw, the blonde turned away and looked at the two men who’d burst into the room, searching their faces. “What happened to me?”

      “You were in a car accident,” Gabe said gently, mimicking the voice his brother Eli used when he was training the quarter horses he sold. “When I found you, your car was on the verge of going over into a ravine. You’re a very lucky woman,” he concluded.

      She didn’t know about that. Tears stung her eyes, but her rising anger kept them back.

      “If I’m so lucky, why can’t I remember anything?” she demanded. “Why don’t I even know my own name or who I am?”

      “Hysterical amnesia,” Dan told her. Her eyes shifted toward him, waiting—hoping—for answers. Any answers. The desperation inside her needed something to hold on to. “It happens after an accident sometimes. Victims block things out until they can handle processing them.”

      “Victims,” she repeated.

      Was that what she was? A victim? Did she feel like a victim? she wondered, trying to examine her feelings. Nothing came to her. She honestly didn’t know. What did victims feel like?

      “Am I all right?” she asked the man in the white lab jacket.

      “So far,” he replied cautiously. “But Gabe is going to take you to the hospital, to make sure.”

      “Gabe?” she repeated. The name meant nothing to her. Should it have? “Who’s Gabe?”

      “That would be me.” Gabe raised his hand a little, drawing her attention to him as he gave her his most reassuring smile.

      Chapter Four

      She shifted her eyes from one man to the other and then back again, hoping for something. A glimmer of a memory, an elusive flash of recognition, anything.

      But there was nothing. Not so much as a hint of a hint.

      “When is my memory going to come back?” she asked the doctor.

      Right now, she felt like an empty vessel. She had no memories to access, no thoughts to fill her head. Nothing but a vast wasteland stretched before her, leading nowhere, involving nothing. The loneliness of that was almost unbearable.

      “That’s hard to say,” he told her honestly. “It varies from person to person. You could remember everything in a few hours, or—”

      “Or?” she prompted, battling back an ever-growing sense of desperation. Was it purely due to her wanting to remember?

      Or did it involve something she wanted to forget? She just didn’t know.

      “Or you could never remember. But that’s rather rare,” he added.

      “But it does happen,” she pressed, not wanting him to sugarcoat anything.

      She did her best to find a way to brace herself for never getting beyond this moment right now, and yet how could she since she had nothing to draw upon?

      “Rarely,” Gabe emphasized, speaking up. He noticed the look that Dan gave him. Probably wondering where I got my medical degree, Gabe thought. But he just couldn’t let that devastated expression on her face continue. “No point in dwelling on possible worst-case scenarios. If it turns out to be that way, you’ve gained nothing by making yourself miserable,” he explained. “And if it doesn’t, well, then you’ve wasted a lot of precious time anticipating something that turned out not to happen.”

      A pragmatic thought rose to the fore—was she like that at heart? Or did this reaction just naturally evolve from her form of resignation? Again, nothing answered her silent query.

      “From where I’m standing,” she told Gabe, “looks to me like I’ve got nothing but time to waste.”

      “You’re not going to be wasting time,” Gabe told the blonde cheerfully. “You’re coming with me, remember? To Pine Ridge Memorial to see what they have to say about all this.”

      It felt as if her head was spinning around in endless circles and she just wasn’t making any headway. Both Gabe and the doctor seemed to be nice, but were they? And why were they so willing to go out of their way for her like this?

      “Do I know either one of you?” she asked, looking from one face to another again.

      But her reaction to either man was just the same as it had been a moment earlier. Neither one looked the least bit familiar, woke up nothing in her depleted memory banks.

      “No, you don’t,” Dan answered for both of them.

      Even in her present limited state, she knew that just didn’t make any sense. “Then why are you doing this? Why are you taking me to a hospital in another town?”

      “Because