Happily Never After. Kathleen O'Brien

looked at her. She was also a darned good actress. The pensiveness that drew her smooth forehead into a mass of wrinkles segued into a wide-eyed look of shock. “I…No,” she said. “I don’t remember anything.” And then she burst into tears.

      EVERYTHING AROUND HER became a horrifying jumble.

      Sara—that was her name, wasn’t it?

      Why couldn’t she remember?

      Her head hurt….

      The man who had joined her was kind and handsome and formally dressed. “Who are you?” she asked, desperate for any kind of knowledge.

      “Jordan Dawes,” he replied in a tone that implied she should know.

      “But who—” she began just as three men in white outfits arrived, carrying all sorts of frightening equipment she couldn’t identify.

      “Check her over first,” Jordan commanded the Emergency Medical Technicians. Kneeling at her side, he blocked her line of sight from the rest of the room. “There’s nothing you can do for him.” He nodded in the direction she couldn’t see.

      She knew who “him” referred to—the bleeding man on the floor beside her. Shouldn’t she know who he was?

      The EMTs put her on a gurney and wheeled her through some halls, down an elevator and out a door. There was an IV in her arm.

      The handsome man with the slight Southern accent stayed with her in the ambulance. She was still wearing the bloody wedding gown. Why? She shook nearly uncontrollably from fear.

      Jordan held her hand. “It’ll be all right, Sara,” he said.

      But how could anything be all right? She couldn’t remember—

      “Please ask them to turn off the siren,” she begged as its shrieking sliced into her aching head. He obliged. Every bump and turn the ambulance made aggravated the pounding pain in her head.

      At the Santa Gregoria Memorial Hospital’s emergency room, she was whisked off almost immediately for a CAT scan. When they brought her back to the emergency room, Jordan was waiting. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked the doctor assigned to her, a young resident with sleepy eyes.

      “The CAT scan didn’t show any bleeding inside her brain, so it’s probably a memory loss brought on by the trauma of the blow to her head…and what she witnessed.”

      What she witnessed. She didn’t recall. Had she seen who had struck the poor man on the floor…the decedent?

      Decedent. Why had that word come to mind?

      More examinations, more questions. All she wanted to do was to sleep, but they wouldn’t allow it.

      Much, much later, they put her in a hospital room. Once the nurses had gotten her situated, she lay in the bed, her eyes wide open, and stared at the ugly, sterile room.

      “Sara,” she whispered, her voice breaking on the two short syllables. Her name was Sara.

      Why hadn’t she been able to remember?

      Oh, Lord, why couldn’t she remember anything? Anxiety welled up in her once more.

      Lying beneath starched white sheets, she wore a skimpy green gown, tied in the back—a ludicrous contrast to the lovely wedding gown she had been wearing earlier.

      Wedding gown. There was something about it she should know…. Her shaking grew more pronounced. Why couldn’t she remember? She swallowed a sob. She wouldn’t cry, at least. She was a brave woman…at least she hoped so. And crying would not bring back her memory.

      Everything would come to her, and soon. It had to.

      But thinking hard didn’t resurrect any memories. All it did was intensify the horrible, pounding ache at the side of her head. She bit her bottom lip, determined not to ring the call button looped over the side rail of her bed for the nurse. She didn’t need medication to muddy her mind further.

      Were there any drugs that would make her memory return?

      Jordan had reassured her that it was all right to take something for the pain. He had seemed so caring, so attentive…but she couldn’t remember anything about him.

      “Sara, are you awake?”

      She felt as though she had conjured Jordan from thin air, for there he was, standing in the doorway. He hadn’t changed clothes, although he no longer looked so amazingly suave and urbane in his tuxedo. Now, the jacket and bow tie were gone and the top buttons of the starched white shirt were undone.

      Earlier, his light brown hair had been parted and combed down. Now, it was brushed back from his face, revealing a high, broad forehead. She couldn’t be certain of the shade of his eyes beneath his jutting brows, but she had a slight recollection that they were a deep, dark blue, the color of blackberries ripened in the sun.

      How did she know that?

      “How are you feeling?” he asked. His stride, as he crossed the sparsely furnished room, was brisk and certain, as though he knew she would welcome him. And she did.

      He had been the only constant in the turmoil of the short lifetime that she remembered. In fact, she smiled at seeing him.

      “I—I’m okay,” she lied.

      “Does your head hurt?” His deep, slow voice was soft with apparent concern. He stood at the edge of the bed and touched her cheek. His hand was cool, as though the hospital air conditioning had chilled it. He gently moved her face so he could look at the area where she had been struck—for she knew now that the injury to her head had been from a very hard blow. Of course, he couldn’t see much; the area was bandaged.

      “It hurts some,” she admitted. But she hastily added, “I can take it, though.”

      “Of course you can.” He smiled at her. Why did she have the sense that this was a rare occurrence, that she had seldom seen him smile? Maybe it was because she could see, with him still standing so close beside her, that there was no humor at all in his dark blue eyes. They appeared almost blank, as though he allowed no emotion at all to reflect from his soul to the world. “But there’s no need for you to suffer. If you want, I’ll have the nurse bring something for you in a minute, before I leave.”

      “Please don’t go.” Panic washed over her again, so intense that she felt she could dig her fingernails into it.

      Her fingernails. Shaking, she glanced at her own hands. Her nails were short and neatly rounded. She wore a light rose polish on them. Polish? It didn’t feel right. Maybe she had polished them because she had been dressed up. In a wedding gown…And on her left hand was a gold band. Was she married? That didn’t feel right either, but—

      “You need some sleep, Sara,” Jordan said soothingly, interrupting her strange train of thought.

      “I—I don’t want to sleep!” She knew she sounded almost hysterical. “Please stay here.”

      Why had she said that? She wanted him to leave…didn’t she? She needed time to herself. To think. To remember.

      But to lose the one fragile thread to her life, this man who had been there for her—

      “I’ll be here until you fall asleep, Sara. I promise. And there will be two uniformed police officers guarding your room from the hall. You’ll be fine.” He sat beside her on the bed, and she felt the mattress sag with his weight. He took her hands. His were large, his fingers thick and rounded, his nails blunt. She stared at them, not willing to meet his eyes.

      But then he bent down and kissed her forehead. Shocked, she stared at him.

      “Oh, Sara.” He shook his head slowly. How had she thought she’d seen no emotion in his eyes? They looked abysmally sad. “Is this an act? It’s okay to tell the truth. You can trust me.”

      “An act?” She didn’t understand at first. And although he had shown