The Lewis Legacy Series Box Set: 4-in-1 Special Edition Page 40

  Within an hour from the time he’d left the hospital, he was back in the Lexus, headed downtown. Passing the local florist near the house, he stopped in to pick out a dozen pink roses, Natalie’s favorite. On a whim, he added a couple of generic helium balloons. A Get Well Soon message didn’t seem appropriate, so he got a bunch of pretty, multi-colored pastel balloons. They always made her giggle with delight like a little girl, and he’d give anything now to hear Natalie’s laughter. Reaching the hospital in record time, Marc made sure to park in a proper visitor’s lot before bounding into the lobby. He rushed toward the elevator, clutching the balloons and flowers in one hand. He tapped his foot and took a deep breath as the doors opened.

  “Well, hello again, Mr. Thompson.”

  Moving the balloons higher as he stepped inside, Marc spied the elderly gentleman in the corner of the elevator. “Hi, Mr. Davis.” He allowed a smile.

  Those light eyes held a bemused sparkle. “Judging by the flowers and balloons, I’d say your wife is doing much better today.”

  “Yes,” Marc said, not wishing to elaborate, “but I’d appreciate your continuing prayers, sir.”

  “They haven’t stopped since we talked last night, son. And they won’t stop.”

  He liked the way he called him “son,” especially since it sounded respectful. His dad had been gone for almost ten years but rarely acknowledged him as such when he was alive. After years of being ignored, Marc gave up trying. After his dad abandoned his family, Marc’s sole focus became taking care of his mother and younger sister. He’d been forced to grow up and become the man of the family long before he was ready, but he didn’t have a choice. Being the man of the family was also about so much more than providing for them financially.

  “This is my floor.” When the doors opened on the fourth floor, Marc stepped onto the ever-shiny hallway, wedging his foot between the doors before they closed. “Thanks. I should have said it last night. You were just being kind, and I acted like a selfish jerk. I’m sorry.”

  The folds around the man’s eyes crinkled. “You were entitled, young man. I’m glad to see everything is working out.”

  “I’m not keeping score, but at least God granted me more time with Natalie. Even though it’s apparently on His terms, not mine.”

  In a surprisingly agile move, Mr. Davis clamped a firm hand on the elevator door. Those light eyes bore into him. “Maybe God didn’t do it for you, son.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Maybe He did it for her.”

  The elevator doors beeped, and Marc removed his foot. As he caught a last glimpse of the old man’s face, he stared at the closed doors. I’m not going to let that old guy get to me. Grumbling under his breath, he stormed down the hall with the balloons streaming behind him. Mr. Davis might as well have outright labeled him selfish and egocentric. Maybe he was right. Instead of thinking about all this as something that happened to him, he should approach it from Natalie’s perspective. One of the pink roses fell to the floor, but he couldn’t be bothered to retrieve it. Let one of the nurses have it. Put it in a vase to brighten her day.

  Pasting a smile on his face, Marc rounded the bend past the nurse’s station and headed into her room with a brief knock on the open door. When he spied the empty bed, he stopped cold. “Where’s Natalie?” He turned and headed back into the hallway. Seeing a nurse a few doors down, he demanded, “Where’s my wife?”

  She put a finger to her lips and her mouth downturned. He lowered his voice. “Do you know where they’ve moved Natalie Thompson?” He followed close behind as she walked to the nurse’s station and checked her chart. Maybe she was undergoing more tests since that seemed the thing to do in hospitals. Leaning over the counter, Marc tried to catch a glimpse of Natalie’s chart, but the nurse pulled the clipboard away from his view with a scolding glance. You’d think he was a wayward child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Like a three-year-old. That also seemed to be a running theme here in the hospital, insofar as a bothersome, disgruntled husband was concerned.

  “Hold on a moment, and let me make a phone call.” Punching in numbers on the phone, she turned, her shoulder between them, and spoke in low tones. Maddening. Any more of this, and he might explode.

  “Dr. Adams is coming out to see you if you’ll have a seat.” The nurse gestured toward a couple of chairs further down the hallway. Even though her tone was pleasant, he wasn’t earning brownie points for being a favorite of the nursing staff. He couldn’t blame them and wasn’t overly fond of himself at the moment.

  “Please answer one question.” Gritting his teeth, he made it sound as congenial as possible. “Is she all right?” He’d hate it if something happened while he’d been away. His guilt was bad enough although Dr. Adams was right to send him home to try and gain some perspective. Apparently, it hadn’t worked.

  “Please have a seat, Mr. Thompson. The doctor will be with you in a few minutes.” Her voice was tinged with faint irritation, which she made only a half-hearted attempt to disguise.

  Grimacing, Marc sped down the hallway to the row of chairs. More waiting. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. Too nervous to sit, he fidgeted with the bouquet of flowers and the strings tied to the balloons. Where had they taken Natalie? What further tests had they run? More importantly, what had they found?

  “Marc.” Dr. Adams walked toward him a few minutes later. “Please have a seat so we can talk.”

  “I can’t.” Marc’s fingers tightened around the balloons and flowers. “What’s going on? Tell me. Please.” Desperation crept into his voice.

  “We performed a few other select tests, keeping your wife’s condition uppermost in mind. It does, in fact, appear that Natalie’s suffering from retrograde amnesia, but at this point, we have no way of determining whether it’s short-term or otherwise.”

  “And what exactly does otherwise mean?” Marc’s eyes bore into the doctor’s sympathetic gaze. “Is that the same thing as significant?”

  “Permanent, Marc.”

  Marc’s eyes widened, pushing his fear aside. He couldn’t allow it to overwhelm him. “What else does she remember? Were you able to ask her some more questions?”

  Dr. Adams nodded. “Natalie remembers her age, but not her actual birth date. As you know, she recalls she’s a kindergarten teacher, but doesn’t remember the name of the school. She has clearer memories from her childhood. She remembers names, significant events . . .”

  Marc licked his lips. Tell me what you don’t want me to know. “And her family? Does she remember her sister? Her parents?”

  “For the most part.”

  “For the most part?” Marc was incredulous, not bothering to hide his shock. “They’ve always been very close,” he said, more to himself than the doctor. “What if they come to see her? Would that help? They’re a few hours away, in Connecticut, but they’d come in a heartbeat if it’d help.”

  “It could, but there are no guarantees. In some respects, it might be better to have them wait, if that’s possible. Having too much thrown at Natalie all at once might be much more difficult for her to absorb and essentially impede the process of healing the brain.” Dr. Adams shifted his position and pushed his glasses further up on his nose. “It might be a comfort for you to know that in more severe cases of amnesia, the patient often has to relearn the most basic tasks. They revert to childhood tendencies—talking, thinking, behaving like a child. In Natalie’s case, it seems strictly to have affected her memory, but she should be able to function fine otherwise.”

  There was that word again. Otherwise. Dr. Adams frowned, his brow creasing, and avoided Marc’s eyes. He appeared uncomfortable. The chink in the armor had finally surfaced. He could only guess it was because he knew something he hadn’t yet divulged.

  “What?” Marc demanded, trying to catch his eye. “First you tell me my wife’s pregnant, and now you tell me she can remember some things, others not so much. What is it you’re not telling me, Dr. Adams
?”

  Slowly, the doctor looked back up, meeting his gaze. “Brace yourself.”

  Marc’s heart pounded in his chest, as thunderous as when he’d first discovered Natalie at the bottom of the basement steps. “Okay,” he managed to utter in spite of the huge, immovable lump lodged in his dry throat. Then it hit him, and his heart plummeted. His voice deadly calm, low in his throat, Marc dared not look in the doctor’s eyes. He couldn’t bear it. “Exactly what does Natalie remember about me?”

  A long moment passed before the dreaded answer finally came. “I’m afraid she doesn’t.”

  Marc collapsed against the back of his chair with a low, guttural groan of despair. “Nothing?” His voice sounded distant and small. As the doctor shook his head, Marc opened his fingers, releasing the cluster of balloons as the flowers fell onto the floor in a pink, scattered heap.

  “I’m truly sorry, Marc. I wish I had better news for you. We’ll hope for the best.” With that, Dr. Adams stood to leave. “Natalie will be brought back to her room shortly, and you can see her then. We’ll keep her overnight tonight and discuss our options tomorrow morning.”

  What good does that do? He wanted to scream. Nothing. Even though he’d heard the word a million times, it never sounded as cold, hard and bitter as it did right now. Yet, oddly enough, he’d known. But somehow, suspecting wasn’t the same as hearing the words from a medical professional. That blank look from Natalie had said it all.

  Nothing.

  Chapter 6

  Two Weeks Later

  Natalie bowed her head, praying for the strength to tell Marc what needed to be said. Saying little prayers throughout the day seemed to help keep her strong. Her mother told her she asked Jesus into her heart when she was six, sitting on her lap at the kitchen table, but her young mind referred to it as the dinner’s prayer instead of the sinner’s prayer.

  Serious for the most part, Marc had started to relax more around her since her release from the hospital. At first, he’d treated her almost like a child and gone overboard to the point of annoyance. Now he teased her more freely and dropped little kisses on her cheeks, her nose, but avoided her lips. Sitting next to her in church, he tried to comfort her by squeezing her hand. It was difficult to ignore the awkward stares and whispers, even though she knew they were prompted by concern. She opted out of going to Sunday school. Instead of teaching the kindergarten class like before her accident, maybe she should join the five-year-olds. They could probably explain some things to her.

  As she closed her Bible a few minutes later, Natalie spied a highlighted passage they’d read that morning. She cherished the times Marc told her how the Lord worked in his life and brought them together. He sat with her in the kitchen every morning, gulping down some disgusting protein concoction he called breakfast while they shared devotions. His work was so important to him, and she knew he was anxious to get to his office, but he was sensitive enough not to check his watch every two minutes. Only every ten.

  Her appetite was pretty much gone, her stomach unsettled from the pregnancy and her own conflicting emotions. She knew Marc worried about her, and he tried to tempt her with healthy snacks—fruit, granola, yogurt. Usually, she managed to swallow a few bites of fruit and some dry toast. The morning sickness wasn’t too bad, but today it was especially awful. Then again, maybe it was more nerves, twisting inside like a knotted rope.

  She couldn’t believe she was expecting a child, much less with a man she couldn’t remember. Marc told her he made the nurses promise not to tell her she was pregnant, and he assured Dr. Adams he’d tell her as soon as he felt the time was right. Coming into the kitchen the day after her release from the hospital, Marc saw her with a medicine bottle. Anxious, he grabbed it from her, studied the label and peppered her with questions. Leading her by the hand, he sat beside her at the table, explaining how surely God had a master plan in all that had happened. In a gentle voice, he told her how thankful he was the Lord brought them together and how they were expecting a child. It brought tears to her eyes every time she thought of his sensitivity and compassion.

  Pulling herself out of the chair, Natalie frowned and headed into the kitchen to start their dinner preparations. She was going to hurt Marc tonight. Wound him deeply. Pulling out the chopper, grater and strainer, she smirked. God had a way of using even the simplest kitchen gadgets as object lessons. In Marc’s mind, she might be chopping up his emotions, slicing through his heart and then putting him in the strainer, like a sieve of emotional heartache. She shook her head as she pulled the chicken from the refrigerator. Help me, Lord. I need to keep it together.

  It was all so difficult, and no doubt he’d be angry. If she couldn’t make sense of it herself, how could she explain it so he’d understand? When she called Marc in his office and asked him to come home early, the pleased surprise in his voice pierced her heart. The fact that he so willingly agreed to leave the office spoke volumes of his commitment to her and their marriage. Breezing in the door a few hours later, he kissed her cheek and presented her with yet another bouquet of pink roses—her favorite, he said. His eyes were bright and he acted almost shy around her, something difficult to fathom.

  It was the most frustrating thing in the world not to remember dating her husband although they’d dated nearly two years before their engagement. Her husband was an incredibly handsome man—tall, broad-shouldered and athletic with high cheekbones, tiny cleft in his chin, full lips, and a head of thick, blond waves. Hard to believe, but his hair color looked natural, with the kind of sun-kissed highlights women paid big money to achieve. He put some kind of gel in his hair for work, but she loved when it was freshly-washed and soft, begging her fingers to run through it. So far she’d resisted, but it was tempting. Marc’s skin was smooth and healthy courtesy of his daily jogs. The only thing marring his gorgeous face was a small, narrow scar just under the hairline on the top left of his forehead, courtesy of a collision on the baseball field.

  Pushing a spear of broccoli around her plate, stabbing it with her fork, Natalie contemplated whether to eat it. Her eyes strayed across the table. At least his appetite wasn’t affected. If Marc didn’t love her cooking, he made a good show of pretending to like it. He never once criticized anything she made. He’d gone to London on business a number of times, and it was amusing how he’d adopted the British manner of holding cutlery. In turn, he teased her for cutting her food into minute pieces. He’d always finish his meal first, lean his chin on one hand and watch her eat, a slow grin upturning his lips. Sometimes she’d give him food she couldn’t eat, and he’d give her a wink as he ate off her fork The man flirted without even being aware. It was distracting, but it was also unnerving in its intimacy. Marc was only being himself, but she didn’t know who she was.

  “What are you thinking?” He watched her closely, fork poised in one hand, knife in the other.

  Natalie dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “For one thing, I’m thinking we sit too far apart at dinner.” Great. Now she was getting his hopes up, only to shoot them down. Maybe this dinner was a big mistake. She could only pray he wouldn’t hate her within the hour.

  His light blue eyes sparkled and the corners of his mouth tipped upward. “Well, that’s remedied easily enough.” Retrieving his half-eaten plate of food, Marc also grabbed her plate as he swept past, asking her to bring the glasses as he led the way into the kitchen. He nodded toward the table. “You sit. I’ll get the rest.” Back in the kitchen after retrieving their napkins and silverware, he opened a drawer and pulled out a tapered candle, holder and matches. Lighting the candle, he graced her with a devastating smile. The man was effortlessly sensual. “I vote we eat in here all the time. Much more romantic.”

  Natalie’s heart was sinking fast. She couldn’t even respond. She was a coward, not knowing how to broach the subject without making him angry. The only thing she could fault Marc for was his temper, but it was never directed at her. That might change tonight. He’d been impatient at times, but she
couldn’t blame him. She could tell how frustrated he was with the amnesia, in every way possible. So was she. Marc always made it clear he wasn’t mad at her, but this inexplicable psychological condition. He compared it to a thief in the night—unyielding and unsympathetic, robbing her of precious memories of their life together.

  Being Friday night, it was movie night. “I’ll do the dishes,” she said. “You go pick out a movie for us.”

  Marc grinned. “You sure about that? Last time I picked, you cringed every other scene and covered your eyes at least twice.”

  She managed a small smile. “Better than you falling asleep during the romantic comedy last week.”

  “Challenge accepted. I’ll find something hopefully cringe-free, but still intellectually stimulating.”

  Good. That should take him at least ten minutes. She shooed him out of the kitchen so she could plan her strategy while washing their few dishes. For all intents and purposes, they were platonic roommates. Marc made it clear he wanted her, but she didn’t feel married in her heart. Although she felt a strong physical attraction for him, that’s all it was at the moment. She needed more, needed time to fall in love again—with her husband. Since she came back to the house, they slept in different bedrooms, passed each other like awkward roommates, and avoided looking at each other at times. He seemed unsure how to act around her and followed her cues. She didn’t feel settled, and no doubt gave him mixed signals. And, sadly, this wonderful home he told her they’d picked out together simply didn’t feel like home.

  One thing she couldn’t deny: Marc got her blood pumping hard and fast with a glance, a touch, a whispered word. Even tired and bedraggled by her hospital bed when she’d first seen him, he’d stirred something deep inside. Every time she glimpsed the hurt in his eyes, the longing in his expression, she berated herself. This man was her husband. He exhibited many fine qualities, and he loved her. She prayed about it, but wasn’t sure what the Lord was telling her to do.