Caroline heard steady beeping before feeling something squeeze around her upper arm. It took considerable effort to raise her eyelids, and when she finally got them to stay open, there were a few seconds of blurriness.
Where was she?
What had happened?
“She’s awake,” a woman said, and Caroline blinked several times until the light fixture in the middle of the white ceiling came into focus. She wiggled her toes as her hands flexed against something that felt like a starched sheet. Was she in a bed? She was definitely lying down.
“Caroline?” someone else asked and she turned toward the voice, her eyes narrowing on the person standing beside her. A woman with steel-gray curls and smooth skin the color of dark copper placed a calming hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “Can you hear me?”
“Where am I?” Caroline asked.
“You’re in the emergency room at Kalispell Regional. I’m Dr. Robinson. Do you remember what happened?”
Caroline shook her head and then flinched at the stabbing pain that shot through her forehead.
“Careful, now,” the doctor continued. “From what I understand, you hit your head pretty hard. Your friends brought you in and we did an MRI while you were still unconscious. We think you have a concussion, but we’d like to get a CT scan of your brain to rule out anything more serious.”
“My friends?” Caroline asked, then turned toward the other woman in the room. She sighed when she saw Josselyn Weaver on the other side of her bed.
“Hey, Caroline.” Josselyn squeezed Caroline’s hand, accidentally dislodging some little white wires and causing a shrill beep.
“Don’t worry. It’s just the oxygen reader,” the doctor offered, putting the plastic device back over Caroline’s pointer finger. “You up for answering some questions?”
“Sure,” Caroline said as she tried to sit up. She was relieved that the rest of her body cooperated and that her head was the only thing hurting.
“Do you know your name?” Dr. Robinson asked.
“Caroline Ruth.”
“And what day is it?”
She blinked a couple of times until it came back to her. “November 21.”
“Good.” The doctor’s bright white smile was reassuring. “And what did you have for breakfast today?”
Caroline’s stomach rumbled at the reminder. “Only a couple of bites of a protein bar. I should’ve gotten a breakfast sandwich at Daisy’s this morning but I didn’t want to be late for my appointment.”
“Oh? What kind of appointment?”
“I’m a wedding planner.”
The physician looked over to Josselyn, who nodded in agreement. The questions must be part of some kind of test and Caroline hoped she was passing.
Dr. Robinson lifted a finger in front of Caroline’s nose. “Do you know where you live?”
Caroline’s eyes followed the finger as she rattled off the address for the tiny guest house she’d rented in the heart of Rust Creek Falls several months ago. The sooner she answered everything and proved she was perfectly fine, the sooner she could get something to eat.
“What’s the last thing you remember before coming to the hospital?”
“I was talking to Josselyn about her wedding and I climbed up on a chair to get the binder with a brochure for a venue when...” Caroline trailed off as she couldn’t recall what had occurred after that. Lifting her fingers to stroke her forehead, she asked, “Is that how I fell?”
“Yes,” Josselyn said, sighing as though she’d been holding her breath up until this point. “You went face-first into one of the shelves on your way down and were out cold. We didn’t want to wait for an ambulance, so we brought you straight to the ER.”
“We?” Caroline asked and looked around the room. There was another man near the partitioned curtain of the exam room, but he’d been talking to a nurse outside and she’d assumed he was another doctor.
“That’s—” Josselyn started, but Dr. Robinson cut her off.
“Do you know the name of this man?”
“No idea,” Caroline replied, hoping her honesty wouldn’t mean that she couldn’t get a snack soon. When she’d been ten years old, her dad had to be rushed to the hospital near the faculty housing at Berkeley. He’d insisted that it was only heartburn and asked Caroline to go to the cafeteria and get him some vanilla soft serve to soothe the acid. Turned out it was a perforated gallbladder and because he’d eaten the ice cream, the anesthesiologist delayed the surgery until his stomach was empty. It had been a long ten hours of her dad doing his awful Oliver Twist impression by begging for more food and insisting he was starving.
“Technically, she hadn’t met me prior to her fall.” The man the doctor had just asked about stepped forward and placed an arm around Josselyn’s waist. “I’m Drew Strickland, by the way. You’re planning our wedding. We had just walked in the door and you’d turned to look at us. That’s when you got your foot twisted in the chair and fell.”
“We?” Caroline asked again, feeling like a parrot. Her eyelids were getting heavy again and all she wanted was a hot breakfast sandwich and a nap. “Who’s we?”
“Me and—” Drew was cut off by Dr. Robinson holding up a hand like a stop sign.
“Do you remember them walking in the door before you fell?” the emergency room physician asked.
Caroline focused on a bright red electric outlet on the wall in an effort to concentrate, trying to form an image in her mind. But nothing was coming to her. She replayed the events of the morning over and over again, and the weight of the silence in the room suggested that everyone else knew what two plus two equaled and were desperately waiting for her to shout out, “Four!”
However, she was drawing a complete blank. In fact, she was positive that there wasn’t anything else that happened after that. She was getting tired again, probably from concentrating so hard, and just wanted to fall asleep. Couldn’t they simply tell her what had happened and let her take a nap?
“Sorry, I don’t.” Caroline shrugged, then yawned. “The last thing I remember was reaching for that binder on the top shelf.”
It was then that a second man walked into the room and Caroline’s breath caught as he took off his cowboy hat and ran a golden hand through his black, close-cropped hair.
Her entire body eased back onto the bed and she smiled in relief, everything finally making sense. “Oh, there you are.”
“So you know him?” the doctor asked, jerking a thumb to the newcomer.
“Of course,” Caroline said, then blinked slowly as the pillow cradled her head. “That’s my fiancé.”
* * *
Her fiancé?
Craig’s head whipped around to the hallway behind him. But nobody else was there. He opened his mouth to tell the doctor that he’d never even met this woman, but nothing came out. The air had been sucked out of his lungs, and probably out of the entire room, judging by the equally confused expressions on everyone else’s faces.
Caroline’s head injury must be more serious than they’d originally thought if she was babbling incoherent randomness. Scratch that. Her statement had been clear and articulate, but it made absolutely no sense. Nor did the way she was looking at him, her doe-shaped brown eyes all dreamy and her wide lips parted in a hazy smile as though he was the only one in the room, or at least the only person who mattered. It was the same look Tina had given him before she’d died, and the comparison made his blood go cold.
Caroline looked nothing like his high school sweetheart, but Craig’s memory had already been triggered, and that rush of helplessness filled his veins the same way it had all those years ago when they’d been trapped on the highway, waiting for the rescue workers to pry them out of the wreckage. He would’ve looked to Drew or Josselyn for an answer, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Caroline.
Logically, he knew he wasn’t reliving that awful night nearly fifteen years ago, but when Caroline’s eyes finally drifted closed, Craig raced to her bedside and grabbed her hand as though he alone could will her back to consciousness.
“She’ll be fine,” the ER doctor told him with a gentle pat on the shoulder, a move likely designed to reassure loved ones. No doubt, it had worked for the doc countless times in the past. The only difference in this situation was that Craig didn’t know the current patient, let alone love her.
“But I’m not—” Craig started and Dr. Robinson interrupted him.
“Let’s step into the hallway where we can talk.” The physician’s reassuring pat turned into a firm nudge as she steered him toward the nurses’ station.
Craig turned back toward his friends, who were slowly following them. Josselyn’s mouth was slightly open and there were a few squiggly creases between her eyebrows while Drew simply stared in concern as though Craig had been the one to hit his head and get the sense knocked out of him.
Not that Craig could blame the guy. There might be plenty of reasons why Caroline accidentally called him her fiancé, but there was absolutely no explanation for his intense emotional reaction to someone who was a total stranger.
While it was already embarrassing that the others saw him respond like that, it would be even more confusing and downright mortifying to explain what prompted him to run to her side and clutch her hand as though she was dying.
Despite the couple approaching, Dr. Robinson faced Craig and directed most of the information his way. Something about a concussion and needing consent for a CT scan to rule out any long-term damage. “My recommendation is to run a few more tests and then have her stay overnight for observation. Does your fiancée have any other family members we should notify or can you authorize consent?”
“She’s not my fiancée.” The words finally tumbled out of Craig’s mouth in a rush as he tugged on the collar of his work shirt. “In fact, I’ve never met her before.”
“Well, she certainly lit up when you came in the room,” Dr. Robinson replied, one hand on her hip as though she wasn’t buying Craig’s version of the situation. “I didn’t even need to shine my light in her eyes when I was examining her because her pupils contracted and focused on you like you were the be-all and end-all.”
“I promise I’ve never seen her before today. Right?” Craig shot a pleading look toward Drew for confirmation. “I have no idea why she would think we knew each other, let alone that we’re engaged. Maybe I resemble her real fiancé and the concussion just has her brain rattled?”
“I’m pretty sure she’s single.” Josselyn finally spoke up and Craig felt the oxygen slowly return to his lungs. “We’ve only talked a handful of times, but she’s never mentioned a significant other. Plus, she doesn’t have an engagement ring.”
At first Craig was filled with a sort of vindication from the proof that he wasn’t her fiancé. However, that was soon replaced by utter bafflement. “Then why would she imagine herself being in a serious relationship at all?”
“Maybe she has amnesia?” Josselyn suggested.
“I suppose that’s possible.” Drew turned down one corner of his mouth, his expression suggesting that it wasn’t possible at all. “However, she had full recollection of all the events leading up to her fall.”
“It could be confabulation.” Dr. Robinson now spoke to Drew, her voice lowered as she threw out phrases such as memory production and cognitive distortion and something else Craig couldn’t quite make out.
“Hmm.” Drew nodded. “I’ve read case studies, but have never seen it manifested in a patient.”
Craig rolled his eyes. “Do you think you guys could use some layman terms for us nondoctors?”
“Confabulation is similar to amnesia in that it’s a memory disturbance. It can happen when there is some type of damage to the brain. Caroline seems to remember almost everything leading up to her injury, but to fill in the gaps on what she doesn’t know, her mind has invented a story to explain it.”
Oh, boy. He should’ve stayed in Thunder Canyon this week. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Craig asked, “But why would she need to make up a lie about being engaged?”
“It’s not a lie.” Dr. Robinson shook her head. “To her, it’s very real.”
“Okay, so then we just tell her that she doesn’t know me and that she doesn’t have a fiancé and she’s good to go.” He slapped his palms together as though it were that simple. And it would’ve been if Craig had been speaking to the vet out on the ranch. Cows and horses never had issues like this.
Dr. Robinson shared another look with Drew before answering. “In theory, we would always recommend telling a patient the truth. But in this case, she hit her forehead, where the frontal lobe is encased, and that makes it hard for her to retrieve and evaluate memories. So in instances of confabulation, it doesn’t matter what you say. Her brain is in a fragile state right now and will only be able to understand what her frontal lobe is telling her.”
“How long does this last?” Craig folded his arms across his chest and looked longingly toward the ER exit doors. “I mean, do I actually have to pretend to be her fiancé?”
“I’m sure Dr. Robinson doesn’t want you to pretend to be anything,” Drew offered, looking at his watch.
“No, of course not. I’m simply recommending that we don’t upset the patient until all the tests come back and we know more about what’s going on.”
“So when will that happen?”
“As soon as her fiancé gives us consent?”
“But I’m not—”
Dr. Robinson held up her palm. “I was kidding. When she wakes up again, we can get her verbal consent. But is there anybody else we should notify in the meantime? Anyone else who can give us a better medical history?”
All eyes turned toward Josselyn again. “I looked through her purse, but I couldn’t find her cell phone. I heard back from Vivienne earlier, and she confirmed that Caroline’s parents are out of the country right now on some sort of teaching sabbatical and she doesn’t remember her mentioning any friends or family nearby. I would hate to leave her here all alone. What if she wakes up and is confused again?”
“Obviously, we can’t leave her here alone,” Craig said.
Drew looked at his watch a second time. “I have to get back to Rust Creek Falls before my son gets out of school.”
“I’d stay, but I have to speak at the city council meeting this evening to ask for extra funding for the elementary school library. If I miss it, I’ll have to wait another month to get my proposal approved.”
“Maybe I’ll call Ben and ask...” Drew started.
“No way,” Craig said, shaking his head before his friend could even finish the thought. “I can stick around.”