A Wedding To Remember. Joanna Sims

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СКАЧАТЬ up from a coma had felt like swimming up to the surface from the bottom of a seemingly bottomless pool. Savannah had felt tingly all over right before the awareness of the throbbing, stabbing pain coming from the left side of her head along with the achiness and stiffness that she felt all over the rest of her body. She had been petrified, unable to understand why she was in a hospital hooked up to monitors with needles in her arms. She didn’t have any memory of the accident; the last thing she could remember was kissing Bruce goodbye as he left to start his day on the Brand family ranch. Her husband, her one and only true love, was the first person she asked for when she had awakened from the coma. Savannah could count on Bruce to make everything okay for her. He always did. So, when she finally saw her husband walk through the doorway of her hospital room, Savannah reached out to him weakly, palm facing up, and the tears of confusion and terror she had been holding back began to flow unbidden.

      “It’s okay, Savannah.” Bruce quickly dried her tears with a tissue. “I’m here now.”

      She tried to pull the full-face oxygen mask off, so she could talk to him, to tell him that she loved him, but he stilled her hand by taking it into his and holding on to it firmly.

      “You have to get your strength back,” Bruce told her.

      The mask on her face made her feel claustrophobic, and she wanted to talk. Perhaps her memory was fuzzy about the events that had landed her in the hospital, but she had very distinct memories of her family and Bruce and nurses and doctors all talking around her when she was in the coma. She could hear them murmuring, but no matter how hard she tried to respond, she couldn’t. Now that she could talk, she wanted to talk.

      “I love you,” she said, her words muffled by the mask.

      Bruce looked at her with an expression she couldn’t place. Why didn’t he respond right away, as he always had before?

      Finally, he squeezed her fingers gently, reassuringly. “I love you.”

      Behind the mask, her smile was frail, her eyelids slipping downward from exhaustion.

      “I’d better let you get some rest.” The sound of Bruce’s voice made her fight to open her eyes.

      When he tried to let go of her hand, she held on, moving her thumb over the empty spot where his wedding band should be.

      “Ring?” Her voice was so raspy from having a trachea tube down her throat.

      Again, an odd expression flashed in Bruce’s sapphire-blue eyes as he glanced down at the ring finger of his left hand.

      “It’s at home.”

      “My...ring?”

      “I have it,” Bruce told her after he dropped a quick kiss on her forehead. “I have your wedding ring.”

      * * *

      Retrograde amnesia secondary to traumatic brain injury and stroke. Bottom line, according to Savannah’s neurologist: Savannah had lost large swaths of her memory. With time and patience, some, or even all, of her memories could return. Until then...

      “What are you suggesting that I do, Carol?” Bruce asked his mother-in-law in a lowered voice. “Move her back to the ranch?”

      “We’ve all tried to talk her into coming home with us, but she wants to be with her husband.” Carol’s eyes were wide with concern. “She wants to be with you.”

      Bruce held up his left hand to show Carol his wedding ring. “All she’s been talking about for the last two days is getting back into her own bed.”

      Savannah had been moved to a regular hospital room soon after she had regained consciousness. Her appetite was healthy, she was laughing and talking. Her speech was still a little slurred from the dysarthria, her right hand was a little weak after the ministroke she had sustained, and of course, there was the memory loss. But even with all that, the doctors were getting ready to discharge her and continue with her care as an outpatient. Considering her near-death experience, Savannah was making a quick recovery.

      “I know it. I know it.” Carol’s brows furrowed worriedly. “It’s gonna break her sweet heart when she finds out the truth.”

      They had all hoped that Savannah’s memory would return on its own; none of them, including him, wanted to be the one to bring her up to speed on her failed marriage. But her discharge date was barreling toward them with no sign that she had any inkling that they were a signature away from being divorced.

      Carol seemed to have something on her mind that she had been skirting ever since he had arrived at the hospital. He had a feeling he knew exactly what his mother-in-law was thinking.

      “Would it be such a horrible thing if Savannah moved back to Sugar Creek with you?” she asked him after a couple of silent moments.

      Bruce knew it was only a matter of time before Carol asked this question. It was a question that had crossed his own mind a time or two. But it wasn’t that simple. Savannah hadn’t lived at the ranch with him for a long while. And although he hadn’t changed much since she had left, she didn’t have clothing or personal items at the ranch.

      “Maybe this could be a second chance for the two of you,” Carol added.

      Carol had always wanted their marriage to work, and had always advocated for spending their attorneys’ fees on more marriage counseling.

      “You still love her. Even after all that’s happened.” His mother-in-law looked up into his face hopefully. “Don’t you?”

      “I’ll always love her,” he admitted because it was true. And even as angry as he had been with Savannah after all of the fighting and money wasted on attorneys fees, seeing her unconscious in critical care slammed home the truth for him: he still loved her.

      Carol’s eyes welled with tears. She put her hands on his arm. “And she loves you.”

      Savannah did love him. Again. It felt bizarre to walk into her hospital room and be greeted with that sweet, welcoming smile he’d first fallen in love with, her hazel-green eyes filled with love and her arms outstretched for a hug. In an odd twist of fate, Savannah was back to being the woman he had married. In an odd twist of fate, Savannah was back in his life.

      “Now,” Bruce reminded Carol. “She loves me now. What happens when her memory comes back and she remembers that she doesn’t love me anymore?”

      * * *

      “I just want to go home,” Savannah complained to her husband. “I’m so tired of being here. All night long, people are barging into my room, taking my blood pressure, pumping me full of fluids! How can they expect anyone to get better in this place if they won’t let us sleep? I’m exhausted, and it’s all their fault.”

      When Bruce arrived at the hospital after giving directions to his crew of cowboys at the ranch, Savannah was sitting up in a chair next to her bed.

      “Can’t you bust me out of this place? I want to sleep in my own bed, with my own pillows.” His wife pointed to the small, rectangle pillow on the hospital bed. “That horrible thing is a brick disguised as a pillow.”

      Every time he came to see Savannah in the hospital, she said something that made him laugh. Perhaps that was one СКАЧАТЬ