Husbands and Other Strangers. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ careful to choose his pay-backs wisely. They fought well and made love even better. Lord, he hadn’t known he could feel this happy, this fulfilled until he’d met Gayle.

      A cold shiver slithered down his spine. He tried his best to ignore it. She was going to be fine. If this was on the level, she was going to be fine.

      If this wasn’t, the woman was dead meat.

      “We’ll be there with you,” Jake assured his sister.

      Gayle turned to look at him and he saw the fear in her eyes.

      So did Taylor. He tried to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

      Like Rico, Taylor had met Dr. Sullivan while doing renovations on the man’s house just after the surgeon had gotten married. The wedding had made the society page as well as the business section, because the bride was the head of a well-known fashion design company and, along with her younger brother, the owner of the Fortune 500 company that produced the designs.

      He saw the man frowning now as he approached him and his brothers-in-law. They’d been cooling their heels in the waiting room, trying to convince one another that this was nothing more than a stupid joke. Getting nowhere.

      Peter wore the expression of a man who knew he was not the bearer of good tidings. “The good news is that she checks out fine physically and she can go home.”

      “And the bad news?” Taylor pressed.

      “The bad news,” Peter told them, trying to phrase it as clinically, as painlessly as possible, “is that Gayle appears to have sustained a blow to the head and while there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of a concussion, it has apparently triggered a bout of amnesia.”

      “A bout,” Taylor repeated. Fighters had bouts. They were over after a given amount of rounds. A bout with the flu lasted a while, then was over. He rallied around the word. “Which means that it’ll go away.” Taylor silently willed the surgeon to confirm his conclusion.

      Peter took a breath, then said, “Probably.”

      “When?” Taylor pressed before either of his brothers-in-law were able to say the word.

      Peter shook his head. He sympathized with what he knew the three men had to be going through, especially Taylor. “I’m afraid that I can’t really say. Amnesia is still a very gray area for us.”

      Taylor felt as if he was free-falling through space, with a terrain full of nothing but jagged rocks beneath him.

      “‘Appears,’ ‘apparently,’ ‘probably,’” he echoed in protest. “There’s nothing definite here, Doc.”

      “No,” Peter agreed, “there’s not. Amnesia is such a capricious condition. There are no hard-and-fast rules established yet. This could go away in an hour, a day, a month or…” He let his voice trail off, not wanting to utter the word that he knew Gayle’s husband dreaded.

      Never.

      “Capricious.” Jake seized on the doctor’s description. “That makes it sound like it’s all a prank.”

      Peter slowly moved his head from side to side. “I’m afraid not.”

      Taylor had worn a path in the carpet, waiting for the neurosurgeon to emerge. He had to hold himself in check now to keep from pacing again. This just didn’t make any sense to him.

      “But Gayle can’t just forget one thing and not everything else,” he protested. And then that sick, sinking feeling had him adding, “Can she?”

      “I know it sounds crazy,” Peter agreed, “but I’m afraid that she can.”

      “Selective amnesia?” Taylor scoffed at the notion even as he fought to keep the panic he felt from crawling up his belly and into his throat. “How is that even possible?”

      “More easily than you think, Taylor. Actually, all amnesia is selective in a way. A person with amnesia doesn’t forget how to talk. How to walk. How to get dressed. They remember who’s president or how to make change. They forget other things, things like who they are.”

      “Okay, she knows all that. She just claims not to know who I am,” Taylor bit off, frustrated.

      “Has she been taking any new medications?” Peter asked, looking at all three men.

      “No. She’s as healthy as a horse,” Taylor told him. “Why?”

      “There was this man, a former astronaut actually, who forgot who his wife was. They thought it was the onset of Alzheimer’s, but it was a bad reaction to a statin medication he was taking for his cholesterol. It happens.”

      “She’s not taking anything for cholesterol.” Taylor took a second to collect himself. “So what you’re saying is that it’s possible to forget just one integral part of her life. Me.”

      “Yes, it’s possible.”

      “Why?” Taylor demanded. He hated this helpless feeling that was taking over. He was a doer, not someone who just sat back to wait. Waiting had never been very popular with him. “Why would Gayle just forget me and not her brothers?”

      “I don’t have the answer to that,” Peter told him honestly.

      “Take a guess.” It was a barely suppressed plea.

      Peter blew out a breath. “There might be some sort of underlying reason. The mind is still largely a huge mystery to us. It represses certain memories, sometimes so much so that the person forgets they ever had them. Gayle hitting her head triggered a response, allowing her mind to spring into action.”

      “And erase me.” The words tasted bitter in Taylor’s mouth.

      Peter frowned slightly. “I wouldn’t have put it exactly that way, but yes, erase you.”

      Taylor still needed a reason, something to rectify, to make right. “But why?” He looked at Jake and Sam. Along with concern, there was pity in their eyes. He hated being on the receiving end of pity. His frustration continued to mount. “There’s nothing wrong between us.”

      “No explosive events in the past few months?” Peter addressed the question not only to Taylor, but to Gayle’s brothers, as well.

      “Gayle is always explosive. She’s a hotbed of emotion,” Sam told him. “She always has been.”

      “But there hasn’t been anything out of the ordinary,” Taylor insisted.

      It wasn’t strictly true. There’d been one argument, a minor one really, especially when you took into consideration that it had been with Gayle. She was usually far more vocal than she had been over this last thing. They’d had a difference of opinion over her getting pregnant. He wanted to wait, and she seemed intent on it happening soon. The reasons for his side were purely logical and perhaps a little chauvinistic.

      He wanted to save a little more money before they started a family. Through her endorsements as well as her job, they were far from hurting financially, but he thought of it as “her” money. A baby should be raised with money that he provided. He’d said as much СКАЧАТЬ