“Is she Apache? Maybe she’s from the res.”
“No. She’s white. Somewhere in her mid-twenties, I’d say.”
Hank shook his head with disbelief. “Boy, oh, boy. And I thought this was going to be a boring night.”
Brady slapped him on the shoulder. “You’d better get down to the highway. The ambulance ought to be here soon.”
Forty-five minutes later, the ambulance had picked up the injured woman and carried her to Sierra General Hospital in Ruidoso. Brady and Hank arrived directly behind the emergency vehicle and followed the paramedics as they pushed the injured woman through the swishing doors.
Once they were inside the building, Hank said, “Guess we’d better give Admitting what information we have. But that’s not a heck of a lot.”
Brady’s expression was rueful. “We have nothing but white female. Black hair, gray eyes, mid-twenties. They’ll have to admit her as a Jane Doe.”
As Brady and his partner paused in the middle of the corridor, two nurses hurried out and ordered the paramedics to take the patient farther down the hallway. As he watched the gurney and medical attendants make a sharp left and disappeared from view, Brady had the oddest urge to follow. He wanted to see for himself that the woman was going to be okay, that the nurses and doctors did everything they could to alleviate her pain and fears.
The urge was totally out of character for Brady and made him feel foolish. He’d always made it a policy to never let his emotions get tangled up with his job. It was easier that way. Easier to go home at night and forget the victims who’d been battered or robbed or abused. As a deputy, his job wasn’t to fix personal problems, but to put criminals away so that no one else might be harmed.
Sure, when a young child was involved, there wasn’t an officer on the force who wasn’t emotionally affected. But the woman he’d found on the road tonight was hardly a child and what happened to her next shouldn’t be on Brady’s mind.
“Hey, Brady, you here on official business tonight? Or just to see your sister?”
At the sound of the female voice, Brady turned to see Andrea, a nurse who often worked the night shift in emergency.
“Bridget is working tonight?” he asked.
Brady’s sister was a medical doctor with a very busy practice. She wasn’t a hospital resident, but if any of her patients needed hospitalization she treated them here at Sierra General. If he could find her, he might be able to talk her in to taking over Jane Doe’s case.
The tall, blonde nurse nodded. “I saw her a few minutes ago. She had some sort of emergency with a patient on the third floor.”
Brady turned to his partner. “Can you deal with admitting her on your own?”
Hank shrugged. “Sure. Why?”
At that moment a male nurse at the front desk called to Andrea and as she quickly excused herself, Brady told the deputy, “I’m going to look for my sister.”
Hank’s brown brows pulled together to form a puzzled frown. “Bridget?” he asked blankly. “Why in heck do you need to see her right now? Your family having problems you haven’t told me about?”
Brady had two brothers, three sisters, parents and a grandmother. And, except for one sister, they all lived in the same house on the Diamond D Ranch. Among that many relatives there were always problems arising, but thankfully usually minor ones.
“No, Hank. No problems!” Trotting toward the elevator, Brady said over his shoulder, “And don’t run off to the coffee shop until I get back!”
On the third floor, Brady stepped off the elevator and headed to the nearest nurse’s station. But before he reached the post, he spotted Bridget striding toward him.
When the petite redhead reached his side, she looked at him with faint alarm. “Brady! What are you doing here? Nothing is wrong with the family, is it?”
“Relax. As far as I know everyone is okay. I’m here on business.”
Looping her arm through his, his sister pulled him to one side of the wide corridor so as not to clog the pathway. “Oh, I hope it’s not a domestic battery,” she said quickly. “I hate to hear about those victims, much less see them in the hospital.”
Removing a gray Stetson from his head, Brady raked a hand through thick, tawny-colored waves. “Actually, I’m not sure what this woman is a victim of. Hank and I found her on a back mountain road a few miles from Picacho. The paramedics just brought her in a few minutes ago. She’s had sort of trauma to the head. And I was…hoping you’d take a look at her.”
His sister frowned. “Isn’t one of the emergency doctors dealing with her?”
Brady felt like an idiot. The hospital was full of competent doctors and no doubt Gray Eyes would get the best of care. That should be enough for any patient. So why was he trying to garner her more attention?
“Yes. She’s…being treating now. But I thought—well, I’d just feel better if you’d stop in and look at her.”
“Who is it?” Bridget quickly questioned. “A friend? Someone we know?”
Shaking his head, he said, “Never seen her before. She doesn’t know who she is.”
Bridget started to ask another question, but at that moment, a small group of people walking past them called greetings to his sister, momentarily distracting her from their conversation.
“Sorry, Brady,” she said, once the medical personnel had moved on down the corridor and away from them. “You were saying—”
“She’s blank, Brita. Not her name, where she was or why. Nothing. And no ID to tell us.”
A thoughtful frown crossed his sister’s face. “A head injury, you say?”
Brady nodded. “A bad gash near her temple.”
Suddenly she patted his forearm in a placating way. “I think Dr. Richmond is on emergency call this evening. He’s certainly capable of taking care of this type of injury.”
“I’m sure he is. But she’ll have to be handed over to the care of a permanent physician. And she doesn’t know anyone and—”
Sensing his urgency, she released a sigh of surrender. “Okay, Brady, okay. I’ll take a look. But mind you, when her family steps forward and requests another doctor, I’ll be gone. Understand?”
Smiling with relief, he clasped a loving arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Did you know that you’re my favorite sister?”
She shot him a tired look. “Yeah. Your favorite is the one you happen to be with at the moment. And do I need to remind you of the messes you’ve gotten me into? That time—”
“We don’t have time to go into my transgressions now, sis,” Brady interrupted as he urged his sister toward the nearest elevator. “I promise I’ll make everything up to you. Someday.”
The cubicle behind the plain beige curtain was cold and smelled faintly of disinfectant. Standing a few feet away, at the foot of the narrow, railed bed, a middle-aged doctor with dark blond hair and black rimmed glasses was scratching notes on a clipboard, while barking orders at the attending nurse.
Since arriving in the emergency unit, she’d been stripped of her boots and clothing, sponged clean and dressed in a blue cotton gown that tied at the back. The doctor had poked and prodded, asked her questions that she couldn’t answer and generally done little to assuage her fears.
Now that he’d ended his examination and was conversing with the nurse, her mind vacillated between sheer panic and a pit of total emptiness.
Scans. Sutures. Neurological tests. The medical words she managed to catch here and there made little to no sense to her.
Oh, God, who was she? Where was she? The questions pounded through her head, adding to the horrible throb in her right temple.
Thinking was like bouncing herself off a black wall where there was no door or crack of light to lead her either forward or backward. Other than waking up to see a deputy sheriff hovering over her, there was nothing in her mind, except icy, paralyzing fear.
She tried to push the terror back and keep from sobbing as the doctor exited the cubicle and the young nurse with a kind fac
e bent over her. The name tag pinned to the left side of her chest said her name was Lilly.
“All right, miss,” she said warmly. “Let’s get some pain medication started and then we’ll see about taking you down to radiology. When that’s done someone will come around to put some stitches in your scalp.”
During the ambulance ride, the paramedics had started an intravenous drip. Now the nurse simply pushed a syringe full of medication into the tube already affixed to her hand.
“Why am I going to radiology?”
“To take pictures of your skull and brain,” the nurse replied. “Dr. Richmond needs to see if you have internal injuries.”
“Oh.” She didn’t want pictures or stitches, she wanted to scream. She wanted her memory back. “Will that take long? The tests?”
“No,” the nurse assured her. “They won’t hurt, either.”
She closed her eyes. “Um—the deputy who found me. Is he here?”
Lilly answered, “I saw Hank Ridell out in the corridor a few minutes ago. Is that who you mean?”
She opened her eyes to see the nurse was writing something on the chart the doctor had left behind.
“No. His name was Donovan, I think. He was tall and had on a gray hat and he had a little scar right here.” She touched a finger to a spot on her cheekbone near her eye.
Lilly suddenly smiled a knowing smile. “Oh. That’s Brady. He’s the chief deputy of Lincoln County. And considered quite a catch by most of the young women around here.”
The pain medication was beginning to course rapidly through her bloodstream, easing the pounding in her head. “Including you?” she asked the nurse.
Lilly blushed and laughed. “No. I have a boyfriend. Besides, I’m not in Brady Donovan’s league.” She placed the chart in a holder at the foot of the bed, then studied her more closely. “Did you need to talk with the deputy for some reason?”
There were a thousand things she wanted to ask the man, things that might help jar her memory. But that wasn’t entirely the reason she wanted to see the deputy again. He’d been nice and gentle. He’d held her with strong hands and soothed her with his low voice. At some point during their wait for the ambulance, he’d become her light in a heavy fog. She’d not wanted to leave him and now she fervently wished he was back by her side.
“I would like to speak with him. If you think that’s possible.”
Smiling, Lilly winked at her. “While you’re in radiology I’ll do my best to find him.”
The nurse quickly swished out the door and as she watched her go, she desperately prayed the woman would find the deputy.
Her world had gone crazy and he was the only person, the only thing her memory had to go back to. She was totally and utterly lost. And without Deputy Donovan, she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to find her way back home.
Chapter Two
More than an hour later, Brady and Hank were sitting in the hospital coffee shop, finishing off huge slices of pie when Bridget walked up to their table.
Shaking her head, she looked at the crumbs on their plates. “Looks like both of you are really worried about good nutrition,” she said wryly.
“Pecan pie must be good for you or the hospital wouldn’t serve it, right?” Hank asked.
“Wrong. But it looks delicious,” she said with a weary sigh.
Immediately, Hank jumped from his seat and pulled out a chair for her.
“Did you see our Jane Doe?” Brady questioned before she had time to get comfortable.
The doctor thanked Hank, then pushed a hand through her tumbled hair. “I did,” she said to Brady. “And I’ve become her doctor. For the time being.”
“I’m glad. So what about her condition?” Brady questioned.
His sister frowned at him. “I can’t give you details, Brady. You know that’s invading a patient’s privacy.”
Brady muttered a curse word under his breath. For the past two hours he’d not been able to think about anything except the gray-eyed woman he’d held in his arms. Now his sister wanted to act all professional with him.
“Damn it, Brita, just tell me—is she going to get better? Is she going to be able to remember? Tell us who she is?”
Bridget studied him keenly, and then glanced pointedly at Hank. “What has he done, had a love-at-first-sight experience?”
Hank grinned. “You mean another one?”
Normally Brady liked to joke. In fact, Fiona Donovan had often called him her most lighthearted child, full of happiness and humor. But at the moment he wasn’t feeling anything of the sort. In fact, he was getting a tad angry at both his sister and his partner.
Scowling, Brady muttered to the both of them, “I’m not in the mood for this!”
Seeing he was serious, Bridget relented. “Okay, brother, I’ll be straightforward. Your Jane Doe will get better. The good news is that physically she’s fine. She wasn’t raped, and aside from some bruising on her arms and legs she isn’t seriously injured. As for her memory, how long that might take is a question I can’t answer.”
“Are you kiddin’ me?”
Reaching across the table, she patted the back of his hand. “No. Medicine is not always an exact science. And head injuries are sometimes tricky. She might remember everything in the next few minutes, years from now, something in-between, or never.”
The picture of awful uncertainty his sister was painting hit Brady like a fist to his mouth. No matter the circumstances that caused the injury, the woman didn’t deserve this.
“Isn’t there something you can do to make her remember? Give her some sort of drug?”
“Trust me, Brady. If she doesn’t improve quickly, I’ll be calling in a specialist. But since she’s a ward of the county, cost has to be considered—there’s just so much the hospital will allow. And quit staring at me like you expect me to perform some sort of miracle. I’m just a doctor.”
Hank suddenly interjected, “Look, Brady, it might be that we find her ID when we return to the scene in the morning. Who knows, we might even find an abandoned vehicle in the area.”
Brady wished they didn’t have to wait until daylight to return to the scene. He wanted answers now. But the department’s manpower was already stretched across the enormous county. To bring in searchlights would be costly, time-consuming and perhaps even worthless in the long run.
“Yeah,” Brady agreed. “Let’s hope.”
Bridget suddenly squeezed his fingers and he glanced back at his sister.
“I almost forgot—she’s asking for you.”
Brady’s mouth fell open. “Me?”
Bridget’s smile was wry. “Yes, you. She wants to see you. I expect the meds we’ve given her will be putting her to sleep soon, so you’d better get going.”
Gray Eyes wanted to see him? The news didn’t just stun Brady, it pleased him in the goofiest sort of way and he hurriedly scraped back his chair.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, Hank.” Rising to his feet, he pulled out his wallet and tossed several bills at Hank. “Here. Buy Bridget a piece of pie. She looks hungry.”
He headed toward the plate glass door leading out of the coffee shop when suddenly his sister’s voice called out to him.
“Brady, where are you going?”
Frowning with frustration, he glanced over his shoulder. “Where do you think I’m going?” he asked impatiently.
With a shake of her head, she looked drolly over to Hank, then back to her brother. “I don’t know. There are nearly five hundred rooms in this hospital. Don’t you think you need the number to find her?”
If Brady didn’t feel like an idiot before, he certainly did now and he was glad he was standing a few feet away from the table. Otherwise Hank could easily see the red on his face.
“All right,” he conceded. “I wasn’t thinking. What’s the number?”
“Two-twelve. And Brady, be easy,” she warned.
A lazy smile crossed Brady’s face. “Don’t worry, sis. If there’s o
ne thing I’m good at, it’s handling women. Especially damsels in distress.”
When a knock sounded on the door, she didn’t bother to open her eyes. For the past thirty minutes the nurses had been coming and going from the hospital room like ants on a picnic blanket. She expected the footsteps she heard approaching her bed belonged to yet another nurse who was there to take her blood pressure for the umpteenth time.
“Excuse me, miss. It’s Deputy Donovan. Do you feel like talking?”
The sound of his voice set her heart to pounding and her eyes popped open to see him standing near the head of the bed. His gray hat was in his hand and beneath the dim lighting she could see rusty-gold hair waving thickly about his head, tanned features molded in a sober expression.
He was a young man, she decided. Somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties. Handsome was not the word to come to her mind as she studied him more closely. But rugged and sexy certainly did. Sharp cheekbones, a thrusting chin, hazel green eyes and a full lower lip merged together to form one strong face.
Suddenly feeling as weak as a puny kitten, she cleared her throat and tried to speak in a normal voice. Instead, it came out raspy. “Thank you for coming, Deputy Donovan.”
A faint smile tilted the corner of his lips and her gaze was drawn to his mouth and the dimple marking his left cheek.
“My pleasure,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
That voice. It was her first memory of anything and she clung to it like a child with a blanket. “Lousy. But better.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Hopefully, you’ll be right as rain real soon.”
She swallowed as hopeless emotions thickened her throat. “Doctor Donovan was very positive about that. She…told me that she’s your sister.”
His smile deepened. “That’s right. We’re from a big family. We all live together in a big ranch house.”
Family. Parents. Siblings. Did she have any? And if she did, where were they? Nearby? Far away? Maybe she had no one. Oh, God, let her remember, she prayed.
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