Diagnosis: Attraction. Rebecca York
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flashlight, noting that the pupils were contracting normally.
“Okay, that’s good. I’m going to check your heart and lungs.” He pressed the stethoscope against her chest, listening to her steady heartbeat. “Good.”
Up until then it had been a routine examination—or as routine as it could be when the patient had amnesia. When he put a hand on her arm, everything changed.
As he touched her, she gasped as though an electric current had shot through her, and perhaps he did too, because suddenly the room began to whirl around him, making it seem like the two of them were in the center of a private, invisible tornado. He knew the windows hadn’t blown in or anything. The air in the room was perfectly still, as it had been moments before. The whirling was all in his mind. And hers because he was picking up on her confusion and sense of disorientation—as well as his own.
He should let go of her, but he felt as though he was riveted in place. With his hand on her arm, memories leaped toward him. Her memories—that she’d said were inaccessible to her. He was sure she hadn’t been lying, but somehow recollections that had been unavailable to her were flooding into his consciousness.
The first thing he knew for sure was that her name wasn’t Jane Doe. It was Elizabeth something. He clenched his teeth, struggling to catch the last name, but it seemed to be dangling just beyond his reach. Although he couldn’t get it, he latched on to a whole series of scenes from her past.
Elizabeth as a little girl, at her first day of nursery school—shy, uncertain and then panicked, watching Mommy leave her alone in a roomful of children she didn’t know. Elizabeth as a grade-schooler working math problems from a textbook. Elizabeth refusing to eat the beef tongue her mother had bought—to save grocery money.
Elizabeth alone in her room, reading a book about two lovers and wishing she could have the same feelings for someone. Elizabeth leaving the hockey field, distraught because she’d missed making a goal she thought should have been hers. And then in a college classroom—taking a social studies exam and sure she was going to get a perfect score.
The old memories faded and were replaced by something much more recent. From yesterday. She was worried about being followed. She was driving an old car she’d borrowed from a friend, glancing frequently in the rearview mirror—seeing a blue vehicle keeping pace with her.
She sped up, fleeing the pursuers, weaving down alleys and onto the street again. She thought she was going to get away until a delivery van had blocked her escape. She plowed into a lamppost with a bone-jarring impact. While she was still stunned from the crash, a man rushed to her, yanking her from the car, hitting her head on the door frame as he pulled her onto the sidewalk, just as a crowd of onlookers gathered.
“Hey, what are you doing to her?” somebody had demanded.
That memory of the accident cut off abruptly with a flash of pain in her head and neck. She must have passed out, and one of the people who’d come running had called 9-1-1.
The recollections flowing from her mind to his were like pounding waves, but they weren’t the only thing he experienced. As he made the physical connection with her, he felt an overwhelming sexual pull that urged him to do more than dip into her thoughts.
He was her doctor, which meant that ethically there could be nothing personal between the two of them; yet he couldn’t stop himself from gathering her close. Somewhere in his own mind he couldn’t squelch the notion that letting go of her would be like his own death.
And he knew from her thoughts that she felt the same powerful connection to him. It made her feel desperate. Aroused. More off-balance than either one of them had ever been in their lives.
He told himself he should pull away. But he was trapped where he was, because her arms came up to wrap around his waist. Well, not trapped. He wanted to be here, and she’d given him a reason not to break the connection.
She pressed herself against him, increasing the contact and the frustration and the sheer need. He breathed in her scent, picturing himself bending down so that he could lower his mouth to hers, imagining the taste of her and letting himself see what it would be like to kick off his shoes and climb into the hospital bed with her.
She made a small needy sound, and he knew that she was picturing the same thing as he was. Part of his mind was shocked and aghast at how far he was going with this fantasy. The other part ached to push her back onto the bed and roll on top of her so he could press his body to hers. Only first he needed to drag off his shirt and pants and get rid of her hospital gown.
That last frantic image was what finally made him come to his senses and pull away, breaking the physical contact and, at the same time, the mental connection.
He stood beside the bed, dragging in lungsful of air, feeling dizzy and disoriented and still achingly aroused.
And she was staring at him, looking like a woman who was ready for sex. When she reached out her hand toward him, he forced himself to step farther back.
He cursed under his breath, ordering himself not to think about making love with her, as he clawed his way toward rational behavior. For a few moments, he’d felt an overwhelming connection with Elizabeth—even though he was sure he’d never met her before. But he did know that she was a patient, and thinking about anything physical between them was completely out of bounds. It was morally wrong, and it could get him in big trouble, come to that.
Which left him trying to understand what had happened between the two of them in those seconds when they were touching. Both the flood of memories from her mind and the sudden intense sexual attraction that had threatened to wipe any reasonable thoughts from his mind.
He shook his head as he gazed down on her. She sat on the bed, looking stunned, her blue eyes wide, her breath coming in little gasps as she clenched and unclenched her fingers on the sheet.
“I’m sorry,” he managed to say.
“Are you?”
“Of course. That was completely inappropriate.”
“I think it took both of us by surprise,” she said, making an excuse.
“You’re a patient.”
Ignoring the observation, she said, “What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Touching you made me recall things I couldn’t remember for myself. And I got inside your mind, too. I didn’t know a thing about you before we touched. Now I know you always went in for dangerous sports. Like mountain climbing. Spelunking. And ice camping.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“They made me feel alive,” he said, unaccountably admitting something to this woman that he had always kept to himself.
“And recently you were in Africa. In the middle of a nasty little war. They were shooting at you, and the guy next to you was killed. You stayed hidden, with him on top of you, soaking your clothes with his blood, until it got dark and you could sneak away.”
He answered with a small wordless nod. It was something he’d tried to forget, and she’d pulled it from his memories.
“You went there to help people, and you saved a lot of lives. But you never knew quite how to connect with anyone.” She gulped. “Just like me.”
The admission jolted him. “What do you mean?”
She kept her gaze fixed on him. “You were in my head. You know I’m like you, with that feeling of not being able to...relate to people on the deep level you crave. Like everybody else has a secret handshake, only nobody ever taught it to you.”
He’d never thought of it quite that way, but he nodded, because she had spoken the truth. All his adult life—all his life, really—he’d been searching for something he was sure he could not find. Something other people had, but he lacked. Until now, with this woman. But that couldn’t be possible—not after all the years