Rita Herron - Memories of Megan

“Thank you.”

She hugged her arms around her middle until she heard the click of the door, and the police car drive away. Finally she forced herself to stand on unsteady legs. But her stomach convulsed and she rushed to the bathroom, sank to her knees and let the tears fall.

The pregnancy test she’d taken earlier mocked her from the sink.

It had been negative. Again. Tom had wanted a baby so badly. She’d felt like a failure when their attempts at conceiving had failed.

Now he would never have a child.

And she had nothing left of him but troubled memories.

And questions. Lots of unanswered questions.

“YOU SAID MY NAME WAS WHAT?” The man pivoted to study the doctor as he unwound the last of the bandages from his face. He was too afraid of what he might see when the last one fell away.

Dr. Crane peered over his silver spectacles, worry creasing his brow. “Cole Hunter. You’re a psychiatrist. You’ve just signed on at the Coastal Island Research Park on Catcall Island. You are—”

“Yeah, yeah, you told me. Thirty-five, single, a workaholic.” Frustration clawed at him. “So, why can’t I remember all this?”

“Because you suffered severe head trauma in the car accident. Your memory should return in bits and pieces. Hopefully you haven’t lost that scientific mind.”

The doctor chuckled at his own joke, but Cole remained stoic. Nothing about the past few weeks had been funny.

He strained for the memories again, for any snippet of his past life. Cole Hunter. A psychiatrist. Somehow during all those painful hours of lying in the hospital he hadn’t imagined himself being a doctor of any kind.

Of course, until a few days ago he’d been in too much pain to care about the past. He’d been struggling through every minute. The long hospital stay, the surgeries, the bandages. The fear of not waking up. The fear of being paralyzed. The fear of looking like a monster.

“Now, see what modern medicine can do.” Dr. Crane spun the stool around so Cole faced the mirror, placed his hands on Cole’s shoulders and directed him to look. “It may not be quite the same as your old face, but it’s not bad. There’s a little swelling and bruising, but it’ll fade.”

Cole stared at the stranger in the mirror, cold terror sweeping over him. Not only did he not remember his name, but he didn’t recognize the face staring back at him, either.

THREE DAYS AFTER MEGAN had received the news of her husband’s death, she stood huddled in her raincoat while they lowered his body into the cold damp ground. Nearly a hundred flower arrangements decorated the dried grass surrounding the grave, their vibrant colors at odds with the dismal day. The church had been packed with Tom’s family and their friends, with various scientists and other employees from the Coastal Island Research Park (CIRP). The preacher offered a few words of comfort, read some scripture, then ended the grave side service with a prayer. Tom’s mother dropped a rose onto the grave and broke into sobs, her husband pulling her into his arms. Megan’s heart clenched as the visitors began to disperse.

A breeze stirred the trees surrounding the cemetery, dead fall leaves scattering across the grass and flapping against tombstones, crunching beneath the soles of people’s shoes as they milled about, speaking in hushed tones. Connie, Tom’s secretary, cried into her hands.

Exhaustion pulled at Megan as the visitors offered condolences, but she forced herself to shake hands, occasionally sparing her best friend April a glance, silently thanking her for staying by her side, offering support.

Tom’s parents had been anything but supportive, their anger over their loss directed at her, as if by marrying Tom she had caused his death. Of course they never had been logical where she was concerned. She was a measly nurse at the research facility, had grown up on the wrong side of the social tracks and had never been good enough, beautiful enough or classy enough for their precious son.

But at least they’d handled most of the details of the funeral. They’d wanted to choose the casket, the flowers that would serve as the blanket cover and to oversee the myriad details, while all she’d wanted to do was curl up in a ball and grieve.

Connie suddenly stood in front of her, looking lost. “Meg—” Her voice broke.

Megan pulled her into her arms and tried to soothe her. “It’ll be okay, Connie.”

“But you and Tom have been so good to me. I don’t know what I would have done…what I’ll do.”

Tom had helped Connie get up the courage to leave her abusive husband. She was still fragile.

“Just know Tom would be proud of you for taking care of your son,” Megan said softly. “And he’d want you to be strong, to keep doing that.”

Connie pulled away, trying to compose herself, and nodded. “If you need me, Megan, I’m here.”

Megan thanked her, weariness settling in her bones as Connie turned and walked away. The long line of people wanting to speak to her stretched in front of her and she felt herself sway.

April grabbed her elbow. “Here, you’d better sit down.”

Megan nodded dumbly and sank into a metal folding chair, the sea of people blurring in front of her. Tears streamed down her cheeks, mingling with the rain. She didn’t want to be here amidst this crowd of strangers. She wanted to be alone to mourn. Oh, God, there were so many things to mourn for.

The marriage that should have lasted forever.

The man who had died before she could make him happy.

The chance to make things right that was lost forever.

COLE HUNTER WATCHED the casket being lowered into the ground, a bitter chill engulfing him. Oddly, Tom Wells had turned up missing the same day Cole had had his own accident. It could have been his body being lowered into that hole just as easily as Wells.

And for a brief second when he’d seen the casket and the hole in the ground, he’d had a flash that it was him being lowered. That he was Tom Wells and he had died.

Warner Parnell, the doctor at the research center who’d been helping Cole with his recovery after the accident, frowned solemnly. “He was a good man. We’ll miss him at the center.”

“It…it seems strange that I survived, but he died on the same day.”

Parnell gave him a sympathetic look. “Don’t succumb to survivor guilt,” he said in a low voice. “As a doctor, you know that’s dangerous.”

Cole folded his hands. The harsh reality of the timing obviously hadn’t escaped him and had played with his head. He had felt guilty that luck had been on his side that day and he had survived. Granted he had a new face, his memory was shaky and his stride hindered by a slight limp, but hell, at least he was still able to walk.

He shuddered, wondering if he should have come. He hadn’t wanted to. In fact, he had the oddest feeling that he normally didn’t attend funerals, but he couldn’t remember why. He’d hoped seeing so many of the research center’s staff in one place might jog some memory cells.

“I didn’t know him very well, did I?”

Parnell shrugged. “No. You met only once. At the center when you came for the interview. I believe you corresponded through e-mail about your research, but I’m not certain.”

Shaking off the uneasy feeling, Cole stared across the smattering of faces, a few of them familiar from the three days he’d spent getting acquainted with the research center.

His gaze settled on Tom Wells’s wife. Megan.

A nurse in the psychiatric ward.

Another eerie sensation skittered across his nerve endings, a flash of some kind of memory tugging at him. He must have met her before, probably at the facility or at one of the dinners for the center when he was being interviewed. She wouldn’t be an easy woman to forget.