Margaret Watson - A Thanksgiving To Remember

He wanted to call her back, to ask her to touch him again. But the darkness was pulling too hard, tugging him into the void. Tom watched her walk out the door, noticing her long, slender body and the gentle sway of her hips. He held onto the image as he slid into sleep.

Tina stood at the desk in the hallway, checking on some patient records, when a blond woman stepped out of Tom’s room and slid her hands into the pockets of her white jacket. When she reached the desk, she said, “Can I have Tom Flynt’s chart?”

“What do you think, Dr. Mellon?” Tina asked.

“He definitely has amnesia,” the neurologist answered. “He seems to be completely blocked.”

“What’s his prognosis?”

“Good, I’d say. But I have no idea how long it will last. At least he doesn’t have any other neurological problems. His brain scan was normal and all the tests I gave him were normal.”

“Treatment?”

The neurologist smiled. “Tincture of time. His memories will eventually come back. But someone is going to have to spend a lot of time with him, talking to him. Are you the nurse who’s taking care of him?”

Tina nodded.

“Spend as much time as you can with him,” the doctor said. She made a few notations on Tom’s chart, then walked away.

“Well, Tina, it looks like you’re going to have your hands full with that patient,” one of the nurses said.

Tina nodded. But her heart sped up in her chest at the prospect of spending time with Tom Flynt.

Although Tina checked on him frequently, Tom spent most of the rest of the day sleeping. It was perfectly normal, she knew, and was the best treatment for his injuries, but she couldn’t control her disappointment every time she opened his door and saw his eyes closed.

“I’m just dopey from the lack of sleep,” she muttered to herself as she closed his door for the last time at the end of her shift. But whatever the reason, she was absurdly disappointed that she hadn’t gotten the chance to say goodbye to her patient.

She walked more slowly than usual to the nursing desk and picked up her purse and her jacket. The supervisor looked up at her.

“Are you on tomorrow, Tina?”

She nodded. “I’ll be here for the afternoon shift…” she hesitated, then added “…unless you need me earlier.”

The supervisor gave her a sharp look, then shook her head. “Don’t go volunteering like that, Tina. Someone might take you up on the offer.”

“I’m not doing anything important tomorrow. Do you need an extra pair of hands?” she asked eagerly.

“I don’t think so.” She looked at Tina questioningly. “You were here late last night, weren’t you?”

When Tina nodded, the other woman scowled. “Go home and get some sleep, White. And don’t come back until tomorrow afternoon.”

Tina headed for the elevator, resisting the impulse to look back toward Tom Flynt’s room. He was in good hands, she told herself. And she did need to get some sleep tonight.

But she was back at the hospital the next day several hours before her shift began. She said hello to the nurses clustered around the desk, then slipped into Tom Flynt’s room. She merely wanted to see if he had regained any of his memory, she told herself.

He was sitting up in bed, reading a newspaper. When he saw her walk in the door, he put it down and gave her a smile. Her stomach swooped toward her toes.

“Good morning,” he said, his eyes warming as they rested on her. “I wondered where you were, Ms. White.”

“Please, call me Tina,” she said. “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together.”

“Tina.” He seemed to savor the sound of her name, and a shiver of pleasure rippled through her. “That will be something to look forward to.” She couldn’t miss the flare of pleasure in his eyes, and warmth blossomed inside her.

“How are you feeling this morning?” She struggled to ignore her body’s reaction and get back on safer ground.

“Other than the fact that I have no idea who I am or what I’m supposed to be doing in Grand Springs, I feel pretty good.”

She picked up the chart at the end of his bed and realized that it was time for one of the nurses to listen to his chest and check his wound. “Let me take a look at you.”

Her fingers moved gently over the bandage on his head, easing the tape away from his skin. She nodded as she looked at the wound. “Your head is healing nicely,” she said. “No problems here.”

Then she took her stethoscope out of her pocket and placed it on his chest. She told herself to ignore the warmth of his skin and the vitality that seemed to shimmer in the air around him. He was a patient, she told herself. Nothing more.

Finally, she stepped back and folded the stethoscope back into her pocket. She noticed that her hands were shaking and she shoved them into her pockets, too. “Sounds good. I don’t think there’s been any more bleeding into your chest, but Dr. Wilson will probably want to get another scan in a day or two, just to be sure.”

He sat in the bed, watching her, a bemused expression on his face. “What time does your shift usually start, Tina?”

The sound of her name on his lips made her tingle with pleasure, but she held his gaze. “Three o’clock. But because of what happened at the Steele ball, there are a lot of extra patients right now, so I thought I’d come in early to help out.”

“I’m glad,” he said, watching her. “I missed you.”

Her heart leaped in her chest, and she wanted to tell him that she’d missed him, too. Instead she said, “You feel comfortable with me because you remember my voice. It’s the only thing that’s at all familiar to you.” She gave him a bright smile. “But that’s okay, because you’re going to be seeing a lot of me in the next few days.”

He leaned back against the pillows on the bed, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. She thought she saw a flash of pleasure, quickly hidden, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t have a lot of experience with men, other than as patients.

“It seems I spent most of yesterday sleeping,” he said, watching her.

She scowled. “I should never have let those detectives grill you like they did. They tired you out.”

To her surprise, he laughed. “No one’s ever been so protective toward me. I think I like it,” he said. His smile slowly faded, and she saw a hint of fear in his eyes. “How did I remember that when I can’t even remember my own name?”

“Don’t worry.” She couldn’t stop herself from touching his arm. “That’s how your memory comes back, in bits and pieces. You’ll remember something and have no idea what it means, but gradually you’ll get more and more pieces of the puzzle, and pretty soon you’ll remember everything.”

He stared up at her. “You’re very reassuring, Tina,” he said, his voice quiet. “Are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

“Of course not. Lying to you isn’t going to help you.” She sat down on the chair next to his bed. “I have to admit, Mr. Flynt, that I haven’t taken care of many patients with amnesia. But I looked it up in my nursing books last night.” She swallowed as she remembered her determined search for every bit of information she could find. “And that’s what all the books said. You generally regain your memory in bits and pieces.”

“Please, call me Tom,” he said. He gave her a smile that looked forced. “It may not sound familiar, but apparently it’s what I’m supposed to be called. And it sounds a lot better than Mr. Flynt.”

“All right…Tom.” Her voice sounded different, low and intimate in the quiet of the room.

She sounded like a woman talking to her lover.