Sally Berneathy - Private Vows

“I told you, I don’t remember.”

“Where’d you get the blood on your dress?”

“I don’t remember!”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t remember!”

“She said it was Mary Jackson a few minutes ago,” Cole interjected. “Mary Jackson who lives at 1492 Main. But I think she was lying so she wouldn’t have to go to the hospital.”

Pete’s dark eyes bored into her, and she trembled slightly. “Is that your name?” he demanded. “Are you Mary Jackson?”

She looked down to the pavement and shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not. Mary Chapin Carpenter sings country music. So does Alan Jackson. I just put them together. 1492 Main Street. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And every town has a Main Street. I made it all up. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Home.”

“Where might that be?”

Her eyes widened and tears again glistened. “I don’t know.”

Involuntarily, Cole reached over and squeezed her hand where it clung to his arm. Her skin was smooth and silky, like her dress, and her fingers were long and delicate. The only contrast was a large diamond ring that pressed with sharp cold edges against his fingers.

“The way I see it,” Pete continued “you’ve got two choices, the hospital or the police station. You’re going to have some questions to answer when you come out of this fugue state, and we need to run some tests on that dress, see what kind of blood that is.”

She swallowed, the sound audible over the traffic and crowd noises as if the three of them stood in their own little universe. “What kind of blood?”

“Could be human. Or could be chicken. Maybe you were cooking for your own wedding reception. Could be goat. Maybe this was some kind of voodoo ceremony.” He stared pointedly at her hand on Cole’s arm, at the huge diamond solitaire. “Apparently the wedding wasn’t over. You don’t have the band to go with that rock.”

She held out her hand, studying the ring as if seeing it for the first time. Abruptly she tugged it off and extended it to Cole. “It’s not mine!”

“It is unless somebody else claims it,” Pete told her. “So what’s it gonna be? The station or the hospital?”

Her eyes, the pupils so shrunken they were lost in the silvery-blue mist, silently asked his advice, trusting him to make the right decision, to lead her in the right direction.

Couldn’t she tell just by looking at him that the only place he could lead her was straight into hell?

“If I were you, I’d choose the hospital,” he growled. “I sure wouldn’t voluntarily go with the cops.” And certainly not with an ex-cop who had the scent of death following him like a shadow.

She studied him a moment longer, her hand still outstretched with the ring winking on her palm. “All right,” she said. “But only if you take me in your car. Only if I don’t have to get into that…that thing.”

“I’ll take you to the hospital,” he agreed against his better judgment. She certainly did seem to have a phobia about the ambulance. Of course, she seemed to have a phobia about everything.

Pete cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I think you better let us take care of the lady.”

Cole flinched at his buddy’s words. Pete was only following procedure, but it hit Cole hard, like a direct attack, an affirmation that this frightened, confused woman would be better off with anybody in the world except him.

Pete knew his story. So maybe he was saying exactly that.

“Are you arresting me?” the bride asked, lifting her chin defiantly, that unexpected burst of strength again surfacing.

“No, ma’am. We’d just like to know where that blood came from. I didn’t find any more in the vicinity and I didn’t find a weapon, but you could have wounded the guy you were struggling with. If you did, he’s not around to press charges, and he did accost you first, according to your friend here. We’re not arresting you.”

“I’ll go to the hospital because I have nowhere else to go, but only if Mr. Grayson takes me.” She spread her hands several inches away from the dress as if she didn’t want to touch it. “And you’re more than welcome to have this…this thing as soon as I get other clothes to wear.” She shivered in the warm summer evening. “I don’t want it. It makes my skin crawl.”

She had amnesia…or a fugue state, as the paramedic called it. She had an aversion to ambulances and hospitals and cops. She was wearing a wedding gown but no wedding band, which probably meant she’d skipped out on her own wedding…after somehow getting blood all over the front of that gown…a gown that made her skin crawl. The only normal things about her were her knowledge of country-music singers and the date America was officially discovered.

She had problems he couldn’t even begin to imagine, and she was looking to him to take care of her. What a joke!

“I can get her to the hospital, Pete,” Cole snapped. “I can handle that.”

“Please take this,” she whispered, still holding out her hand.

Pete reached toward her, but she jerked away from him. “I’ll take your jewelry in for you, ma’am,” he said. “Give you a receipt and you can have it back as soon as you get out of the hospital or anytime you want.”

“No. Not you. Him.”

“Look, lady,” Cole said, “I’m a complete stranger. The only thing you know about me is that I ran you down with my car. Give the ring to the police officer. You give it to me and you may never get it back again. You may never see me again.”

“I don’t want it back.”

“Take it, Grayson,” Pete snapped irritably. “We haven’t got all night. I’ll see that he doesn’t run off with it, ma’am.”

Cole sighed and reached for the ring, his fingers brushing the smooth coolness of her palm. If he’d had his eyes closed, he’d have been able to tell by the feel that her skin had the color and translucency of fine china, the same allure that invited touching. And the same tendency to shatter.

Get her to the hospital. That was all he had to do. After that, he’d never see her again.

He shoved the gaudy ring into his pocket, turned and strode back to his car. She could follow him or not, go with him or not. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care.

Jane Doe.

That’s what she’d heard the doctors and nurses calling her when they thought she wasn’t listening, and she hated it. Bad enough she’d lost all memory of self, but everyone’s insistence on using that generic, no-identity name stole any remaining sense of self.

They said it was normal that she could remember dates from history and the names of country singers but not whether she liked those country singers, not who she went to concerts with, nothing about the classroom where she’d learned those historical dates. Nothing personal. Nothing that made her anything more than a zombie with no soul and no name.

She tucked the hospital sheet more tightly around her as if that thin material could keep out the demons. She couldn’t remember their names or faces, but she knew they were there, watching from dark, soulless eyes, waiting to snare her with twisted claws.

The man who said he’d hit her with his car, Cole Grayson, the one person she’d felt connected to in this strange world, had brought her to the hospital and turned her over to the others then left. They had poked, prodded and examined every inch of her mind and body. She’d hated it, hated the invasion, hated and feared the strangers…medical personnel and police officers…with their questions she couldn’t answer and their sly insinuations that she might be lying.