White lies

He took a deep breath and forced himself to slowly relax. Raise head.

It took her a few seconds to figure that one out. He must be incredibly sore from lying flat for so long, unable to shift his legs or lift his arms. The only time his arms were moved was when the bandages were changed. She pressed the control that raised the head of the bed, lifting him only an inch or so at a time, keeping her hand on his arm so he could signal her when he wanted her to stop. He took several more deep breaths as his weight shifted to his hips and lower back, then moved his arm to halt her. His lips moved in silent curse, his muscles tightening against the pain, but after a moment he adjusted and began to relax again.

Jay watched him, her deep blue eyes mirroring the pain he felt, but he was improving daily, and seeing the improvements filled her with heady joy. The swelling in his face was subsiding; his lips were almost normal again, though dark bruises still stained his jaw and throat.

She could almost feel his impatience. He wanted to talk, he wanted to see, he wanted to walk, to be able to shift his own weight in the bed. He was imprisoned in his body and he didn’t like it. She thought it must be close to hell to be cut off from his own identity as he was, as well as being so completely constrained by his injuries. But he wasn’t giving in; he asked more questions every day, trying to fill the void of memories by making new ones, maybe hoping that some magic word would take him back to himself. Jay talked to him even when he didn’t ask questions, idle conversation that, she hoped, gave him basic information and perspective. Even if it just filled the silence, that was something. If he didn’t want her to talk he would tell her.

A movement of his arm alerted her, and she began the alphabet.

When married?

She caught her breath. It was the first personal question he’d asked her, the first time he’d wanted to know about their past relationship. "We were married for three years," she managed to say calmly. "We divorced five years ago."

Why?

"It wasn’t a hostile divorce," she mused. "Or a hostile marriage. I guess we simply wanted different things out of life. We .grew apart, and finally the divorce seemed more like a formality than any wrenching change in our lives."

What did you want?

Now that was a twenty-thousand-dollar question. What did she want? She had been certain of her life up until the Friday when she had been fired and Franlc Payne had brought Steve back into her life. Now she wasn’t certain at all; too many changes had happened all at once, jolting her life onto a different track entirely. She looked at Steve and felt him waiting patiently for her answer.

"Stability, I guess. I wanted to settle down more than you did. We had fun together, but we weren’t really suited to each other."

Children?

The thought startled her. Oddly, when they had been married, she hadn’t been in any hurry to start a family. "No, no children." She hadn’t been able to visualize having Steve’s children. Now… oh God, now the idea shook her to the bones.

Remarried?

"No, I’ve never remarried. I don’t think you have, either. When Frank notified me of your accident, he asked if you had any other relatives or close friends, so you must have stayed single."

He’d been listening closely, but his interest suddenly sharpened. She could feel it, like a touch against her skin. No family?

"No. Your parents are dead, and if you had any relatives, I never knew about them." She skated around telling him that he’d been orphaned at an early age and raised in foster homes. Not having a family seemed to disturb him, though he’d never given any indication that it bothered him while they had been married.

He lay very still and the line of his mouth was grim. She sensed there was a lot he wanted to ask her, but the very complexity of his questions stymied him. To get his mind off the questions he couldn’t ask and the answers he wouldn’t like, she began to tell him about how they had met, and slowly his mouth relaxed.

"…and since it was our first date, I was a little stiff. More than a little stiff, if you want the truth. First dates are torment, aren’t they? It had been raining off and on all day, and water was standing in the streets. We walked out to your car, and a passing truck hit this huge puddle just as we reached the curb. We were both drenched, from the head down. And we stood there laughing at each other like complete fools. I don’t even want to think what I looked like, but you had muddy water dripping off your nose."

His lips were twitching, as if it hurt him to smile but he couldn’t stop the movement. What did we do?

She chuckled. "There wasn’t a lot we could do, looking the way we did. We went back to my apartment, and while our clothes were washing we watched television and talked. We never did make it to the party we’d been going to. One date led to another, and five months later we were married."

He asked one question after another, like a child listening to fairy tales and wanting more. Knowing that he was reaching for the part of himself that was lost due to the blankness of his memory, she tirelessly recounted places they had gone and the things they’d done, people they had known, hoping that some little detail would provide the spark needed to bring it all back. Her voice began to grow hoarse, and finally he managed a small shake of his head.

Sorry.

She pressed his arms, understanding. "Don’t worry," she said softly. "It will all come back. It will just take time."

But the days passed and still his memory didn’t return–not even a glimmer of a link to the past. She could feel his intense concentration on every word she uttered, as if he were willing himself to remember. Even now, his control was phenomenal; he never allowed himself to become frustrated or lose his temper. He just kept trying, keeping his feelings under control as if he sensed that any emotional upheaval could set his recovery back. Total recovery was his aim, and he worked toward it with a single-minded concentration that never wavered.