Into Focus: A Second Chance Amnesia Romance (High Stakes Hearts Book 1)

  Into Focus

  Becca Barnes

  Copyright © 2017 by Becca Barnes

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Created with Vellum

  For W

  (You know what you did.)

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  One

  It’s nothing like the movies, waking up from a coma.

  First off, there was no cloud of concerned relatives hovering around my hospital bed, only my best friend Jen. And she looked less concerned than put-out.

  “Oh, go screw yourself, Martha Stewart,” she muttered. “And the handwoven corn husk broom you rode in on.”

  She flicked the corner of the DIY magazine harder than she needed to, and the page tore.

  “What did Martha ever do to you?” I said. But it came out in a scratchy, mangled croak as if I’d been gargling razor blades. I clutched at my throat and looked around for a glass of water.

  “Oh, please. We both know she’s a government robot operative designed to make regular women feel like they’re dung beetles,” said Jen without thinking, like we were chatting over our weekly Saturday morning coffee date.

  Then she froze. Jen swiveled to face me, her eyes alight with excitement and joy and . . . something else. Worry?

  “You’re awake,” she said.

  “Apparently so.”

  “Annie. You’re awake,” she said again and then lunged at me. I braced myself for the ensuing hug, but she didn’t touch me. Instead, she reached around me and pressed a button on my bed. Once. Twice. And then frantically, over and over.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s the nurse call button. I’m not sure sure what I’m supposed to do.”

  That was when the real fun began. Nurses and doctors crowded into the room, each with a different pointy object with which to prod me. Jen scooted over to the corner. She whipped out her phone, and I could see her texting like a mad fiend.

  Four different people in scrubs barked questions at me all at once.

  “Do you know your name?”

  “What date is it?”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  I opened my mouth to answer.

  Annie Cargill.

  No clue.

  I’m not sure, but call me crazy, I’m going to guess . . . a hospital.

  And the answer to that last question was complicated.

  Of course, none of this came out. Instead, a hoarse cough escaped.

  “Water,” I whispered and shifted around to try to reach a cup, but there were so many tubes and wires attached to me, it felt like I was trapped in a spider’s sticky web.

  Thankfully, one of the nurses put a straw to my mouth and said, “drink.”

  The cold liquid seared the sides of my throat as it went down, but after another small sip, the burning subsided, and I tried out my voice.

  “My name’s Annie,” I said.

  That one small answer was enough to restart the interrogation. My head started to pound with all the questions, and I was about to ask them to stop when a tiny but fierce-looking woman wearing a white lab coat entered the room. She would have barely reached five feet tall with heels on, but when she spoke, her tone held the calm but rock-solid inflection of someone who was accustomed to being the sole authoritative voice in a group.

  “All right,” she said. “Everybody out except for you and you.” She gestured to the nurse who had helped me get a drink of water and to Jen.

  “And you can stay, too,” she added with a smile, pointing directly at me. “Hi. I’m Elise Anand, your neurologist. I know you must be a little scared and confused right now. You’re in the hospital. You’ve been in a medically induced coma following a car accident.”

  I nodded slowly, willing memories of said car accident to rise to the surface, but it was no use. She might as well have told me I’d been attacked by a killer squid. And it wasn’t a bad comparison. Because right now, it felt like I was swimming through a hazy cloud of ink trying to drag up recollections of anything recent. Glimmers of light and movement, flashes of what might have been memories, popped up unbidden then receded back into the dark.

  “Don’t try to remember details or force it,” said Dr. Anand, as if she could read my mind. “You had some significant head trauma, and then we were worried that you might be at risk for a stroke.”

  I tried to push myself up in the bed, but my chest and abdomen throbbed in blunt pain. The nurse reached around me and used a remote to prop the head of the bed up.

  “Two cracked ribs and a bruised pelvis,” said Dr. Anand, patting my toes. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  I nodded again.

  “The other car?” I asked, looking at Jen.

  “There was no other car,” she said. “You slid on a patch of black ice and hit the median.”

  “Ice?” Ignoring the pain, I pushed myself further up on my pillows so I could look out the window. The trees stood bare, leafless skeletons guarding against a steel gray sky that marked a typical Atlanta winter day. It was all wrong. I couldn’t pinpoint what date I thought it was, but those trees should have been green, thick with leaves.

  “How long was I out?” I asked.

  “A little over a week,” said Jen.

  A week. Trees didn’t go from summer lush to winter barren in a week. Before I had a chance to question them further, though, there was a skirmish at the door. It flew open, and a brassy, bossy bleach-bottle blonde pushed her way into the room and over to my bed. She sobbed as I reached my hand out.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Oh, my sweet Annie bear.” She collapsed onto me in a huge hug, and I winced as the tubes pulled at my skin. Over her shoulder, though, I could see my dad sidle in next to Jen. He waved apologetically. He was usually the one to reign in my mother’s melodrama, but we both knew there was no holding her back with her daughter waking from a coma.

  “Glad you’re awake, honey,” he said as the nurse pried my mother off of me.

  Behind Dad, my older brother Jack squeezed in, looking uncomfortable. And behind Jack, another man, this one holding a clipboard and pen. He clicked the end of the pen in and out. In and out. He wasn’t wearing a lab coat or scrubs. But he definitely looked like he was familiar with the room and my family. A social worker, maybe?

  Whoever he was, hot diggity damn. He was the most attractive man I’d ever seen. Tall and lean but with well-defined muscles. Not the kind of muscles you get from being a gym rat. The kind you get from working with your hands. I had no idea how I seemed to know or sense that, but I did. His hair was mussed and ruffled, like he’d woken up and run his fingers through it without bothering to look in a mirror, and he had a scruffy beard. Even from a distance, I
could tell that his eyes were a rich, deep hazel.

  Apparently, all the better to stare at me with.

  He reached over and squeezed Dad’s shoulder, but he didn’t take his eyes off me. I felt my breath catch in my throat and glanced up at the monitors to make sure my heart hadn’t skipped a beat. My cheeks flushed, and the nurse noticed.

  “Do you need a cool cloth? Ice chips?” she asked.

  “No, I’m fine.” For a few seconds there, I had felt better than fine, but wondering whether post-coma lust was normal didn’t seem like an appropriate conversation topic surrounded by family and hospital staff.

  “Your vitals have been stable and strong,” said Dr. Anand. “That’s excellent. The coma was actually the best thing possible to keep you immobile and help your ribs heal. We’ll keep you for another couple days of observation, but I’ll put in the orders to move you down to a regular room. There’s more space for visitors, but let’s restrict that to two at a time. And only one at night.”

  I glanced around and noticed how exhausted they all looked. My mom hadn’t even bothered to apply makeup, which was right up there next to sacrilege in her book.

  “Even though you’re awake, I want you to focus on rest,” said Dr. Anand. “Don’t push yourself. And no brain strain.”

  “So that means I need to cancel the chess tournament I signed her up for this afternoon?” asked Jen.

  “Oh, how I’m going to miss that irreverent wit.” Dr. Anand grinned at Jen, but I could tell she’d fallen under my best friend’s sarcastic spell like everyone else. Even that felt weird, knowing that this stranger was friendly with my loved ones.

  The nurse backed away so my family could cluster around my bed, all of them touching a part of my body like they were clutching a talisman. The gorgeous social worker stood near my shoulder and took my hand in both of his.

  Okay, then.

  That was a little odd. I mean, maybe he had been helping my family this whole time and felt close to me somehow. But still . . .

  “I need to do a more thorough mental state eval after everyone leaves, but so far, so good,” said Dr. Anand. “Any questions?”

  “I have one,” I said. “What date is it?”

  “It’s January nineteenth, sweetie.” Hottie McSocial Worker rubbed his thumb gently in the center of my palm as he said it. Worn callouses confirmed my earlier assessment of a man who knew his way around physical labor. Tingles shot up my arm, and I snatched it away.

  “Look, holding my hand is one thing,” I said, “but sweetie? And you’re practically making love to my wrist. Who do you think you are?”

  All the color drained from his face. Everyone in the room froze, mouths ajar. It was Jen who answered.

  “He’s your husband.”

  Two

  “Husband. Husband. Husssssbannnnnnd.”

  Nope. It didn’t matter how many times I said it, out loud or silently, it was still ridiculous and insane and . . . just nope.

  Dr. Anand had cleared the room almost immediately, but not soon enough. The moment someone had uttered the actual word—amnesia—my mother fainted dead away, knocking down my brother and a tray of urine samples in the process. After the orderlies helped my dad drag her out and clean up the pee mess, Jen patted me on the foot. She made a soothing shush noise before she got up to leave.

  It was only then that I realized I’d been babbling incoherently under my breath. But what did they expect? They’d just told me I was a married woman. I hadn’t even had a boyfriend, last I knew.

  “Annie,” said the man who was apparently my husband, still pale as a ghost, “it’s going to be okay.”

  I gulped, unsure of whether he was saying it for my benefit or for his own.

  “Wait,” I said, before he made it out the door.

  “Yes?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Evan.” His lips split into a grin, but there was a sadness behind his smile. “Evan Gaines.”

  “Okay.” I nodded then stopped him again. “Wait.”

  He leaned against the door frame. Dr. Anand shot him a look that said, “move it.” But I could tell he viewed me as the sole authority in the room. He didn’t intend to go anywhere until I bid him leave.

  “Am I Annie Gaines, then?”

  “You hadn’t decided yet. And for the record, I’m one hundred percent fine with whatever you do choose.”

  He didn’t have to say who wouldn’t be fine with me keeping my maiden name. My mother, grand southern dame that she was, would have kittens at the thought of it.

  After they left, the room was eerily quiet. I stared out the window at those bare branches, undeniable proof of the time and memories that I had lost.

  “It’s actually quite common,” said Dr. Anand, settling into a chair next to the bed.

  “What? Waking up from a coma with a mystery husband?”

  “No, amnesia. After a head trauma, confusion and memory loss are to be expected.”

  “But I think I’ve lost several months. Not just the accident.” I strained to recall my last vivid memory. It was my birthday party in August. I’d gone out with a group of friends to grab food truck tacos at a concert in the park for a local band. The memories seemed too bright, though. Too crisp compared to the blurry haze I’d woken from.

  “That’s normal. You took a severe knock to the frontal lobe. The brain is a complex but resilient organ. Most people achieve at least partial memory restoration after post-traumatic amnesia.”

  “They do? What can I do to hurry it along?”

  “Nothing. Or I should say, nothing but rest.” She folded away my chart. “Focus on your overall health. And the more you’re in your familiar surroundings, the better the chance of retrieving those lost memories. But I’m being serious when I say that you shouldn’t try to force it. You could end up harming more than helping your recovery.”

  She went through more technical jargon—timeframes and percentiles and statistics. I glanced over at the clipboard that Evan had left on the bedside table. He’d taken pages and pages of notes.

  “Did Evan already write all this down?” I gestured to the notepad.

  “Yes. Although he’s done research on his own as well. If he’s not in here watching you, he’s on his laptop googling every word I utter.”

  “He has? I mean, he is?”

  “Talk about someone who needs some rest.”

  I felt a stab of guilt that someone who I didn’t even know was sacrificing so much time and effort for me. But that someone was my husband. And I was back to square one of disbelief.

  Husband.

  The new room wasn’t actually much bigger than the one in Intensive Care, but it sure had less whirring and beeping and wires and tubes. For that alone, I was thankful.

  The nurses also had a different definition of “rest” down in the regular ward. Every half hour, one of them came in to poke, jab, and force me to get up and pee. At first, it took two of them to hold me up and steady me, but by the end of the day, I’d gotten it down to a sore shuffle on my own.

  “Excellent,” said one of my minders as I climbed back into bed. “Keep that up, and you’ll get underpant privileges back in no time.”

  “I never thought of underwear as a privilege before, but—”

  “Oh, umm, hi.” Evan stood in the doorway holding a paper bag in one hand, his other poised to knock. Judging by the flush that bloomed across his cheeks, he had heard our underwear exchange.

  I realized a moment too late that it might also have been my bare ass hanging out of the paper-thin, see-through hospital gown that had caused him to blush. Whichever it was, he recovered quickly.

  “I brought you a gift.” He handed over the bag as I settled into bed. But I didn’t need to open it to tell what it was.

  “Extra mayo?” I took a deep whiff of the contents of the bag.

  “And double bacon. Your favorite.”

  “Mmmm.” BLTs from Bucky’s were my all-time favorite. “If I hadn’t al
ready married you, I would right now.”

  “Well, I wish I’d known. It would have saved me a chunk of change on this.” He held out a dazzling platinum solitaire, dangling on a silver chain. It spun and caught a sun ray that had broken through the gloom outside, bursting into a light show of sparkles that danced up the walls.

  “The nurses said it might be awhile before the swelling in your fingers went down. But I thought you might want to have it with you.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Exactly what I would have picked out given the choice. I realized with a startle that I might have done exactly that.

  “Sorry,” said Evan. “We don’t have to . . . . Maybe that was too fast. I’m kind of treading on unfamiliar ground here.”

  “That makes two of us,” I said.

  “I bet you have questions,” he said.

  “That, I do.” I licked a dollop of mayonnaise off my thumb, and when I glanced up, Evan was biting his lip to hold back a smile.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just, man, I love watching you eat.” He reached over with a napkin and wiped another smudge of mayo off the corner of my lip. He’d shaved this afternoon. With his face so close to mine, I took in a tentative sniff, wondering if he smelled as good as he looked.

  And promptly gagged and started to cough.

  He reeked of the strongest aftershave I’d ever smelled in my life.

  I mean, it was a good scent. Great, even. But it was too much. Like . . . swimming in a river of cologne.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying to hide both my revulsion and the urge to wash out the inside of my nostrils with soap.

  I was saved from explanations by Jen, who walked into the room and promptly plugged up her nose and grimaced. She sniffed her way over to Evan and made a retching sound.