Husbands and Other Strangers

Taylor still needed a reason, something to rectify, to make right. “But why?” He looked at Jake and Sam. Along with concern, there was pity in their eyes. He hated being on the receiving end of pity. His frustration continued to mount. “There’s nothing wrong between us.”

“No explosive events in the past few months?” Peter addressed the question not only to Taylor, but to Gayle’s brothers, as well.

“Gayle is always explosive. She’s a hotbed of emotion,” Sam told him. “She always has been.”

“But there hasn’t been anything out of the ordinary,” Taylor insisted.

It wasn’t strictly true. There’d been one argument, a minor one really, especially when you took into consideration that it had been with Gayle. She was usually far more vocal than she had been over this last thing. They’d had a difference of opinion over her getting pregnant. He wanted to wait, and she seemed intent on it happening soon. The reasons for his side were purely logical and perhaps a little chauvinistic.

He wanted to save a little more money before they started a family. Through her endorsements as well as her job, they were far from hurting financially, but he thought of it as “her” money. A baby should be raised with money that he provided. He’d said as much and she’d backed away from her position quickly enough. But she hadn’t seemed happy about it.

The matter hadn’t come up again, so he just thought it was one of those things Gayle occasionally raised, getting on the opposing side of an argument just to goad him. It really hadn’t been much of a disagreement as far as some of their disagreements went. He figured she was just testing the waters to see how he felt. Quite honestly, he’d been rather surprised that the discussion had evaporated so quickly.

Taylor tried to think of something else, something remotely major that might have upset her. He came up empty. That couldn’t be it.

Shrugging, he said, “She wanted us to go and visit my parents, but I told her I was too busy and she got a little bent out of shape over that. But you’re not going to tell me that my wife just suddenly decided to wipe me out of her memory banks because I wouldn’t take her for a visit to see her in-laws.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “They’re not the kind of people you’d put yourself out for.” They weren’t even the kind of people you’d bother crossing the street to meet, he added silently, then shook his head. “This can’t be about that.”

“Whatever it is about, for some reason her mind decided to shut down when it came to things about you. I’m not even sure if anything traumatic is really directly at the heart of this.”

He felt they were going around in circles. And he was getting dizzy, as well as despondent, because he was beginning to believe Peter. “But you are sure that Gayle doesn’t remember me. That this isn’t some elaborate trick.”

The doctor’s expression told him as much.

Taylor’s heart sank even lower.

“There’s actually a precedent for this,” Peter told him. “There was case several years ago where a woman was involved in an accident. She hit her head and when she came to, she couldn’t remember her husband. But she could remember everything else.”

Taylor was almost afraid to ask. “Did she ever get over it?”

“Yes.” The doctor smiled.

Hope began to rebuild inside of him. “Then it’ll be okay.”

“Every case is different.”

Taylor snorted. “You don’t exactly dip into the well of optimism, do you?”

Peter laid his hand on Taylor’s shoulder. “Most likely she will come around.”

Most likely. He wanted guarantees, not nebulous words he couldn’t bank on. “What do I do until then?”

Peter gave him an encouraging smile before he left to see his patient. “Be nice to her.”

Chapter Three

“‘Be nice to her?’” Sam repeated in disbelief, looking at Taylor once Dr. Sullivan had left. “That’s his professional advice to you? ‘Be nice to her’?” Stunned almost beyond words, Sam could only shake his head. “Damn it, Taylor, where did you find this guy? In an ad on the back of a comic book?”

“No,” Taylor replied slowly. “Actually, he’s pretty high up in his field. The guy works miracles.”

Even as he spoke, he felt as if the words were bouncing around in an echo chamber in his head. As if nothing around him was real.

This couldn’t be happening.

He and Gayle had had a rocky eighteen months, but they were learning to work things out, to travel on the same road because they loved each other. No matter how heated things got between them, there was always that to fall back on, the love they felt for each other.

And now he was supposed to accept the fact that he was standing out there, alone? That he loved her but she didn’t love him because she didn’t even know him from any other stranger on the street? How the hell was he supposed to come to terms with that? What did that do to their marriage? To their relationship?

Damn it, he had no frame of reference for this. No idea how to cope.

“Sure doesn’t look as if he worked any miracles on Gayle,” Sam countered in disgust.

“I think it makes sense,” Jake said in his even, quiet voice.

Taylor had to concentrate to keep the fog from closing in around his brain. He looked at Jake and realized he hadn’t been listening. That he’d been mentally trying to catch up all the marbles in his hand at once, but they kept insisting on slipping through his fingers and rolling away.

“What does?”

Jake nodded in the general direction that the surgeon had taken. “What the doc said about being nice to Gayle. All you can do is be patient.” He put his hand up, forestalling the words he knew had to be coming. “I know it’ll be hard, but this condition has got to be a temporary thing.”

Taylor wished he had Jake’s ability to see the bright side of things. But he was a realist who knew that sometimes, the worst could and did happen. “And if it’s not?”

Jake’s small mouth curved ever so slightly, his expression more philosophical than amused. He put his arm around Taylor’s shoulders. “Now you see, there’s your problem, Taylor. You can’t think of this negatively. You’ve got to believe. Believe that it’s going to be all right. Before you know it, Gayle’s going to be back to normal.” Although the smile remained, there was an enormous depth of feeling behind every word.

“Yeah, and then before you know it, you’ll find yourself missing her not knowing you,” Sam speculated.

“Yeah,” Taylor bit off.

How many times over the course of the last eighteen months, at the height of one of their “disagreements,” had he wished he’d never met her? The woman seemed to go out of her way to drive him insane. And yet…

And yet he knew that life before Gayle had been nothing more than an existence, marked by pockets of work he was really proud of and interludes with women that left him feeling empty and somehow lacking. Until Gayle, he hadn’t realized exactly what it was that had been lacking. After Gayle came into his life, rolling in like a tempestuous storm, he knew that what had been lacking was color, vibrancy and a zest that had him greeting each day with the enthusiasm of an adventurer poised to take the first step into the greatest adventure of his life.

That was what living with Gayle was like, a constant adventure. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always, always stimulating.

There was no way he was going to give that up. No way he was going to give her up.

Okay, he thought. This was going to be just another adventure in a long series of adventures. A little strange, but then, life with Gayle had never exactly been what one would call normal.

As long as he kept his eye fixed on the light at the end of the tunnel—as long as he kept telling himself the light was there even when he couldn’t see it—he could get through this.

“The doctor said Gayle could go home,” Taylor said aloud, more to himself than to Sam and Jake.

Jake nodded, as if to say that this was a good next step. “Then let’s go get our girl,” he said.

Taylor returned the nod, grateful for his brother-in-law’s support. He knew that he could count on both Jake and Sam. Not just because Gayle was their sister, but because he was part of the family. There were times when he caught himself thinking how odd that felt. Eighteen months and he was still adjusting to the idea that he had more than himself to lean on. That he wasn’t alone anymore. It was a fringe benefit for getting involved with Gayle.

Flanked by Jake and Sam, Taylor entered the curtained area, ready to pick up the fight where they had left off. Gayle had called him a liar just before the nurse had drawn the curtain around the gurney so that she could change into a hospital gown.

Words melted from his tongue and his head the moment he looked at the woman who no longer remembered that she was his wife. He couldn’t recall ever seeing Gayle looking so small, so vulnerable as she did lying in that bed—and yet so defensive at the same time.