Awol Bride

Could it?

No, it couldn’t be. It just wasn’t possible for the woman coming to on the floor in front of him to be the girl he’d left behind.

And yet the more closely he looked at her, the more he knew it was...

* * *

Everything was hazy. Maicy’s mind, her senses, were slowly fading in from darkness. She could hear a voice but she couldn’t quite make out words. And she felt too heavy to move.

Her head hurt. And she was lying on something hard.

Why would that be?

She remembered that she’d been in her car...

And it had been cold. So cold.

And then, too, there was that voice. A man.

She faded in a little more and blinked open her eyes. Her vision was blurry, and the light seemed dim. There was a man there...

“Good girl! Come on, wake up.”

This time she heard the words.

But she still couldn’t quite focus her eyes. And she was so disoriented that for a minute the sound of the man’s voice actually made her think of Conor Madison. As if that made any sense...

“Can you tell me your name?” the man asked.

Definitely not Conor Madison, then—he would know her.

“Maicy,” she managed.

“How about your last name, Maicy?”

“Clark,” she muttered.

She heard him say, “Holy...” under his breath before shifting back into a calm, professional tone to ask, “Can you tell me what year it is?”

“A new year. January...” The date rolled off her tongue.

But maybe that wasn’t the right date. Maybe she only said it out of habit. She’d given that particular date a million times in the last few months while planning the wedding.

The wedding...

“How old are you?” the man asked.

These questions were dumb. “Old enough,” she said peevishly.

She pinched her eyes closed against the pain in her head and reached up to feel the source. She discovered that her hair was damp and that there were bandages of some sort on her forehead, just below her hairline.

“Good, you can move your right arm. How about this side?” the man asked, taking her other hand. “Can you squeeze my hand?”

She did that. He had a big hand.

“Strength is good,” he decreed. “How about your feet? Can you flex those for me?”

She did as he asked and felt that her feet were bare.

Bare feet? She didn’t leave home in her bare feet.

Her wedding shoes...

“Where are my shoes—I love those shoes!”

He didn’t answer her question. Instead he asked, “Can you tell me what happened to you?”

She opened her eyes again. Her vision was a bit clearer this time, and the fuzzy image of the man on his knees beside her looked even more like her old boyfriend.

This really was bizarre.

“There was a deer. I swerved to miss hitting him,” she said, remembering. She also recalled that it was her wedding she’d come from.

And Gary...

“What’s around my neck?” she asked when she also became aware that there was something there.

“My coat,” the man answered. “Are you experiencing pain anywhere?”

“My head.”

“Anywhere else?”

“No.”

“Any pain in your neck? Your shoulders? Your back or arms?”

“No.”

“I’m going to pinch you a little bit—tell me if you can feel it.”

He did, pinching different spots on her arms and legs. She could feel it so she told him so.

Then he said, “Can you raise your legs? One at a time?”

She did that, feeling satin around them. The wedding dress. From the wedding that hadn’t been. Because she’d run away from it...

“Okay, very carefully, I want you to try to move your head—can you do that?”