She was a prodigy, after all. Oh, her father didn’t use that word around her. He claimed it wasn’t technically what she was. A genius-level IQ didn’t necessarily mean a prodigy. A prodigy was one who excelled in a certain area. Medicine wasn’t normally one of those areas, but she knew she could do it. She could certainly take care of her mother.
Her father once told her she was like a superhero, that she could be Super Doc if she tried hard enough. Saving lives in a single bound. She had no idea what a single bound had to do with anything, but her dad had been so happy as he’d said it, she’d pretended to understand his aged pop culture references.
He shook his head. “Absolutely not. You’re scheduled for a second summer session. You’ll be studying neurology. I thought that was apropos, and perhaps maybe it will help you understand what your mother is going through. You leave in two days.”
“No.” She couldn’t leave.
His jaw clenched. “I’m going to bring your mother home as soon as I can, but you shouldn’t see her like that.”
“She’s my mom. I love her. I should see her every way I can.” She stood up to him. They rarely fought, almost never because her father was a softy, but this was one fight she couldn’t lose. “I’ll take the classes here, but I’m staying home. I can help.”
Melissa was suddenly beside her. “And I’m taking a sabbatical.”
“We talked about this,” her dad began.
“Yes, we did. Sonja and I talked about this,” she admitted. “She doesn’t want me to give up my life, but taking care of people is my life. Now I have the chance to take care of one of the finest women I’ve ever met. Do you know the strength she’s given me? She got me through my divorce. She helped me walk away from an abusive bastard and find my strength. Now I’m going to give some of it back to her.”
Tears rolled down Becca’s cheeks and she took Melissa’s hand. “Me, too. If you send me away, I’ll come back and I’ll be by my mom’s side. I can do everything I need to do from home. You said I could be anything I wanted to be. I want to be a doctor. I want to help people. I’m going to start with my mother because you always said the best medicine is love.”
Her dad lost it. His clipboard dropped and he hit his knees, no longer able to control his grief.
Becca moved in, wrapping her arms around him, and oddly found comfort in knowing she could help.
Thirty minutes later, Melissa guided her to the door of her mom’s room. “You sure you don’t want me to go in with you?”
“I think Dad needs you more.” He was currently in the bathroom washing his face and trying to look professional. “Convince him to bring someone else in. He’s too emotional to be on call right now.”
Melissa nodded. “I will. I’ll order dinner for the two of you and I’ll stay here and watch your mom. Pizza okay?”
Anything would taste like cardboard. “Sure. Pepperoni and mushrooms, please. And thank you. Thanks for helping me convince him to let me stay.”
“We’ll get through this.” Her voice had broken but she cleared her throat. “Don’t stay too long. She’s on a lot of pain meds.”
Becca opened the door and her mother looked up, a smile plastered on her face.
“Hello,” she said. “You’re young to be a nurse. Are you lost, honey?”
“Mom?”
A cloud crossed her mother’s pretty face. “I have a daughter. Her name is Becca but she’s only three. Are you lost? We can call someone to help find your mother.”
It was already starting. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t. This was her mom. She’d never run from anything in her life. It was time to pay her back.
“I came to sit with you for a while.” She wasn’t sure how to handle the situation. Should she remind her mother that she was Sonja Walsh? Should she go along with her mom’s memory lapses?
She would start reading tonight. For now, she would simply sit.
“That’s lovely,” her mom said with a whisper of a smile. “I’m feeling lonely. I seem to have broken something. The doctors are nice though. I miss my daughter.”
Becca reached for her hand, emotion choking her. “She misses you, too.”
“I want her to be happy.” Her mother was staring as though she could see something Becca couldn’t, but her hand clutched hers. “I want her to be so happy. I want her to choose to be happy.”
“She will,” Becca promised.
She held on to her mother as she shifted and started talking about a dance she was going to with a boy named Leland. She was excited about it because he was awfully handsome.
Becca sat and listened as her mother’s life played out in bits and pieces in her fragmented brain.
But she would never forget the promise she’d made. Never forget what she owed her mother.
A happy life.
Fourteen years later
London, England
The dark-haired man stared down at him. “Owen? Owen, do you remember anything?”
He remembered that his whole body ached. His head was foggy with the drugs they’d given him. Good drugs. He knew that much. The drugs held back the agony of having his skin flayed open. They’d bandaged him up and his skin was healing, but it still felt like he’d been set on fire from the inside. “I don’t…where am I?”
He wasn’t going to ask the real question. Who am I? He was fairly certain that he didn’t want to know. Anyone who felt this much pain had to be cursed.
He couldn’t remember anything. He knew he was in a hospital, knew that the woman who’d come in wearing a white coat had been a doctor, was certain the thing in his arm was an IV.
Why couldn’t he remember his bloody name? He was supposed to have a name, right? The black-haired man had said a word. Owen. Was that a name?
“We’ve taken you back to London,” the black-haired man said. He had some kind of an accent. It was heavy, though his English was perfect. Yes, the man was speaking English, but his accent was Russian.
Panic welled because a lot of things were coming back to him. He could describe the world around him, understood what to call the body parts that ached despite the drugs, but his name, who he was, eluded him.
“Am I from London?” The man had used the word back. Did that mean he lived here?
A deep frown creased the man’s face. “You’re originally from Edinburgh, but you’ve lived in London for years. You work for a company called McKay-Taggart and Knight.”
“He doesn’t remember?” a new voice asked.
“Ian, I think it would be best if you give his team time to figure out what’s going on with him.”
He turned and two large blond men were standing close to the door. One was slightly smaller than the other, but they were both extremely large and muscular. Military men. Or something like it.
The black-haired man put his body between the hospital bed and the men in the doorway. “Now is not the time. Theo, I know what he did to you…”
“But he doesn’t, does he?” The one named Ian came stalking in and Owen suddenly wasn’t so sure his pain was over for the day.
Pure instinct made him force his body up. Where was his gun? He carried a gun.
There was no gun here. Why did he carry a gun?
“Nick, I’m not going to murder him,” Ian said.
“No, he’s going to walk away now.” Theo put a hand on Ian’s arm. “She dosed him with the new drug, Ian. He’s not the same person he was before. I know you’re angry. I am, too. He betrayed me and Erin.”
“Dr. McDonald was holding his mother and his sister,” Nick said and Owen could hear the anger in the Russian’s voice.
Were they talking about him? He tried to get up, but his limbs wouldn’t move. What was wrong with his legs? They wouldn’t move at all.
“And he worked at a place where we fucking specialize in saving people.” The words spat out of the big guy’s mouth with the force of a machine gun. “It never occurred to him to mention that he was in trouble? His first reaction was to sentence my brother and Erin to hell?”
“They’re all he has,” Nick replied. “Had. Could you please remember that he’s suffered for what he did?”