What Men Want - Chapter 38

“She’ll be okay,” Mick murmured.

He sounded like a broken record. Everybody sounded like a broken record lately with their reassurances that Kaori would be okay. They didn’t know that. No one knew that, not even the doctors. They didn’t even know when she’d wake up. If she’d wake up.

Though, again according to the doctors, who obviously didn’t know anything, she wasn’t in a coma. According to them, she was just resting. For almost a full week now.

No one needed that much rest.

Or, if she really needed that much rest, she could have the decency to wake up, so they could assess her and go rest back home. In his bed. In his arms.

God, how he missed her. He missed her smile, her eyes, the smell of her skin...

He needed her. After only two nights spent in her arms, he needed her like he needed his next breath. And missed her like he’d miss a limb or vital organ.

Just two weeks ago, the thought of needing someone so much—needing her so much—would’ve scared him shitless. But not anymore. She was his everything. And he needed her. He needed her now. He needed her forever. And he needed her to wake the fuck up!

He needed to see her eyes, her smile, hear her voice...He knew that only that would be able to erase the image of her lying on the warehouse floor from his mind.

Her body flung carelessly on the floor, her eyes closed, and her features slack as blood gushed from the wound on her head from where she hit the sharp corner of the concrete slab she’d been tied to earlier.

He’d rushed to her, felt her threadbare pulse, and for a frighteningly long moment, everything had stopped. And then, suddenly, everything—sound, color, smell, and touch—had been in sharp focus. The creamy texture of her pale skin, her white, flimsy underwear, the crimson color of her blood, the smell of gunpowder, the satisfied screams of the woman being hauled away by Umibozu...

He’d taken off his jacket and wrapped her in it, lifted her in his arms, and rushed out of the warehouse to where Saeko had been cooling her heels, waiting for the three of them to finish the job.

She’d taken one look at the bundle in his arms and started snapping orders. For her men to drive with full lights and to floor it, as she’d called dispatch to block traffic on their way to the hospital.

Once there, her limp body had had to be pried from his arms, and it had taken both Mick and Umibozu’s combined strength to keep him from following the gurney into the trauma center, his hands and shirt caked with her dried blood.

He’d been unable to draw a normal breath since.

He’d spent the past week by her bedside, holding her hand, talking to her, begging her to open her eyes, to come back, until today, when Miki has had enough and has kicked him out, ordering Mick and Umibozu to take him home to shower, change, and make him eat something.

He’d showered and changed, but even thinking about food made him want to vomit.

 

The alarm clock was starting to get really annoying. Come to think of it, the beeping didn’t sound anything like a normal alarm clock. The cadence was too monotonous, and the rhythm too slow. Well, no matter the obviously defective alarm clock, she needed to wake up—at least to turn the odious thing off.

But her limbs were so heavy, the sheet pressing down on her, tangling around her legs, her arms. It felt like swimming through treacle, and she would’ve given up and gone back to sleep if it weren’t for the damn beeping. So, she gritted her teeth and clawed toward consciousness...

The first thing Kaori noticed was that she wasn’t at home; she wasn’t lying in her bed. She was in what looked to be a hospital room, and the infernal beeping was coming from somewhere to her right.

She turned her head, and the dull ache at the side of her head increased in intensity. It didn’t help that everything was so bright and smelling of disinfectant and hospitals.

She wanted to curse but found it impossible since her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. She groaned. How long has she been out?

“Oh, my God,” someone whimpered. There was some rustling, and finally Miki’s face filled her line of vision. “Kaori, you’re awake!”

She wanted to tell Miki to keep it down; she was making the headache worse, but all she could do was groan.

Thankfully, Miki understood, because her next words were a whisper. “I’ll go get the doctor.” She squeezed Kaori’s fingers. “We’ve been so worried about you.”

And she was gone before Kaori could try to ask her how long she’d been out of commission.

 

Ryo, flanked by Mick and Umibozu and followed by Saeko, who they’d picked up from the lobby, half-hidden behind a huge bouquet of flowers, exited the elevator and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

The door to Kaori’s hospital room was wide open, and Miki was pacing up and down the hallway like a caged animal.

“Oh, thank God.” Miki rushed to them. He must’ve looked as petrified as he felt, because her eyes widened and she placed a gentle hand on his arm. “No, no, she’s okay. She’s awake.”

Ryo could finally breathe again. She was awake. She was fine. She was back.

Umibozu slammed his beefy hand onto his shoulder, almost making his knees buckle. “Are you waiting for an invitation?”

On the other side, Mick nudged him with his elbow. “Have you turned into a demure damsel, all of a sudden?”

Shrugging off Umi’s paw, he shoved Mick aside. “Shut up,” he snapped, and started toward her room, but Miki’s voice stopped him in his stride.

“She’s not in. They took her to take some tests.”

Ryo turned so suddenly that she instinctively took a step back. “What tests?”

“No clue. As soon as she woke up, the doctor examined her and then ordered some tests.” She shrugged. “I guess now that she’s awake, they can look more closely, if there are any consequences.”

Ryo stared at her. There was something she left out. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Miki nibbled on her lower lip; her forehead creased. “The doctor wouldn’t tell me anything. And I asked. But when they wheeled her out, it was clear she’d been crying.”

He slid down the wall into a crouch and dropped his head in his hands. He felt like crying. He didn’t care if his friends saw; they knew everything anyway. He had had to tell them; it had been written all over his face that something major had changed between him and Kaori.

Kaori’s doctor, the same man who had taken care of her almost three weeks ago, after her first knock on the head, rounded the corner, his nose in a medical chart.

Saeko, policewoman that she was, took charge immediately. “How is she, Dr. Yamamoto?”

“Hmm?” The man, his bushy eyebrows merging over his eyes, looked up from the chart.

“How is Kaori?” Saeko prompted, just as the woman of the hour, pushed in a wheelchair by a rotund nurse, rounded the same corner as the doctor.

Ryo straightened, drinking her in. She was as pale as the hospital gown she was dressed in, her eyes downcast, her gaze fixed on her hands clasped in her lap, and the corners of her mouth were pinched. She was still the most beautiful woman in the world.

The nurse, unable to wheel her charge any further thanks to the traffic jam they were creating in the hallway, stopped with a scowl, and Kaori finally lifted her eyes.

“Hey, guys.”

Her voice trembled as she offered a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep himself from reaching for her. He’d probably never let go again, and the nurse, judging from the scowl on her face, would probably kick his ass.

Welcome back, baby. I missed you so much.

She didn’t even blink. Or acknowledged his silent message.

“Excuse me,” the nurse snapped nasally. “I need to get this young lady back into her room.” She glared up at him. “You’re blocking my way.”

If it weren’t Kaori in that wheelchair, he wouldn’t have moved. But it was, so he stepped aside.

Tried again. Kaori?

Nothing.

He didn’t need a medical professional to tell him the second bump on the head had obviously reset her brain to pre-mind-reading settings. But that didn’t explain the utter lack of warmth or recognition of just what and how much changed between them. Or maybe she thought he wanted it kept a secret from their friends.

Fat chance.

They all knew. And now that he’d had her, he was never letting her go. He just needed a few minutes alone with her. To explain, to hold her. To cuddle. To tell her everything had changed and there was no going back.

“When can she go back home?” he asked the doctor, eyes on the open door of her hospital room, where the nurse fussed—and not in that nasal, superior tone of voice, but more like a mother with a child—over her charge.

“That will be determined after we get all the test results back.” The doctor’s words were like a bucketfull of ice over the head.

Ryo slowly turned. “What?”

“But,” Miki said with a quelling look toward him—he must’ve looked too menacing, not that the doctor noticed, “she’s fine. Isn’t she?”

Dr. Yamamoto sighed. “Besides a slight, dull headache, which should wane soon, she’s physically fine, yes.”

Ryo’s heart lodged somewhere in his throat. Physically fine didn’t mean fully fine.

“What’s wrong with her?” he growled at the end of his tether. What wasn’t the doctor telling them?

Another sigh. “I cannot dismiss her without determining her condition isn’t caused by some underlying trauma. And for that, I need the CT scan and MRI results.”

“What condition?” Ryo hissed between tightly clenched teeth.

“Amnesia.”

“What?!”

The doctor nodded. “It is quite a common side effect of head trauma. And since she’d had two injuries in less than a month, I’m inclined to believe the results will come back negative and she’ll be able to go home this evening. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

Miki was shaking her head. “She can’t have amnesia, she clearly knew who we were.”

The doctor smiled at her—one of those smiles one reserves for people who have no idea what they’re talking about. “In my opinion, she’s suffering from post-traumatic retrograde amnesia caused by her latest head injury. She seems to remember everything until the first injury,” he checked his notes, “but doesn’t know the exact day of the week or today’s date and has no recollection of the two weeks between the first and second trauma. As far as she’s concerned, today she woke up after that first bump.”

A buzzing sound made him reach into his pocket for his beeper. “There are no other side effects: no dizziness, no nausea, no...auditory hallucinations.” He cleared his throat. “Besides the amnesia, she seems perfectly fine.”

Ryo felt like throwing up. Yeah, she was perfectly fine. She didn’t read minds anymore, and she’d forgotten everything that had happened between them. She might be perfectly fine, but he wasn’t.

“Is it permanent?” he asked, his voice shaking.

There was a pregnant pause before the doctor answered. “It’s difficult to say. Milder head injuries don’t typically cause permanent amnesia, and because the period covered by them is rather short, the prognosis for recovery is rather good. But it’s also possible she might never regain lost memories.”

“That’s a no-answer, doc,” Mick snapped.

Yamamoto glared. “I’m a doctor, not a fortune teller. Doctors deal with facts. If we don’t have all the facts, we list all the possibilities.”

Mick lifted his hands in a placating gesture. “Is there a way we can help her remember?” he asked, his eyes on Ryo.

The doctor was once again silent. Thinking. “I would advise to let her proceed at her own pace. My diagnosis is amnesia caused by the head injury, but we might also be dealing with dissociative amnesia, caused by some sort of emotional shock or trauma. In this case, she might’ve repressed a traumatic memory, and forcing her to remember could deepen that trauma.”

Ryo groaned and leaned back against the wall, eyes on the ceiling. Great. It might’ve been the knock on the head. Or it might’ve been the fact that he’d finally told her what he felt for her, finally claimed her...

Yamamoto nodded toward Kaori’s hospital room. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind a visit while we wait for the results.” His beeper went off again. “Just remember, take it easy, don’t push her.” And he was off.