Excerpt of Diagnosis Attraction by Rebecca York

Dr. Matt Delano goes to examine a new patient with amnesia. He things it will be a routine exam, but the encounter turns out to be far from ordinary:

She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. About his own age, he judged. She sat forward, fixing her gaze on him with a kind of unnerving desperation.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Dr. Delano.”

“I’d say pleased to meet you, if I knew how to introduce myself,” she answered.

“I take it you’re still having memory problems?”

She shrugged. “Unfortunately. I don’t know who I am or what happened to me.”

He consulted his tablet. “It says in your chart that you were in a one-car accident.”

“They told me that part. It seems I hit a light pole. It’s the rest of it that’s a mystery.” She gave her arm a little flap of exasperation. “I don’t know why I didn’t have a purse. The cops said there was a crowd around me, and a man had pulled me out of the car. The best I can figure is that he took the purse and disappeared.”

She dragged in a breath and let it out. “I don’t even know if the guy who pulled me out of the car is somebody I know—or just a random thief taking advantage of a woman who had an accident. Either way, I don’t like it. He left me in a heck of a fix.”

“I understand,” Matt answered, keying into her fears. Some pretty scary things had happened to him on his overseas travels. In one African country, he’d been threatened with having his arms cut off—or worse—until he’d volunteered to remove some bullets from a bunch of rebels. He’d been shot at too many times to count. And he’d been on a plane that had made an almost-crash landing on a dirt runway in a little airport out in the middle of nowhere. Taking all that into consideration, he still wouldn’t like to be in this woman’s shoes. She had no money. No memory. Nowhere to stay when she got out of the hospital.

She must have seen his reaction.

“Sorry to be such a bother.”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

“Then what?”

“I was feeling sorry for you, if you must know.”

“Right. I’m trying to keep from having a panic attack.”

He tipped his head to the side. “You know what that means—panic attack?”

“Yes. You get shaky. Your heart starts to pound.” She laughed, “And you feel like you’re going to die.”

“You remember details like that but not who you are?”

“I guess that must be true.”

“Have you ever had one?”

That stopped her. “Either I have, or I’ve read about it.”

“Is the picture of the syndrome vivid in your mind.”

“Yes.” 

“So it’s probably more than reading. Either you had one or you know someone who has.”

Her gaze turned inward, and he knew she was trying to remember which it was.

“Your chart says you’re doing okay physically. Let’s have a look at you.”

She sighed. “Okay.”

“Does anything hurt?”

“The lump on my head is still painful—but tolerable.”

“Good.”

“And I’m kind of stiff—from the impact.”

“Understandable. Let’s check your pupillary reflexes.”

She tipped her face up, and he looked into one eye and then the other with the flashlight, noting that the pupils were contracting normally.

“Okay, that’s good. I’m going to check your heart and lungs.” He pressed the stethoscope against her chest, listening to her steady heartbeat. “Good.”

Up until then, it had been a routine examination—or as routine as it could be when the patient had amnesia. As he put a hand on her arm, everything changed. At his touch, she gasped as though an electric current had shot through her, and perhaps he did, too, because suddenly, the room began to whirl around him, making it seem like the two of them were in the center of a private, invisible tornado. He knew the windows hadn’t blown in or anything. The air in the room was perfectly still, the same as moments before. The whirling was all in his mind. And hers because he was picking up on her confusion and sense of disorientation—as well as his own.

He should let go of her, but he felt as though he was riveted in place. With his hand on her arm, memories leaped toward him. Her memories—that she’d said were inaccessible to her. He was sure she hadn’t been lying, but somehow recollections that had been unavailable to her were flooding into his consciousness.

The first thing he knew for sure was that her name wasn’t Jane Doe. It was Elizabeth something. He clenched his teeth, struggling to catch the last name, but it seemed to be dangling just beyond his reach. Although he couldn’t get her last name, he caught hold of a whole series of scenes from her past.

Elizabeth, as a little girl, on her first day of nursery school, was shy, uncertain, and then panicked, watching Mommy leave her alone in a room full of children she didn’t know. Elizabeth as a grade-schooler working on math problems from a textbook. Elizabeth refusing to eat the beef tongue her mother had bought—to save grocery money. Elizabeth alone in her room, reading a book about two lovers and wishing she could have the same feelings for someone.

The old memories faded and were replaced by something much more recent. From yesterday. She was worried about being followed. She was driving an old car she’d borrowed from a friend, glancing frequently in the rearview mirror—seeing a blue car keeping pace with her.

She sped up, fleeing the pursuers, weaving down alleys and onto the street again. She thought she was going to get away until a truck blocked her escape. Trying to get around it, she plowed into a lamppost with bone-jarring impact. While she was still stunned from the crash, a man rushed to her, yanking her from the car, hitting her head on the doorframe as he pulled her onto the sidewalk, just as a crowd of onlookers gathered.

“Hey, what are you doing to her?” somebody demanded.

 That memory of the accident cut off abruptly with a flash of pain in her head and neck. She must have passed out, and one of the people who’d come running had called 911.

The recollections flowing from her mind to his were like pounding waves, but they weren’t the only thing he experienced. As he made the physical connection with her, he felt an overwhelming sexual pull that urged him to do more than dip into her thoughts.

He was her doctor, which meant that ethically there could be nothing personal between the two of them; yet he couldn’t stop himself from gathering her close. Somewhere in his own mind, he couldn’t squelch the notion that letting go of her would be like his own death.