Excerpt of Memories After Midnight by Linda Randall Wisdom

Afiery spike bored its way into the side ofAlex's head. Her eyelids fluttered as she fought her way past the blistering pain.

"Hey, sweetheart, think you can open your eyes for me?" The gruff voice only added to the agony.

She carefully opened one eye a mere slit, then quickly closed it as the bright overhead light sent more pain slicing through her head.

"I'm now blocking the light. Why don't you try opening your eyes again," the voice suggested.

When Alex opened her eyes she found the lack of direct light more tolerable. The man bending over her wore rumpled green surgical scrubs.

"Where...?" She managed to push the word past her lips.

"You're in the emergency room at the Sierra Vista Medical Center," he said, straightening up. "And you look good — except for some trauma from the blow to your head, but that's expected."

She frowned and quickly discovered even that small motion sent that fiery spike driving down even harder. She started to lift her hand to her head, but the doctor clasped it and kept it down.

"Not a good idea. We've still got to clean you up and put in a few stitches."

She licked her dry, cracked lips. "What happened to me?"

"You were mugged in the airport parking lot. A passenger on your flight saw the attack and called Security. Unfortunately, the thief got away. I'm afraid you ended up with a nasty gash. Seems that you were hit on the head, then you fell against your car."

"That doesn't make sense," she murmured, fighting to understand his words. Why was she at the airport? She hated to fly.

"Muggings never do," he said crisply. "Think you can answer a few questions for me?"

She hoped they were easy ones. "I'll try."

"First off, how many fingers am I holding up?" He held up his forefinger and middle finger.

"Two and please don't tell me you're holding up one and I'm seeing double."

He smiled. "Nope, we're doing okay there. How about any nausea or dizziness?"

At his question Alex suddenly turned green. The doctor took immediate stock of the situation and handed her a small basin just in time.

"Thank you," she whispered, feeling horribly embarrassed. "One of the side effects from head injuries, I'm afraid," he replied. "Better now?"

"Nothing that an aspirin couldn't take care of. Maybe two — " she paused " — or two hundred." She cautiously lifted her hand to push a stray strand of coppery-red hair out of her face. She feared she looked as bad as she felt, and she felt as if she had been in the middle of a cattle stampede.

The doctor smiled. "That's something we can take care of after we make sure you're in one piece. Do you know what your name is?"

She was relieved the questions were still easy. "Alexandra Elaine Spencer Parker."

"Do you know what day it is?"

"Tuesday," she said without hesitation.

"What about the date?"

Alex opened her mouth, then shut it again. "I — ah — I..." Tears sprang to her eyes as she struggled to remember the date. She felt confused and frustrated. "I'm not sure."

The doctor didn't say anything as he jotted some notes on her chart. "I wouldn't worry about it. You had a pretty bad blow to the head. Head injuries like this can affect the memory. It's a protective process since you instinctively want to forget what brought about the pain. Running some tests will also help us see how much trauma you've suffered and how to treat it. Once they're done, I'll stitch you up," he said.

Alex may have had the headache from hell, but she was still a lawyer. She could smell a lie a mile off and this man was lying to her.

"There's more to it than a bad headache, isn't there?" she asked.

"The laceration on your scalp was pretty deep. As a precaution we just want to make sure there isn't any further damage," he said. "Head wounds can be tricky, so I like to be doubly sure."

"My husband!" She started to sit up, but he gently pushed her back down. "Did anyone contact him?"

"Don't worry, we'll take care of that." He used a soothing voice.

Alex frowned. "I do remember that I was in here about a year ago for a sprained ankle."

"Then you're in our records." He nodded at the nurse, who moved off. "You just lie here and rest."

"Easy for you to say," she grumbled.

The doctor smiled sympathetically. "There's an officer out front who's waiting to talk to you about the attack."

"I don't know what I can tell him. I really don't remember anything about what happened," she said, then laughed. "Since I can't remember the date, I guess I couldn't be expected to remember being robbed, could I?"

"I can tell him you're not ready to speak to anyone just yet," the doctor said. "You need to get down to Radiology for those X-rays."

"No, let me talk to him now and get it over with." She lay back against the pillow.

He nodded reluctantly. "I'll have him come on back, then." Alex was convinced the baby-faced officer was no more than twelve years old. She assumed he must have recently joined the Sierra Vista police force since he didn't look familiar to her. She hadn't been married to Dylan for very long, but she had come to know many of the officers and detectives in the town's police force.

As the officer questioned her about the attack, she realized she really did remember nothing. She looked at the doctor with questions in her eyes.

"Loss of memory from a head injury like that isn't unusual," the doctor explained. "Trauma to the head has been known to block out memories of recent events."

"But why do I remember the day of the week but not the date?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "We don't know why some things are retained and others aren't."

Alex closed her eyes. Everything would be fine now. They'd call Dylan and he'd take care of everything.

"Hey, Parker, I thought it was your turn to host the poker game," Ron Davis, a detective in Narcotics, said as he tossed a chip onto the table.

"Franklin and I switched since he goes on vacation next week." Dylan Parker hadn't looked at his cards yet. He liked to wait until it was his turn to ante up.

The Domestic Crimes detective felt lucky tonight. He might even go home with money for once instead of leaving most of it with Davis or Greer, who was Davis's partner.

The fast-paced tune from the 1970s television show Batman sounded loudly in the room. The other four detectives stared at the origin of the tune coming from the cell phone clipped to Dylan's belt.

"Hey, Batman, your bat phone is ringing. Commissioner Gordon must need a hero."

Dylan Parker looked down at the cell phone. He checked the Caller ID. "I am off duty tonight," he muttered, then reluctantly answered the phone. "Parker." His body froze as he listened to the caller's words.

The other four men watched him intently. "Okay, who set this up?" he demanded. "Because whoever did will pay big- time. Trust me, this is not funny!" He impatiently listened to the caller. His expression suddenly changed. "She was what? All right, I'll be there in about twenty minutes." He disconnected the call and stared at each of the men seated around the table. "So help me, if I find out this call is a joke, I will make sure the person behind it comes to a world of pain."

"What the hell are you talking about?" one of the other detectives demanded.

Dylan sighed. "That was the medical center. They said my wife was mugged at the airport parking lot and she's in the ER." He studied the cards he held. It would have to be his first winning hand of the evening. With a muttered curse, he threw down the cards and unfolded his six-foot- two length. The backdrop of male laughter followed him as he left the apartment.

As a police detective with the Domestic Crimes Unit, it wasn't Dylan's first visit to the emergency room. Over time he'd interviewed his share of victims in the ER and been treated himself. But this was the first time he was there because the victim was someone he knew. Intimately.

By the time he arrived at the med center parking lot, his stomach was churning.

His and Alex's divorce hadn't been a pretty one. The woman knew how to extract her pound of flesh. His being forced to pay one hundred dollars per month in alimony was as good as rubbing salt in a wound. Not that the alimony was all due to Alex. The judge they'd been up against didn't like Dylan and ordered him to pay one dollar a month — an order they all knew was like a sick joke and would have been reversed on appeal. Dylan only made matters worse by saying a few things that didn't sit well with the judge, which caused the order to change to one hundred dollars per month. Dylan's attorney wanted to appeal the order, but Dylan didn't want to. He was positive a psychologist would have a field day with that scenario. A professional would have said the order left a thread, even a hostile one, between Dylan and Alex. Dylan preferred saying it gave him a chance to annoy Alex once a month.

Dylan decided if Alex wanted alimony, fine, she'd get it, but not in the form of a monthly check. He took his revenge in more creative ways, whether it was a donation to the San Francisco Aquarium made in her name, or sending her a cactus with one hundred dollars in pennies embedded in the pot. He learned the hard way not to send her one hundred lottery tickets — her winning fifteen thousand dollars from one of those tickets still rankled.

Except for barely two minutes last winter when he and his partner had interviewed a rape victim at Alex's law offices, he hadn't spoken to his ex-wife. For safety's sake, dialogue between the divorced couple had been kept to the bare minimum. That worked best for them.

Alex was so beautiful he'd never understood why she'd accepted his marriage proposal. At first, he'd thought it was love. He had fallen for her hard the first moment he'd seen her. She was quick with words, understood his jokes and there had always been something about her that convinced him they were meant to be together forever. It wasn't until later he discovered the fiery redhead's exterior didn't seem to match the interior. It was as if she had no desire in maintaining their marriage, and for the life of him he couldn't figure out why. He felt that all that mattered to her was staying on the fast track to partnership. After their divorce, he vowed relationships weren't in the cards for him and went on to pick up the pieces of his damaged life.

The security guard stationed near the ER entrance doors nodded at Dylan as he walked up. The moment he stepped through the automatic sliding glass doors, a uniformed officer approached him. The waiting room was empty except for a man sprawled asleep in a chair. A television playing a black-and-white movie was bolted onto a shelf set high up against the wall. A bowl of colorful silk flowers had been placed at the admitting clerk's desk in an attempt to cheer the place up, but in Dylan's opinion it didn't do a bit of good.

He walked up to the reception desk and identified himself to the clerk, asking for Dr. Kelly. Luckily for him, it was a slow night, so he didn't have to wait long.

The bearded man in wrinkled surgical scrubs approaching him looked tired. He carried an insulated coffee container in one hand.

"Hey, Detective Parker," he said, greeting the detective with a broad grin. "I can guess why you're here. You were listed as next of kin in Alexandra Spencer's records, not to mention she asked specifically for you."

"Yeah, I heard." He grimaced, wondering if there was anyone in this town who didn't know the gory details of his divorce.