Falling for Her Army Doc Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I’D CLAIM AMNESIA, but I really don’t know the names of most flowers. The purple and white ones...

  “Orchids,” Lizzie filled in.

  “I know what orchids are.” Mateo reached over the stone wall and picked one, then handed it to Lizzie. “There’s probably a rule against picking the flowers, but you need an...orchid in your hair.”

  She took it and tucked it behind her right ear. “Right ear means you’re available. Left means you’re taken.”

  “How could someone like you not be taken?” he asked, sitting down next to her on the stone wall surrounding the garden.

  Behind them were beautiful flowers in every color imaginable, with a long reflecting pond in the background. One that stretched toward the ocean.

  “Because I don’t want to be taken. It’s one of those been-there-done-that situations, and I can still feel the sting from it, so I don’t want to make the wound any worse.

  “That bad?”

  “Let’s just say that on a rating of one through ten, I’d need a few more numbers to describe it. So, you haven’t been...?”

  “I was engaged briefly—apparently. Don’t really have any memory of it other than a few flashes, and those aren’t very flattering. Definitely not my type, from the little I recall.”

  “Maybe with your head injury your type changed. That can happen with brain damage. People are known to come out the other side very different from what they were when they went in. Could be the Fates giving you a second chance.”

  “You can’t just have a normal conversation, can you? You turn everything into work.”

  “Because that’s what I do.”

  “That’s all you do, Lizzie. You come in early, leave late, and probably sandwich some sleep in there somewhere. I lived that schedule in Afghanistan too often, and it catches up to you.”

  “But this isn’t about me, Mateo.”

  “First-year Med School. ‘Treating a patient is as much about you as it is the patient.’ Even though some of my patients came in and out so fast they never even saw me, I worked hard to make every one of them feel that they were in good hands, even if those hands were exhausted. But you... There’s a deep-down tiredness behind the facade you put on, and it shows in your eyes. And I don’t think it’s physical so much as something else.”

  “It’s just an accumulation of things. Tough decisions. My dad’s death. Things I’ve wanted I haven’t had. Things I’ve had I haven’t wanted.” She gave him a weak smile. “You’re very perceptive for a man who claims amnesia at the drop of a hat.”

  “Straightforward talk, honesty...that’s what I was all about, Lizzie. Have to be when you’re out on the battlefield making quick decisions and performing life-changing procedures.” He sighed. “In the end, when you’re all they’ve got, the only real thing that counts is your word.”

  “Was it difficult...practicing like that?”

  “Isn’t it what your dad did?”

  She shook her head. “He had rank, which got him assigned to a base hospital. He was the one who took the casualties that people like you had fixed after you sent them on.”

  “Wouldn’t it be crazy if our paths had crossed somewhere? Yours and mine?”

  “He kept me pretty isolated from that part of his life. If our paths had crossed it would have been somewhere like that little bäckerei on Robsonstrasse in Rhineland-Palatinate. We lived in a little flat about a block from there, and I loved getting up early and going for a Danish, or even a raspberry-filled braid.”

  “The plum cake there was always my favorite. A little bit sweet, a little bit tart.”

  “So, you’ve been there?” Lizzie asked, smiling over the shared memory.

  “When I had time. My trips in and out were pretty quick, but I started getting a taste for the plum cake about the same time I stepped on the plane to go there, so that was always my first stop.”

  “Small world,” Lizzie said. “Almost like a fairy tale...where the Princess meets the Prince in the most improbable way, then they have battles to fight to get to each other. You know—the love-conquers-all thing, starting with a fruit Danish and plum cake.”

  “And the rest of the story in your little world?” he asked. “Do they ever get to their happily-ever-after, or do they eat their cakes alone forever?”

  “Let’s see...” she said. “So, their paths crossed at the bakery... His eyes met hers—love at first sight, of course. It always happens that way in a nice romantic story. But since the hero of my story was a soldier prince, their time was fleeting. Passionate, but brief. And the kisses...?”

  “Were they good?”

  “The best she’d ever known. But she was young, and very inexperienced. Oh, and she’d never kissed a real man before. He was her first. Her other kisses had come from boys in the village...no comparison to the kisses of a man.”

  It was nice, putting herself in the place of a young village maiden. Yes, Mateo’s kisses would definitely be those of a real man. She could almost imagine how they would taste on her own lips.

  “Was he her first true love?”

  Lizzie nodded. “Of course he was. But, the way as many war stories end, they were separated. He was sent somewhere else and her heart was broken.”

  “Badly, or would she eventually heal?”

  “I don’t think you ever heal when you’ve lost the love of your life. But she went after him. She was strong that way.”

  “Then true love prevailed?”

  “In my story, yes.”

  “And they lived happily ever after?”

  “As happily-ever-after as any two lovers could with six children. A house in the country. Maybe a few dairy cows.”

  “Or just a couple of children, a house on a beach in Hawaii, no cows allowed?”

  “Nice dream,” she said on a sigh. “And I’d kill for a blueberry Danish right now.”

  Mateo started to slide his hand across the ledge on which they were seated—not so much to hold her hand, but just to brush against it. But either she saw it coming and didn’t want it, or she was still caught up in her fairy tale, because just as he made his approach she stood, then turned toward the beach.

  “We used to come here when I was a child. It’s grown up a lot. Not much tourism back then.”

  “Is there any one place you call home, Lizzie?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. Home was where we were or where we were going. And you?”

  “A small village near Guadalajara, originally. Then wherever my mother could get work after we came to the States.”

  “Is she...?”

  “She’s got some health problems...can’t travel anymore. But we chat almost every day, and someone at the facility is helping her learn how to video chat.”

  “Does she know about your injury?”

  Mateo shook his head. “Her life was hard enough because of me. Why add to it if I don’t have to?”

  “After what my dad went through with his Alzheimer’s, I think you’re doing the right thing.”

  “Now, about that walk...”

  He would have been good doctor. She was sure of that. And she was touched by his caring attitude toward his mother. Even toward her. This wasn’t the Mateo who refused his treatments or walled himself into his room like a recluse. This was someone entirely different. Someone she hadn’t expected but was glad she’d found.

  “Well, if we go one way we’ll run into a shaved ice concession, and if we go the other way it’s The Shack.”

  “And The Shack is...?”

  “Fun, loud, dancing, music, watered-down drinks for the tourists... Pretty much a place I shouldn’t be taking you.”

  “Which is exactly why I’m taking you.”

  “Two-drink limit, Mateo. Beer, preferably. You’re not on any prohibitive meds, but...�
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  “I was wondering when the doctor would return.”

  “The doctor never left.”

  “Oh, yes, she did,” he said, smiling. “And I was the one who got to see it happen.”

  * * *

  It was well into the evening—“her time,” as she called it. She really needed to go home and rest. But now that he was out here, she wanted to keep him here. Because while he was here he wasn’t inside the hospital, getting into trouble. Even his good looks—which everybody noticed—weren’t enough to change their minds, and right now the mindset was not in Mateo’s favor. Presently she was too exhausted to deal with it, so this little time out was badly needed. Probably for both of them.

  Lizzie took a quick appraisal, even though she knew what he looked like. But she liked his dark look. The muscles. The smooth chest. And his hands...large, but gentle—the hands of a surgeon. How would they be as the hands of a lover? she wondered, as he spotted her amongst the crowd, then came her direction.

  “I saw you staring at me,” he said, as a couple of young women from the bar watched him with obvious open invitation.

  Who could blame them? Lizzie thought. He was the best-looking man there.

  “Not staring. Just watching to make sure you weren’t doing something that would embarrass you and cost me my job.”

  “But you’re off duty.”

  “And you’re still a patient of the hospital.”

  “But not your patient, Lizzie. And therein lies the distinction.” He grabbed a cold beer from a passing server and handed it to Lizzie. “Do you ever allow yourself to have fun?”

  “Do you ever allow yourself to not have fun?” she asked, wondering if, in his previous life, he’d been a party boy.

  He held up his bottle to clink with hers, but she stepped back before that could happen.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Lizzie. Prettier than anyone else here. And you’re smart. But if I were your doctor I’d prescribe more fun in your life—because even when you’re standing in the middle of it, you can’t see it.”

  “Then it’s a good thing you’re not my doctor, isn’t it?”

  Mateo reached over and took Lizzie’s beer, then took a swig of it.

  “That’s your limit,” she warned him.

  “Actually, it’s one over—but who’s counting?”

  Lizzie shook her head, caught between smiling and frowning. “I shouldn’t have to count. Somewhere in the manual on being adult there’s a chapter on responsibility. Maybe you should go back and re-read it.”

  “You really can’t let go, can you?”

  “It’s not about letting go, Mateo. It’s about all the things that are expected of me—not least of which is taking care of you, since I’m the one who brought you here.”

  He reached over and brushed a stray strand of hair from her face. The feel of his hand was so startling and smooth she caught herself on the verge of recoiling, but stopped when she realized it was an empty gesture. Still, the shivers his touch left behind rattled her.

  “I’m not going to let anything hurt you or your reputation,” he said, his voice so low it was almost drowned out by the noise level coming from the rest of the people at The Shack. “I know how hard it is to get what you want and keep it, and I wouldn’t jeopardize that for you, Lizzie.”

  This serious side of him...she hadn’t seen it before. But she knew, deep down, this was the real Mateo coming through. Not the one who refused treatment, not even the one who partied hard on the beach. Those might be different sides to his personality, but she’d just been touched by the real Mateo Sanchez, and she liked it. Maybe for the first time liked him. If only she could see more of him, now.

  “I appreciate that,” she said.

  She toyed with the idea of telling him that her job here might not be everything she wanted, that she was rethinking staying. But he didn’t want to hear that. It was her dilemma to solve.

  “Just keep it reasonable and we’ll both be fine.”

  “Everything in my life has been reasonable, Lizzie. I may not remember all about that life, but I do recall who I was in the part I remember, and I was you—always too serious, always too involved.”

  “And now?” she asked.

  “That is the question, isn’t it? I have so many different pieces of me rattling around my brain, and I’m not able to put them in order yet.”

  And she suspected he was afraid of what he might find when he did put them into place. She understood that. Understood Mateo more now than she had.

  “Sometimes they don’t always come together the way you want or expect.”

  “Then I’ll have a lifetime to adjust to what I’m missing, or what got away from me. And that’s not me being pragmatic. That’s me trying to deal with me, and I’m not easy. I know that.”

  He reached out and brushed her cheek, this time without the pretense of brushing back her hair. It was simply a stroke of affection or friendship. Maybe an old habit returning. And she didn’t mind so much.

  Affection had never really been part of her life. Not from her dad, not from her husband. Even if this little gesture from Mateo meant nothing to him, it meant something to her. But she wouldn’t allow herself to think beyond that. What was the point? He was a man without a memory; she a woman without clear direction. It wasn’t a good combination, no matter how you looked at it.

  Still, his touch gave her the shivers again.

  “So, moving on to something less philosophical, you wouldn’t happen to know if I can swim, would you? I mean, being in the Army, I’m assuming I have basic skills. But enough to get me out there on one of those surfboards?”

  “I could always throw you in to find out.”

  “You’re not a very sympathetic doctor, Dr. Peterson.”

  She laughed. “Well, you’re finally catching on.”

  “What I’m catching on to is that you’re a fraud. I know there’s a side of Lizzie Peterson she doesn’t let out. That’s the side I want to see.”

  “Good luck with that,” she said, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “Because what you see with me is what you get.”

  “Under different circumstances that might not be so bad. But with what I’m going through...” Mateo shrugged. “As they say: timing is everything. Too bad that’s the way it’s working out.”

  Which meant what? Was he really interested, or was this only one small aspect of Mateo that had been damaged?

  “In my experience, it’s not so much about the timing as it is the luck of the draw. Things happen when they happen, and the only thing dictating that is what you’re doing in the moment. If I’m the one paddling around in the surf after I’ve been warned there’s a rip current, it should come as no surprise to me that I’m also the one who gets carried out to sea. Things happen because we make them happen—or we choose to ignore what could happen in their place.”

  “Like my amnesia. It happened because... Well, if I knew the answer to that, I’d tell you. But my doc prefers I make the discovery on my own. ‘Vulnerable mind syndrome,’ he calls it. Which means my mind is open and susceptible to anything.”

  “Except doing the things you’re supposed to in order to help yourself improve.”

  “Claiming amnesia on that one,” he said, smiling.

  “As long as you’re just claiming and not believing. And as for swimming... I don’t know. But at some point, after I return from my holiday, if you’re still here...”

  “Ah, the veiled threat.”

  “Not a threat. An offer to take you out and see how you do in the water.”

  “That could motivate me to be on my best behavior.”

  “Or you could motivate yourself. Your choice, Mateo. So, are you up for a wade?” she asked.

  “Didn’t you just say something about throwing me in?”

  “Maybe I did...maybe I did
n’t,” she teased.

  Mateo laughed, then suddenly turned serious. “What happens if the real me comes back, Lizzie—all of me—and I don’t like who I am?”

  “You haven’t given yourself enough time. And maybe you underestimate yourself. Whatever the case, you’re aware of changes and that’s the first step. Always be mindful of that and you’ll be fine. I mean, we all lose track of ourselves at one time or another, with or without amnesia. I really believe you’re more in touch with who you are than you’re ready to admit. So, like I said, there’s no rush. Now, if you go in the water with me, it’s ankle-deep or nothing.”

  “I could have been a Navy SEAL...which means I’m an expert swimmer.” He kicked off his flip-flops and waded out in the water with her.

  “Except you were an Army surgeon, stationed in a field hospital in Afghanistan. No swimming there.”

  “In my mind I was doing something more glamorous and heroic.”

  “You were doing something heroic. Patching, stitching, amputating...” She took hold of his hand, even though he was in perfect physical condition, and they waded in up to their knees. “Might not have been glamorous, but you were saving lives.”

  “Only some of which I remember,” he said, taking the lead and then pulling Lizzie along until they were in halfway to their hips.

  They stood there together for a few minutes, simply looking out over the water. In the distance, a freighter was making its slow way across the horizon—not destined for Oahu, where they were, but perhaps one of the other islands.

  Faraway places, she thought, as she reluctantly turned back toward shore. She’d spent her life in faraway places, but she’d never taken the time to notice as she’d been too young, or too involved in trying to get along in yet another new place.

  A big pity, that. So many opportunities wasted. Maybe someday she’d go back and have a do-over. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d put the past behind her, find her roots, and venture out to see if a little happiness might go with that. Right now, she didn’t know what she’d do. Her life was a toss-up.