Page 2 of Diagnosis Attraction

“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 themiddle 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.”

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