Regina's Song

"What's happening here?" Les Greenleaf demanded, after Renata had been sedated into a peaceful slumber and we'd returned to Fallon's office. "I thought you told us that she has total amnesia." "Evidently, it's not quite as total as we thought," Fallon replied, grinning broadly. "I think this might be a major breakthrough." "Why does she recognize Mark and not us?" Inga sounded offended. "I haven't got the faintest idea," Fallon confessed, "but the fact that she recognizes somebody is very significant. It means that her past isn't a total blank." "Then she'll get her memory back?" Inga asked. "Some of it, at least. It's too early to tell how much." Fallon looked at me then. "Would it be possible for you to stay here for the next few days, Mark?" he asked. "For some reason, you seem to be the key to Renata's memory, so I'd like to have you available." "No problem, Doc," I replied. "If the boss can drop me off at my place, I'll grab a few things and come right back up the hill." "Good. I'll want you right there when Renata wakes up. We've made a connection, and we don't want to lose it." Les and Inga took me back to my place when we left the sanitarium. I tossed some clothes and stuff into a suitcase, grabbed some books, and drove my old Dodge back to Lake Stevens. I was as baffled as everybody else had been by Renata's recognition of me, and it'd caught me completely off guard. There'd been a kind of desperation about the way she'd clung to mealmost like somebody hanging on to a life raft. "We don't necessarily have to mention this to her parents, Mark," Fallon told me when I reported in, "but I think you'd better be right there in the room when Renata wakes up. Let's not take any chances and lose this. All the rooms here have surveillance cameras, so I'll be watching and listening. Don't push her or say anything about why she's here. Just be there." "I think I see where you're going, Doc," I told him. The shot Dr. Fallon had given her kept Twink totally out of it until the next morning, and that gave me time to think my way through the situation. I was still working through my grief at losing my parents, but it was time to put my problems aside and concentrate, here and now, on Twink. If she needed me, I sure as hell wasn't going to let her down. I pushed the reclining chair over beside her bed, pulled the blanket up around my ears, and tapped out. When I woke the next morning, Renata was still sound asleep, but she was holding my hand. Either she'd come about halfway out of her drug-induced slumber and found something to hold on to, or she'd just groped around for it in her sleep. Then again, it might have been me who'd been looking. It was sort of hard to say. One of the orderlies brought our breakfast about seven, and I tugged on Twink's hand a couple of times. "Hey, sack-rat," I said, "rise and shine. It's daylight in the swamp." She woke up smiling, for God's sake! That's sick! Nobody smiles that early in the morning! "I need a hug," she said. "Not 'til you get up." "Grouch," she accused me, her face still radiant. TEddings, David is the author of 'Regina's Song' with ISBN 9780345448989 and ISBN 0345448987.