With This Man

  ‘My head hurts,’ she complains.

  ‘Oh, darling. Of course it hurts.’ Elizabeth’s light laugh as she speaks is loaded with joy. ‘Look who’s here.’ She moves away from Ava, opening up a direct path to me and the twins.

  I move forward, desperate to look into those eyes, to touch her and feel her respond, even if it’s just a light squeeze of my hand. I’ve missed her so much. But when our eyes connect, Ava frowns, flicking her gaze to the children and then back to me. I stop, watching carefully as she seems to assess us. Where’s the sparkle in those eyes I love so much? Where’s the love? My heart slows to a faint thud in my chest, my joy fading with it. Something isn’t right.

  ‘Ava, do you know who this is?’ the doctor asks warily.

  My head swings towards him in horror. ‘Of course she does,’ I blurt. What is he suggesting?

  The doctor ignores me and moves closer to Ava, whose eyes are still passing continuously between me and the kids. Still no sparkle. Still no love. ‘Ava, tell me your full name.’

  She doesn’t hesitate. ‘Ava O’Shea.’

  I recoil, not quite sure what to make of this.

  The doctor flicks a glance towards me. I don’t know what to make of his look, either. ‘Ava, do you know who this man is?’

  ‘What?’ I blurt, my horror growing.

  That horror reaches unspeakable heights when my wife slowly starts to shake her head. ‘No.’

  I gasp, suddenly struggling for breath. No?

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ Elizabeth breathes, coming straight to me and claiming the children. ‘Come on, darlings. Let’s go and find your pap.’ She steers them out of the room, both of them looking back at me with confusion all over their faces.

  And I just stand there, useless, staring into the eyes of the woman who rules my heart, trying to comprehend what’s unfolding. ‘Ava.’ I barely get her name out, my mind frantically searching for words.

  ‘Can you tell me how you crashed your car?’ the doctor pushes on.

  She shakes her head on a frown, reaching up to rub her forehead. But her eyes never leave mine. They’re holding me frozen where I stand, taking me in.

  ‘And this man isn’t familiar to you?’ Dr Peters asks, making notes while he talks.

  I hold my breath, begging she puts this right, praying that I didn’t hear her correctly, that she’s just confused. Of course she remembers me. I’m her husband. I’m the man who would lay down his life for her. She has to remember me!

  She studies me for a few moments, looking me up and down, as if trying hard to place me. My heart cracks. ‘I don’t recognise him.’ She looks down at the sheets, and the inevitable tears start to pinch the back of my stunned eyes.

  ‘Do you have any children, Ava?’

  ‘No.’ She almost laughs, quickly looking up at me again.

  My world shatters into a million shards of devastation, and I stagger towards a nearby chair, sitting down before I fall. Her gaze follows me the entire way.

  ‘You don’t remember me?’ I whisper the words.

  ‘Should I?’ she asks, her laughter gone and clear worry in her tone.

  Her reply slays me. It turns my stomach and rips my broken heart from my chest. I want to scream at her, tell her that yes, yes, she should remember me. Everything we’ve been through. Everything we’ve done together. How much we love each other.

  ‘Ava, this is your husband.’ The doctor points towards me where I’m slumped in the chair. ‘Jesse.’

  ‘But I’m not married,’ she argues, seeming to be getting frustrated. Frustrated? She’s frustrated? I hate myself with a vengeance for concluding that she has no fucking idea. I positively hate myself. She doesn’t remember me? Her husband. Her Lord.

  I can’t take this. I’m going to throw up. I dash out of the room and sprint down the corridor, thrusting the door to the men’s open with force and falling into a cubicle. I haven’t eaten for days, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for my stomach. I retch and cough over the toilet.

  She’s forgotten me. Forgotten our kids. What is this madness?

  My body starts to ache with the force of my retching, and when I finally accept that there’s nothing to bring up, I push myself up with too much effort and move to the sink to splash my face. I stare at myself in the mirror. I don’t even recognise myself right now. I’m pasty, my eyes are sunken, and I look drained. I am drained. I was before Ava came around, and the small, momentary sliver of life I found when she opened her eyes has been cruelly snatched away.

  What am I going to do? How do I fix this? The only thing in this world that keeps my heart beating doesn’t know who I am.

  A tap on the door prompts me to look past my frightful reflection. ‘Mr Ward?’ The doctor’s voice has lost all the hope that filled it when Ava woke from her coma. Now it’s back to sympathetic. ‘Mr Ward, are you in there?’ The door opens and Dr Peters appears, his lips pressed tightly together when he finds me holding myself up by the basin.

  ‘She doesn’t remember me, her own husband, and not even our babies?’ I swallow down the lump making me choke on every word, wondering why I’m posing it as a question. It’s not like I heard her wrong. It’s not like I didn’t see the total blankness in her eyes when she looked at me and the twins.

  The doctor enters, shutting the door quietly and slowly behind him. Clearing his throat and plunging his hands into his pockets, he finds my eyes in the mirror. I can’t turn to face him. My hands wedged against the edge of the basin are the only thing holding me up.

  ‘Mr Ward, it would seem your wife is suffering from amnestic syndrome.’

  ‘What?’ I snap.

  ‘Memory loss.’

  ‘No fucking shit, brainiac,’ I mutter. Is he just going to state the fucking obvious?

  Ignoring my rudeness, he goes on. ‘Having chatted briefly with Ava, there appears to be a clear divide in her memory.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask, my forehead bunching.

  ‘I mean, from what I have established thus far, there is an obvious cut-off point in her memory.’ He points to the side of his head. ‘The part of her brain that stores certain memories has been traumatised. Our ability to recall memories is a very complex process, without the added handicap of a brain trauma.’

  I close my eyes, trying to allow all the information to sink in. ‘What are you saying, doctor?’ I ask outright.

  ‘I’m saying your wife has lost the last sixteen years of her life.’

  ‘What?’ I swing around to face him. ‘That’s me. All of me, all of our time together. Are you telling me she won’t remember any of it? Nothing?’

  ‘The majority of patients who suffer from amnesia as a result of trauma will recover fully. How long that recovery takes depends on so much – the severity of the injury, the patient’s frame of mind, their short-term and long-term memory.’

  ‘The majority of patients?’ I ask, homing in on that part and that part alone.

  ‘Ava is a young, healthy woman, Mr Ward. The odds are in her favour.’

  ‘And if she doesn’t fully recover?’

  ‘The memories remain lost,’ he says bluntly, making me wince.

  The kids’ lives to this point. Me. She’ll lose it all? ‘What about medication?’

  ‘There is no physical or mental disorder present, Mr Ward. She doesn’t need medication. What she needs is her family to help her retrieve her lost memories. To support her. There are many therapy options we can consider, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, EMDR, energy psychology, neurofeedback, and maybe even hypnosis.’

  His spew of words means nothing to me. I’m lost in this crazy. ‘She doesn’t even know who I am,’ I grate. ‘What am I supposed to do? Just take her home and hope she’ll suddenly remember me?’

  ‘It’s all you can do, Mr Ward. That, and support her in any therapy ses
sions we decide to try in order to help.’ He takes the door handle, smiling mildly. ‘Ava realises that she’s forgotten things. That’ll be both frustrating and upsetting, especially where her children are concerned. She might have issues with short-term memory, too, and daily life will take its toll. You need to be strong, Mr Ward. You need to help her try to remember.’

  ‘I don’t think a Reminder Fuck is going to suffice right now,’ I mumble.

  ‘Pardon?’ The doctor looks at me like I might be going doolally. He could be right.

  I shake my head and try to take in what he’s said. Help her. Help her try to find the endless memories we share. I stand up straight and pull my shoulders back, a physical act of determination that I’m trying so hard to back up with mental determination. I can do this. I have to do this. There’s no way I’m going to allow our history to slip away like it never happened. No way. I’ll do anything.

  ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’ I nod to myself and make my way to the door, passing the doctor without another word, now full to the brim with the mental determination I was missing only a moment ago. There’s only one way to approach this. Gently. Patiently. Sensitively. Softly-softly. I blow out a breath, laughing at myself. Good God, this is going to be a battle like no other.

  Chapter 8

  As I approach her room, Ava is sitting up a little in the bed, her fingers twiddling with the thin white sheets. The wound on her head has been redressed, the bandage stark white against her dark hair. Her face is full of concentration, her eyes squinting every now and then. She’s trying to remember, and it breaks my fucking heart to see it. It also renews my resolve. I’ll die before I let her memories turn to dust.

  I rap softly on the open door, prompting Ava to look up quickly. She winces, bringing her hand to the back of her neck and rubbing. I’m across the room like a bullet, forgetting everything gently-gently. ‘For fuck’s sake, Ava, be careful!’ I stop abruptly a few feet from her bed when she recoils, looking at me with wide, shocked eyes.

  Oh shit. Too much? Every instinct is telling me to rub her neck for her, to chastise her for not taking care of herself and chastise her more when her inevitable feistiness kicks in.

  But instead, and it fucking kills me, I back up, giving her a little space. ‘You should be careful,’ I say, an air of awkwardness already drenching the small room, and I’ve not even introduced myself.

  Introduced myself? Do I need to do that? I frown at my feet, wondering what the fucking hell to say. Oh hi, nice to meet you. I’m your husband. You call me the Lord. I’m a crazy, challenging, unreasonable pain in your arse; I’m possessive, I trample all over the place – your words, not mine – but by some fucking miracle, you love me nonetheless. We have sex. Lots of it, and you humour my need to have you wearing lace every day. Oh, did I mention that I owned a sex club one time? The Manor. It’s now some swanky golf complex. We fell in love fast. Well, I did. You played hard to get. So I stalked you until you relented, because I knew there was something there. We just . . . we made so much fucking sense, but then my crazy past started to get in the way, and I thought it would be a good idea to try to hide it all from you. Oh, and I forgot one of the main points. I’m a recovering alcoholic. Before I met you, I drank and I fucked many women. That was my life. We’ve had some pretty shitty times, but the good far outweighed the bad, and you stuck by me through it all. I really don’t deserve you, but you stayed with me despite all of my sins, and to top it all off, you gave me my babies. Two perfect babies. Did I mention I was married before you? No? Well, I was. I also had a little girl, but I lost her . . .

  I cough away the distress creeping up into my throat, the enormity of my situation slapping me hard in the face. I’ve always been in awe of Ava’s ability to love me so fiercely. Please, God, please. I beg that she finds that ability again.

  ‘So apparently you’re my husband,’ she says quietly, an inappropriate tinge of humour lacing her statement.

  I look up through my lashes, wondering if it’s a good thing that she seems a bit amused by the fact that she has a husband. Then I catch sight of her frowning face and conclude that it’s a bad thing. She’s looking at me in . . . oh, fuck. Is that disappointment? Maybe she’s not so surprised that she’s married, just surprised that she’s married to me.

  ‘You look . . . taken aback.’ I move across to the chair and sit down calmly, watching as Ava starts to spin her wedding ring on her finger.

  She shrugs a little. ‘I guess you’re a little older than I imagined.’ Another frown. ‘Well, if I ever imagined I would be married.’

  Ouch! I shift on my chair, injured, though showing it would be selfish, given the state of my wife. ‘You’re only as old as the woman you feel,’ I mutter pathetically instead.

  ‘So how old am I?’

  ‘Thirty-eight.’

  ‘I am?’ She recoils, surprised. ‘Then how old are you?’

  My lips press together, not prepared to reveal that little detail. It’s like déjà fucking vu. ‘Twenty-one,’ I say coolly, trying not to scowl at her when her eyebrows jump up in surprise.

  And she coughs. She fucking coughs. My scowl breaks free and my teeth grind, but I can’t pull her up on it. ‘Twenty-one?’

  I nod, confirming that I really am a twat.

  ‘I might have lost my memory, but I haven’t lost my eyesight.’

  Well, isn’t she just full of compliments. ‘It’s just a game we used to play.’

  ‘A game where you lied about your age?’

  I laugh under my breath a little. ‘Pretty much.’ I neglect to mention the reason behind my tactics at the time, because I’m adopting the same tactic now. I don’t want to put her off, and that’s a killer of a thought at this stage in our lives.

  I’ve been married to this woman for twelve fucking years, and I’m worried she might reject me. What kind of fucked-up nightmare am I in? Though, Lord knows, it’s going to take a lot more asks to reach my real age on this occasion, and I definitely won’t be sharing how she finally managed to extract the information from me all those years ago. I shudder, recalling the hellish few hours that she had me handcuffed to the bed.

  I sigh and inch forward on the chair, scrubbing my hands through my hair. ‘Do you remember anything?’ I ask, my eyes pleading with her. ‘Not one tiny thing, Ava?’

  Her face fills with sadness, but I’m not sure if it’s sadness for me or sadness for herself. She shakes her head, looking back down at her wedding ring. ‘I feel so misplaced.’ Her voice cracks, and one single tear splashes her forearm.

  That’s it. It’s not natural for me to be sitting here. I get up and go to her, sitting on the edge of her bed and taking her hands in mine, avoiding going in for a full-on cuddle. It’s ridiculous to think that I don’t want to push my luck. With my own fucking wife. ‘You are not misplaced,’ I say calmly, seeing more tears fall. ‘Ava, look at me.’ My demand is way too harsh, given our situation.

  Not that it matters. She looks up at me, and our stares instantly lock, her brown eyes gazing deeply into mine as I squeeze her hands. Her lips part a fraction, and something appears in her eyes – something familiar. Desire. It’s faint, but it’s there, a small reaction, and I cling to it with everything I have.

  ‘You feel that?’ I whisper, starting to fiddle with her ring myself. Her slight nod forces me to swallow down my relief before it chokes me. ‘That’s just the very beginning, Ava. That’s just the spark that set our worlds alight.’ Determination is now running rampant through my veins, that small reaction driving it. ‘This head of yours.’ I gently stroke down her cheek, relishing her slight nuzzle into my palm. ‘It’s been consumed by me for twelve years, lady. I’m not about to let you forget our story. I will make you remember. It’s my mission objective. I’ll do anything.’

  She sniffles, nodding, and everything tells me that she’s accepting so easily because there’s something ins
ide telling her that she should trust me. That she belongs with me. ‘That smell,’ she says out of the blue, tugging me towards her. I go with ease, a little taken aback when she buries her face in my neck, no matter how amazing it feels to have her so close. She inhales deeply and I wrap my arms around her as best I can, not missing the opportunity she’s instigated. ‘It’s my favourite smell.’

  I smile and close my eyes. ‘I know.’

  Chapter 9

  Ava

  I don’t recognise him. Not visually, anyway, but my body seems to know exactly who he is. It’s like he’s familiar to me, yet I can’t place him. He’s handsome, so very handsome; I can see it even through the sallowness of his skin and the glaze of his tired eyes. His scent, a mix of fresh water and the freshest mint, is my favourite, though I don’t think I’ve ever smelled it before. His face, cut with stress, is harsh but soft. His green eyes are sad but hopeful.

  He looks at me like I’m his saviour and his downfall. I feel lost. Lost and bewildered. I’m listening to what people are saying – the doctor, my mum – and it’s impossible to comprehend what they’re telling me. I’m married. I have eleven-year-old twins. I’m not in my early twenties, but in my late thirties. It’s madness, and if it weren’t for my mother, the woman I trust most in the world, backing up what the doctor’s saying, I wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe the gaps they’re filling in with wild tales of my love for this man and our life together.

  We were married within a couple of months of knowing each other. I was pregnant within a few weeks. That doesn’t sound like me. I’ve never been hasty when it comes to life-changing decisions, nor careless. I’ve always been independent and ambitious. The woman they are telling me I am doesn’t sound like me.

  Yet, this man who has been here almost constantly makes something inside me kick. My heart pumps faster when he is here. And my brain feels like it’s trying to jump-start, trying to dislodge memories that I’ve lost. Memories of him? I’m a mother. I’m a wife. And I have no idea how I’m supposed to do either of those jobs.