A Ranger For The Holidays. Allie Pleiter
the middle of nowhere, really.” She grabbed his free hand—the one where the watch had been—and held it, stroking his forearm in an effort to keep him calm. Keep him talking to you. “What on earth made you come up into the forest in last night’s storm? Or did someone just dump you here?”
“I...” Finn’s eyes rolled back and his lids fell shut. The hand Amelia was touching lost its tension and dropped to his chest.
He’d lost consciousness again—that couldn’t be good news. “Lord,” Amelia prayed aloud, helplessness pushing her pulse higher, “I need to know what to do here. Don’t You let Finn die before help comes. Don’t You do that to him or to me.” She laid her hand against Finn’s chest, grateful to feel breath and a heartbeat.
Amelia checked her phone again, then used the edge of her jacket to blot the sheen of sweat now beading Finn’s forehead. “Finn? Finn, wake up. Show me those nice blue eyes.” She grabbed his hand again, shaking it a bit to rouse him. “I found your gloves.” That struck her as a ridiculous thing to say, but she didn’t have a lot of experience making conversation with men out cold. Gramps fell asleep nightly—okay, hourly—in his recliner, but that was different. “Come on, Finn, give a gal a break. Open your eyes. Groan a little. Let me know you’re still in there.”
Finn seemed to grow more still, even the tension in his rugged features going soft as if falling sleep. Was he dying? He was such a nice-looking guy—if she discounted the mud, leaves and blood. Far too dashing to meet his end out here in a pile of pine needles.
Her phone beeped again. Shout out the text from Lucy said. Amelia dropped Finn’s hand and stood to yell “Lucy!” at the top of her lungs. She heard the distant rumble of an engine and dashed over to the side of the ridge to see a little all-terrain vehicle scrambling up the hillside with Lucy’s white police SUV not far behind. Some distance back, Amelia could see the flashing lights of what had to be an ambulance.
“Here!” Amelia yelled again, jumping up and down and waving her arms as relief filled her chest. “Over here!”
When the ATV veered in her direction, Amelia dashed back to Finn, still motionless on the ground.
“It’s okay, Finn,” she said, mopping his face again. “We’re gonna get you out of here.” She grabbed his hand, breathless and surprisingly near tears. “Help is here. You’re safe.”
* * *
“Hello there. Welcome back. I’m Dr. Searle.” A man in tortoiseshell glasses was peering at him as if he was a science experiment. The doctor’s warm tone felt suspiciously rehearsed. “Can you tell me your name?”
His name? His name seemed just out of reach. The combination of pain and confusion left him feeling weightless and heavy at the same time—as if he couldn’t tell up from down or left from right. He couldn’t answer.
The doctor adjusted his glasses. “Amelia found a watch on your wrist inscribed to Finn. Is that your name?”
“Sounds...right,” he said, mostly because he didn’t know what else to say. Amelia? Did he know that name?
“Well, let’s go with Finn for now. Tell me, can you see my face clearly?” Dr. Searle asked.
“Uh...I guess so.” Glory, even his teeth hurt. His tongue felt dry and sluggish. Where did this awful headache come from? Why did everything feel so out of place?
Dr. Searle switched on a small light and waved it back and forth. “Do you know where you are?”
“No.” Admitting that made the pounding in his head go double-time, a steady rhythm of not-good, not-good, not-good.
“You’re in the Little Horn Regional Medical Center. Amelia Klondike found you unconscious in the woods early this morning. Can you tell me how you got there?”
The pounding turned into a slam, with a sucker punch of fear to his gut. “No.” Hospital? In the woods? Out cold? Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember anything about anything except that this Amelia person sounded a bit familiar. The air turned thin and his head began to spin. “My head hurts. And my ribs.”
“I expect so. You’ve had a concussion, along with a few broken ribs and several nasty lacerations. Whatever hit you was big and mean. Took your wallet and your phone and left you out in the storm from the looks of it. Amelia said you had nothing on you but the watch.”
Amelia. He focused on the half-familiar name and remembered a vague impression of some very pretty blue eyes and a soft, soothing voice. Everything else was a blank.
“Well, Finn, it seems the knock on your head has rattled things around a bit. I’d try not to worry about it. It’s not that unusual for head-trauma patients to lose the hours around their injury at first.”
Finn didn’t like that he’d said “that unusual.” And he hadn’t just lost a few hours—right now it felt as if he’d lost everything. The spinning started again and he closed his eyes.
“I’m going to run some tests and give your description to the police. We might not be able to learn much over the weekend, but it’s worth a shot. Can you tell me if Finn is your first name, a last name or a nickname?”
Finn licked his dry, cracked lips. It hurt to think. For that matter, it hurt to breathe. “I don’t know.” He put his hand to his forehead, immediately regretting the sparks of pain it sent through the back of his eyes.
The doctor put a hand on Finn’s arm. “Try not to get all worked up. You must have friends or family looking for you. It won’t take long to sort things out.”
If Dr. Searle could have picked the one idea to make Finn feel worse... The haunting sense that no one was missing him or searching for him, that he was alone, was as deep as it was inexplicable. “I don’t remember anything, Doc.” It felt as if the admission swallowed him whole.
“It’ll likely come back to you in the next few hours. Are you up for a visitor? Amelia’s been out in the lobby waiting for you to wake up, and if you ask me, you could do with a distraction right about now.”
“Sure.” After all, this Amelia was the only thing he thought he remembered right now.
Dr. Searle gave him a half casual, half concerned smile as he moved to the door and opened it.
“Well, look at you, awake and everything.”
“Amelia” swept into the room with a bouquet of flowers and a bundle of plaid fabric. The particular turquoise of her eyes did feel vaguely familiar, as did her voice. In fact, her voice and eyes were the only memory he could pull up at all.
She deposited the flowers on his bedside table with a hopeful smile. As rescue squads went, she was pretty easy on the eyes with a tumble of blond hair and a petite, curvy figure. “Do you remember me? I found you early this morning.”
“A bit.” He had no idea what to say.
“Dr. Searle says you’ll recover just fine despite being pretty banged up. Gramps broke a rib once—I know it isn’t much fun.”
Should he know who Gramps was? “It’s not.” Finn stared at her, feeling as if he ought to know more about her but coming up short. All he remembered was the sound of her voice saying You’re safe and the blue of her eyes. And her hand. He remembered her holding his hand. He started to say You’re the only thing I remember, but changed his mind.
She mistook his silence for curiosity about the bundle, so she held up what turned out to be pajamas. “I think hospital gowns make you feel sicker than you already are. I figured you’d want to be comfortable, seeing as Doc Searle says you’ll be here over the weekend while they run a bunch of tests. You look to me like a blue plaid kind of guy.” She handed them to him, and when her fingers brushed his arm, the familiarity returned again. Something—anything familiar—made Finn fight the urge to grab her hand and hold it to see if the sensation would grow stronger.
Her