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“You can’t hang on to her until the ambulance gets here. It could take awhile.” Simon tried to reason with him.
“The hell I can’t,” Max answered harshly, his hold tightening on his woman involuntarily as he lengthened his stride. “She’s my wife. I’ll carry her as long as I need to.” He needed to keep her, needed to hold her.
He didn’t notice Sam and Simon’s astonished looks as they both gaped at him like he’d suddenly lost his mind.
“You think that’s Mia?” Sam asked, confused.
“It is Mia,” Max answered confidently.
“Max, she doesn’t look like Mia—”
Arriving at the parking lot, Max jerked his head around to look at Sam, telling him belligerently, “It’s her.” He knew his own wife. She smelled like Mia; she felt like Mia; shewasMia.
The woman in his arms began to stir just as Kade joined the three men. Sirens were wailing distantly, rapidly moving closer. “Ambulance is coming,” Kade muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets, his expression concerned as he looked at Max. “Max, I know you think that’s Mia, but you must know that she really isn’t.”
Max watched Mia’s eyes flutter open slowly, blinking like she was trying to focus her vision and looking around warily. “What happened? Why are you carrying me?” she rasped.
“You fell and hit your head, sweetheart,” Max answered softly.
“Can you put me down please?” she requested, squirming.
Scowling, he answered, “Not happening. You’re hurt.”
Irritated, she looked at her brother. “Kade, can you tell Max that I’m fine? Where did you get that horrible shirt? I think that’s worse than the one with the purple birds.” Her confused eyes moved over Simon and Sam. “Why are Simon and Sam here? Where the hell are we? Dammit! I feel like I got run over by a semi-truck.” She rested her head against Max’s shoulder and closed her eyes, no longer arguing about Max holding her, her lucid moment apparently over.
The four men all looked at one another, none of them moving as they stared at the female Max was holding.
“Holy shit,” Simon and Sam grumbled in unison.
Max’s heart accelerated, his mouth going dry. He found himself incapable of speech as he tried to wrap his mind around what was happening…and failed miserably.
Kade yanked the phone from his pocket and punched one of the buttons. Raising his voice to be heard over the sirens of the arriving ambulance, he shouted into the phone, “Travis? I need you to meet us at the hospital. We think we found Mia, and she’s alive.”
Maddie, Kara, and the rest of the guests for the picnic arrived, everyone talking at once as a paramedic hopped out of the ambulance and rushed over with the gurney. Max reluctantly laid Mia on the board that rested on top of the pristine sheet, but he gripped her hand and never let go. Ignoring the chaos around him, he followed wherever his wife was going. Hopping into the ambulance, he sat near her head and let the paramedic do his job, but he gripped her hand, squeezing it lightly, needing to keep the connection.
“Are you hurt, sir?” the brisk voice of the young medic asked.
The question barely penetrated the fog around Max’s brain. Slowly, he glanced down at his t-shirt, realizing he was covered in blood from Mia’s head wound.
“No,” he said huskily, shaking his head. “Not anymore.”
The perplexed young man in uniform looked at Max for a moment and shrugged, obviously convinced that the blood on Max belonged to Mia. Setting back to work, he stemmed the blood from Mia’s head wound, stabilized her head and neck, and started peppering Max with medical questions about his wife.
Yanking himself brutally from his own thoughts, Max went into autopilot, answering every question, responding coherently, giving the paramedic every bit of information he could to help Mia.
Mustering every bit of the Hamilton control he could find, Max calmed and buried his emotions. It should have been easy. It was something he’d done most of his life. But right now, it was an enormous effort, one that he almost didn’t care whether he accomplished or not.
Do it for Mia. She needs you to be sensible and get a grip on yourself.
With that thought, Max was able to totally rein himself in, become the rational man she had always expected.
By the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital, Max was in command of himself; the only signal that he hadn’t quite managed to completely bury his emotions was the steadfast, unwavering grip he retained on Mia’s hand.
By some unknown phenomenon, Max knew he was actually getting a second chance. As improbable as it was, his wife had been given back to him, and he wasn’t going to fuck it up this time.
His face grim, he never left Mia, even when he was instructed to wait somewhere else. He’d waited long enough. He had his wife in his grasp, and he wasn’t ever letting her go again.
“I’ve talked to all of her doctors, Max. Even the consulting psychiatrist. Her traumatic brain injury is fairly mild; she’s experiencing some symptoms of post-concussion syndrome with retrograde amnesia. She really doesn’t remember the last two and a half years or what occurred during that time.” Maddie was using her doctor’s voice, but her expression was concerned as she sat down next to Max in the hospital waiting room and covered his hand with hers.