Katie's Hellion (Rhyn Trilogy, Book One) Read Online Free Page A

wear
something decent this time. You looked like you were in pj’s last
time."
    "Yeah."
    Katie set the phone on the table and stared
at the kid’s drawings on the fridge.
    How could she remember everything but her
child ? She felt sick to her stomach.
     
     
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
    "Almost everything looks normal. There's an
anomaly in your blood test, but you’re physically healthy," Dr.
Williams said with a warm smile at odds with the cold sterility of
the room.
    "Just a mental mess?" she prodded.
    "Don’t be hard on yourself," he chided,
pulling a rolling chair up to the exam table. "Your amnesia is
trauma induced from the rape you survived six years ago."
    "I was raped? "
    "And beaten near death," he said with a shake
of his head. "I don’t know how you survived, but you did. To
protect you, your mind backtracks whenever you feel overwhelmed,
overly stressed, mentally threatened."
    She gazed at him skeptically. Her file --two
inches thick --was yet more proof that the world that seemed
foreign to her really wasn’t.
    "So my mind blanks stuff out?"
    "Precisely. It’s a survival technique. The
human mind is so wonderful and so versatile." By his glowing eyes,
he loved his job. His enthusiasm and genuine warmth melted more of
her resistance.
    "But how is it I remember being alone getting
on the train, and Toby got on at the next stop?" she
challenged.
    "It’s how your mind wakes up from whatever
sleep it went into. You fantasized him appearing at the next stop;
it’s how your psychosis snaps and brings you back to reality."
    "That makes no sense."
    "We’ve gone over this several times," he
said. "You’ll have to take my word on this."
    "Do I usually do that?"
    "No, but I’d like to get home to my wife
before midnight. And I called the judge on your behalf and
volunteered you to go to counseling. The judge liked that option
rather than jailing a single mom."
    Jailing a single mom, like her. She managed a
nod. He gave another warm smile.
    "Get dressed and take your file to the nurse.
Please call me if you experience any other problems. I'll tell my
receptionist to make you an appointment for next week. Your blood
test results were unusual."
    He handed her a business card and left. The
antiseptic pine-laced air from the hallway made her nose wrinkle.
She looked at the door, the familiar scent disturbing her, then
down at her file.
    Everything was documented, every visit, every
doctor-scrawled record, every prescription she’d ever taken.
    It was too real not to be real, yet it didn’t
feel real at all! She followed his instructions and traded the file
for two prescriptions to drugs she’d never heard of. She considered
debating with the nurse at the front desk, whose friendly grey eyes
were familiar. Toby hopped up from his chair and waved to the
nurse. Tired and confused, Katie left without asking what the drugs
were for and stepped into the chilly fall evening. Toby trailed
silently.
    The cold wind felt good against her face and
roused her dark thoughts. She breathed out fog, watching it rise to
the dark grey skies. Dr. Williams’ clinic had a blessedly late
schedule; it was nearing eight, and the lights of his building
still glowed. Having the world’s best neurologist on call was one
of the perks of the rich and famous, a world unfamiliar to her
except that her sister had been gunning for it since her sixteenth
birthday.
    Hannah had succeeded in landing a big fish
blueblood, a descendant of Italian royalty, whose old money
placated the chilly welcome she received into a lifestyle far, far
different from her own.
    Katie shivered and looked around for a cab.
Her eyes settled on a form across the street, so still and dark he
would’ve been a shadow if not for his presence beneath a street
lamp. She felt the cold, black glare and fought the urge to run
back inside the clinic. He didn’t move; for a long moment, she
convinced herself he was a statue, not a man too still to be human.
He was in black, unaffected