Chapter 188: Aren’t You Curious About You and Your Wife?
Adrian Grant turned his head, a hint of surprise in his eyes. “You’re the one who saved me?”
Caroline Whitman’s lips twitched. “That’s right. We even have body cam footage. Want to see?”
The footage was from Captain Marshall; it was probably standard procedure for their rescue team.
An indescribable tightness filled Adrian Grant’s chest. He couldn’t put the feeling into words.
He looked at her, silent for a moment before speaking. “Thank you.”
Caroline Whitman froze.
She had imagined all sorts of ways Adrian Grant might react to learning she’d saved him, but she never expected him to act the way he did when they first met.
The words “thank you” were polite yet distant.
Grace Lawson frowned.
‘Something’s not right. Something’s not right.’
‘Something’s very wrong!’
‘Her son’s reaction is all wrong.’
Seeing that young Ryan Grant was still in the room, Grace Lawson held her tongue and quickly changed the subject. “Caroline said you were found in a cave. You have a head injury, too. Did something happen?”
Adrian Grant shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
At these words, it was Grace Lawson’s turn to look as if she’d been struck by lightning.
“Don’t… don’t remember…?”
Just then, the other family elders started coming in, taking turns to ask about Adrian Grant’s condition.
‘He handled them all flawlessly. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was faking the amnesia.’
It wasn’t until Yolanda Young took the child out to give him his medicine that Adrian Grant finally spoke. “I have amnesia.”
Grace Lawson had already braced herself for it, but Jonathan Grant was stunned to hear the words himself.
‘Amnesia?’
‘Amnesia again?’
‘Zoe had amnesia after he went missing in the water, and now it’s my son’s turn after getting caught in a mudslide.’
‘What is going on?’
‘Is there something wrong with our family’s feng shui?’
‘Maybe I should have someone look into it.’
“Huh?” Of the three of them, Franklin Whitman was the most shocked.
“You have amnesia? Does that mean you don’t recognize me either?”
Adrian Grant: “…”
‘He truly had no memory of Franklin Whitman, but it wasn’t hard to guess that this must be his wife’s father.’
“I’m sorry, I can’t seem to remember the past few months.”
Franklin Whitman’s eyes widened. He turned to Caroline Whitman. “So you’re saying you’ve forgotten your own wife?”
Adrian Grant pressed his lips together. His silence was the answer.
For the first time, Jonathan Grant felt a headache coming on and wanted to scratch his head. ‘How did we end up in this mess?’ “What did the doctor say?”
“He hasn’t said anything yet,” Caroline Whitman replied. “I’ve already called for the doctor.”
Less than two minutes later, the attending physician arrived. After examining Adrian Grant and asking a few orientation questions, he closed the chart.
“He sustained a blow to the left temporal lobe, resulting in partial memory loss. The CT and MRI scans show no signs of organic damage, so this condition is usually not permanent.”
“The recovery time varies from person to person. It could be a few days for some, or a few months for others. There’s no specific medication for it; recovery mainly depends on repeated stimulation from familiar environments and people.”
“Family members should talk to him about the past and expose him to familiar people and places. That will help with his memory recovery.”
After the doctor left, the room fell silent.
In other words, it was still unclear whether Adrian Grant had walked into that cave on his own.
Caroline Whitman knew the mountain environment better than anyone. There were no signs of a mudslide’s impact there.
‘Given Adrian Zimmer’s usual clear-headed state and capabilities, it’s impossible he would have suffered harm from a natural event.’
‘And he certainly wouldn’t have abnormally hidden himself in a cave.’
But now that Adrian Grant had amnesia, they had no way of finding out what happened to him yesterday.
The heavy rain had also washed the scene clean, leaving no traces behind.
Adrian Grant lowered his gaze. ‘He hadn’t expected his amnesia to spawn a conspiracy theory.’
Grace Lawson sat by the bed, and seeing her son’s all-business expression made her heart ache.
‘All his memories after May are gone. That means he doesn’t remember how he pursued Caroline, how he proposed, or how they got married.’
She held it in, refraining from making a scene in the hospital room. She simply stood up and said, “I’ll go check on Ryan,” patting the back of Caroline’s hand as she passed.
Caroline Whitman felt she needed a moment to herself as well.
She left the room to give them space to talk.
Franklin Whitman also tactfully took his leave, leaving only Jonathan Grant and Adrian Grant in the room.
“Tsk, so you really have amnesia?” Jonathan Grant said with a hint of resignation.
“Yeah.”
“How did you end up just like your younger brother?”
“Zoe? He’s back.”
“Alright, I see you’ve really lost it,” Jonathan Grant said, staring wistfully at the ceiling.
“…”
「Later that afternoon.」
After getting a general overview of the company’s situation from Jonathan Grant, Adrian Grant claimed he was tired.
Jonathan Grant’s mouth twitched, speechless. ‘The amnesia might have taken his memories,’ he thought, ‘but his damn personality is still the same. He used me like a tool and then tossed me aside.’
“Aren’t you curious about your wife? Or your child?”
“As she’s the other person involved, I’d rather ask her about it myself.”
Jonathan Grant clapped him on the shoulder. “You were the one who told us you wanted to pursue Caroline, and you told us to stay out of it. You’d better not pull any stunts while your memory is gone. You don’t want to regret it when you get your memories back.”
Adrian Grant was silent. “…”
‘I was the one who said I wanted to pursue her…?’
“And another thing, Caroline saved your life. Even with amnesia, you can’t just dismiss that.”
“I know.”
—
That evening, Caroline Whitman brought him dinner.
Adrian Grant ate everything without complaint. While he was eating, Tiny ran in to chat, asking him all about his “business trip.”
Ryan Grant had recovered and was back to his chatty self.
Even if Adrian Grant wanted to share stories from his trip, his blank memory forced him to invent them.
But whenever he tried, the child would pepper him with endless follow-up questions.
The little rascal would blink his big, innocent eyes and immediately spot a contradiction. “But Daddy, that’s not what you told me the night before last! You said you had a boxed lunch that afternoon, not noodles.”
“…”
‘I can’t keep up with this kid at all,’ Adrian Grant realized.
Sitting on the sofa and peeling an apple, Caroline Whitman watched the father-son duo—one delivering a relentless barrage of questions, the other passively taking the hits—and couldn’t help but be amused.
‘How could a man with amnesia possibly outwit a sharp-tongued four-year-old with a steel-trap memory?’
‘Ryan Grant could question him into a total system shutdown all by himself.’
Faced with his son’s chatter, Adrian Grant surrendered. He wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Good boy, Daddy has a little headache. Can we stop talking for a bit, okay?”
‘Caroline doesn’t seem very talkative,’ he thought, ‘and I’m certainly not a man of many words. How did we end up with such a chatty kid?’
“Oh, okay.” Ryan Grant obediently zipped his lips.
He looked at the bandage on his father’s forehead and puffed out his cheeks to blow on it. “Daddy, let me blow on it for you.”
Caroline Whitman stood up and handed the freshly peeled apple to Ryan Grant. “Go play with Grandma and the others. Let Daddy rest for a little while.”
“Okay.”
The little one obediently took the apple and ran off to the other room, munching as he went.