[Paige's POV]

I excitedly made my way down the hallway towards Emily's room following closely behind Dr. Lopez. When he came to a stop just outside of her door I caught the slight look of nervousness on his face before he spoke, "So everything appears to be fine with your wife. She has made great strides in recovering for only being in a coma for a week. However, like I had worried, the blow to the head did do a little bit of damage." My happiness at this point had been taken down a couple of notches due to the new information.

"But I thought you said she was asking for me, so it can't be memory loss right? I don't think I understand what you're getting at." I looked at him a little worried about what was going to come out of his mouth next.

"Well she does have some memory, but unfortunately she only remembers up to a certain point in time. We were asking her a couple of questions to see exactly where it is that her memory cuts off and it appears that she can only remember up to about a week or two after you were married."

My happiness at this point was gone and replaced with pure shock. She couldn't remember a little less than half of her life. A week after the wedding? That means she hardly remembers anything after college. Oh my god, she's not going to remember the kids. My head was spinning with possibilities that seemed to be endless before the doctor snapped me back into reality.

"I know this is a lot to take in, but I need you to stay calm. We can't tell in these cases whether or not her memory will return. Sometimes it's back in a few weeks and sometimes it never returns." I nodded slowly at him to show that I was following everything he was saying before he continued, "You may want to go at her pace in informing her on events in her life that she can't remember as of right now so she doesn't feel to overwhelmed. Also we'll release her within the next couple of days. It is good for people with memory loss to be in familiar places in order to try to restore as many of those memories as possible. Pictures, videos, simply just retelling stories of her life may help jog her memory back, but like I said there are no guarantees."

I nodded again before he left me alone to go into the room and speak to Emily myself, which I was now a little scared to do. I had never experienced anything like this and wasn't completely sure how it was going to go once I went in, but I wanted to see her so bad that I burst into the room without thinking much about it.

My eyes instantly met hers and when she smiled at me I swear time stopped as my knees wobbled beneath me. I don't remember ever crossing the room to get to her but I must have at some point because I now had a death grip on my wife as I sobbed into the crook of her neck. "You scared me so much Em. Please don't ever leave me."

Her grip tightened around me as she rubbed her hands soothingly up and down my back. "I'm sorry baby, I dint mean to make you worry, even though you always had been good at that." I smiled against her neck as she teased me, reminding me of the one thing I was always good at when it came to her.

[Emily's POV]

I pulled away from her slowly and took both of her cheeks into my hands as I observed her tired face, "You don't look like you've been getting much sleep." She smiled down at me as she laughed as if I had just stated an obvious fact.

"Well I think to say that it's been a hectic week would be an understatement. I never realized how much you did, everything was a mess the minute you went unconscious. Although I'd say everyone pulled themselves together pretty well after the first couple of days." I couldn't help but lean up and pull her lips down into mine. Although I felt like I hadn't been apart from her at all, for some weird reason I still felt like I missed her.

I felt her smile against my lips before I pulled away looking back at her. "So you managed to survive without me for a week huh?" Paige settled into the chair next to the hospital bed before letting out a puff of air, "Barely. Seriously I've hardly slept and you know how bad I am in a kitchen. I've eaten nothing but Chinese food for the last week, it was like freshman year of college all over again and we both know how that ended."

I couldn't help but smile at the memory of me and Paige stuffing our faces with Chinese food every night in our dorm room the first couple of weeks of college. Neither of us had access to a kitchen and even if we did at that point in time we were both terrible cooks. The Chinese food had come to an abrupt stop though a few weeks later after Paige had gotten sick one night and was convinced that her body was begging her to stop. After that we simply stuck to the deli down in the cafeteria.

"I don't think we ate Chinese food again for at least a year." Paige laughed, never taking her eyes off of mine. "So did I miss anything good while I was out cold?" I asked in a teasing tone that I was sure Paige would pick up on but she looked around the room with an anxious look plastered on her face.

I reached out and grabbed her face with one hand setting her gaze on me, "Look I know the doctor said something about minor memory loss, but you can fill me in. It's going to be okay babe."

"I don't know what the doctor told you Em, but I think it's considered to be more than a minor case of memory loss. He said you only remember up to the point of maybe a week after our wedding." To be honest I wasn't really paying that much attention to the doctor when he was in my room. Instead I was worried about them finding Paige and letting her come see me. When he said something about memory loss I didn't think much of it because I felt fine and I just pushed it aside.

"So how long have we've been married then?" I didn't know if I was ready for the answer now, but the look on Paige's face was scaring me. And her being so hesitant wasn't helping either. "It's okay Paige, you're going to have to tell me at some point anyways, let's just get everything out there." I reached down for her hand and intertwined our fingers to reassure her that it was okay.

I saw Paige's lips move as a whisper of few words came out that weren't audible. I squeezed her hand tighter in order to tell her again that it was okay, "I can't hear you Paige."

"17 years." My eyes widened as she softly spit out the way larger time period then I had originally expected.

"Okay so I missed a TON while I was out cold." I stated trying to lighten the mood a little, but Paige just stared at me with a blank expression not liking my response.

"Come on Em, it's not funny." I nodded my head in agreement as my gaze dropped to my lap. "I know it's not Paige and I know this must be hard for you, but I honestly don't feel like I missed anything at all. I feel like we just got married and I don't know I just don't know what else to say…I can't remember."

Paige nodded to show that she understood where I was coming from, "No I know Emily. It just is a little surreal, that's all. I'm glad you're not freaking out about it or anything like that though. The doctor said that everyone takes the news differently and to be prepared for anything." I nodded down at her as I wondered about all that can happen in 17 years.

As if Paige was aware that I had to of had a million questions she stood up and sat down on the bed next to me allowing me to rest my head on her chest as I leaned into her, "The doctor said that it's best to answer any questions that you have and to just tell you about your life now. You know, to help jog your memory or something. He said sometimes it can come back if you help the patient remember."

I leaned myself further into Paige wondering where I should start. When I felt her kiss the top of my head I decided to start with the obvious, "So I guess we're still married then." Paige let out a small chuckle. "Yep, 17 years strong and I've only had to sleep on the couch like twice, so I'd say were doing pretty good."

"Really?" I asked kind of surprised.

"No I'm sure I've slept on the couch more than twice but you can't remember so might as well get rid of a couple fights huh." I nudged her gently in the side with my elbow as she laughed, "Come on Paige that's not fair! You have to tell the truth."

"Okay, okay. I definitely have slept on the couch more than twice, but we've been married for 17 years and I don't think we've reached double digits yet on the couch situation so still, pretty good." I could feel her body shaking slightly against my body as she continued to giggle, "Are you sure? Because you seem like more of a handful than you used to be and that says a lot." I teased as we fell back into a comfortable silence.

I thought about the next question I was going to ask and I think we both knew what that question would be. But I was nervous, a part of me knew that if we have been married for 17 years then we had to have had kids by now, but how terrible of a mother do you have to be to not remember your kids. I was well aware that under the circumstances of head trauma, you probably weren't held accountable for forgetting someone due to it being a medical situation, but knowing this didn't make me feel any better about forgetting them.

"How many are there?" I asked in a whisper, almost hoping that Paige wouldn't hear me, but we were so close together, it was nearly impossible for her not to.

She leaned her lips down close to my ear before whispering a response, "Three girls." I smiled at the thought of Paige and me raising three girls together. We had always wanted a group of girls, scared that if we ended up with a boy we wouldn't know exactly what to do with him. "How old?"

"Parker turns 17 in a couple of months, I had gotten pregnant a couple days after the wedding. Kacey is 15, her and Parker are almost exactly a year a part. We decided that we wanted them to be close in age so you started fertility treatments right after Parker was born. With me it took a couple of tries before it actually took which is why we started trying so close to Parkers birth, but it ended up taking on the first try, which is why they're so close in age. And then Taylor is only 9. With the never ending experience we went through with a one and two year old running around, we waited a good while before we had another."

It was a lot to take in but at the same time I couldn't wipe the huge smile off my face. I had three kid with the love of my life and from the smile I could hear in Paige's voice as she spoke of the kids, it was obvious that it had been a crazy but fun ride raising them. I felt a strange guilt wash over me as I tried to imagine what they were like and how they looked, quickly realizing that I didn't know all of the simple things a mother should about the people she raised. I wasn't sure how everyone, including myself, was going to react to this situation, but I wanted to see them. Hoping that maybe once I saw them, as a mother, everything would just come back to me.

"Are they here?" I asked warily. "Are you kidding me, I could barely get any of them to leave once I let them in this place. They really love you Em." I heard her sigh as tears began to flow down my cheeks. "I know this is hard babe and I don't know what to expect either from them, but just know that we all love you no matter what and we are going to do everything we can to get through this as smooth as possible, okay?"

I nodded before turning in her arms to capture her lips. It was reassuring to know that we had been married for so long and we were clearly still very much there for each other and in love. I poured everything I had into the kiss as I deepened it, running my hands to the back of her neck and slightly tugging at her hair. She moaned slightly before we pulled away from each other slowly, resting our foreheads together. "I'm really glad you're okay Em. I missed you."

"Me to Paige." I leaned in to kiss her once more before pulling away gently. "So can I meet them?"

Paige grinned down at me before moving off the bed, "Of course."