"He's being treated for what?"

Nancy Drew stood in the middle of her bedroom. The summer half of her wardrobe was in various piles around the room: acceptable, unacceptable, undecided. Even if she didn't manage to find a mystery in Rio, a vacation with Bess usually required at least three outfit changes per day, and Bess didn't think jeans and tennis shoes were acceptable. Nancy was trying to prepare early, and distract herself from the fact that she had only a weekend with Ned before this much-deserved vacation would separate them again.

"Smoke inhalation."

Nancy turned toward her blank television set, blood draining from her face. "On the newsãwas it at Omega Chi?"

"No," Mike reassured her. "The sorority around the block. Two girls were stuck inside, and he..."

Nancy gasped. "That was him? On the report they were saying, two girls, the firemen, and then..."

"Ned went in after them, after the firemen had already given up. They don't know how he did it. They're calling it a miracle. Everyone else thought those two girls weren't going to make it out of there."

"So he found another way in..."

She could almost hear Mike shrug. "I guess so. I was there, Nan. It was terrible, we could hear them screaming... and then Ned comes around the side of the house with the girls leaning on him, and they're all black, and it was... no one could believe it."

"I tried to call him this morning," Nancy said, looking down at her bed. "But he's in the hospital, in Emersonville?"

--

Her first glimpse of his room was lilies. Around the corner, he was under dingy sheets and there were bouquets all around him. He looked pale, but otherwise unchanged, and Nancy swept into the room. He rose to meet her and Nancy put her arms around him, breathing him in.

"Ned."

"Hey." His voice was rough, broken. "Sorry I sound bad, it's the smoke..."

"But you're all right?"

He pulled back to see her eyes, and after a beat her eyes fluttered shut, and their kiss was incredibly sweet and tasted nothing like smoke. She pulled back and searched his eyes.

"So that's a yes."

He smiled, his fingers trailing down her arm. "You didn't have to come all this way."

Nancy glanced at his tray table and found a cup of water, which she handed over. "Sure I did," she said lightly. "Had to see with my own eyes that you were okay."

He glanced at the door. "I just need the doctor to let me get back to my room. I have an exam tomorrow..."

"An exam?" Nancy gestured around the room. "I think it's more likely that there'll be a parade in your honor than a demand that you take an exam, Ned."

"Even so," the doctor said, from the doorway. "Ned, how are you feeling?"

He shrugged. "Okay," he said. "My throat hurts, but that's all."

"Remembered anything?"

Nancy glanced back and forth between the doctor and her boyfriend. "Ned? What...?"

Ned sighed, pushing himself up on his elbows. "I was standing at the back of the house, trying to figure out a way to get in, and then... and then I must have. The next thing I remember, I was inside, on the top floor, calling out to the girls. I found them, and then... and then I was outside again. I don't remember how I did it; the stress... I felt like I do when I'm on the field, I just knew what I had to do. That was all. The details, I don't remember."

"Retrograde amnesia?"

The doctor shrugged. "That's the only thing I can come up with," he replied to Nancy. "The rest of his memory seems intact; only those two specific instances, getting into the house and getting back out again. Maybe he'll never recover those memories."

"Or we can come back and discuss this after my exam," Ned said, pleading in his voice.

Nancy ran her fingers through his hair. "Is this that one class?"

He nodded. "I don't pass, and... I don't even want to think about what that'll mean. An extra semester, retaking the class..."

Nancy glanced at the doctor. "So that's all that's wrong?"

"I wouldn't say 'that's all,'" Nancy heard. "It's more serious than you think."

Brenda Carlton appeared in Ned's doorway, her shock-red lips pursed in a grimace of a smile. Her eyes were glittering.

"Get lost, Brenda."

Brenda crossed the room in a series of staccato steps and shoved past Nancy to stand at the head of Ned's hospital bed, a notebook already open in her hand, a pen clutched between her red-tipped fingernails. "Mr. Nickerson, what is your response to the finding of the officials who went through the building after your departure, that all the staircases were useless? There's absolutely no way for you to have gone upstairs without significant injury, even if you had made it." The tip of her pen floated just above the paper.

"If they went in after I left..." Ned shrugged, his voice still rough, sounding painful. "The fire must have gotten worse after I left, and weakened everything. Brenda, there's not really a story here. Everyone got out safe; that's all that matters."

"What about the allegation that this was just a prank?"

Nancy and Ned immediately glared at her, their faces twin masks of anger. "What are you saying?" Nancy managed first, her voice low and deliberate.

Brenda shrugged, careless. "Ned wanted to look like a hero, who knows why, so he got two girls from the sorority to wait outside, screaming, acting like they were stuck inside the house... then he sweeps in and manages to save them. But if those girls had been upstairs, Ned, there's absolutely no way you could have gotten to them. So, they weren't upstairs; so they were safe, and you just orchestrated this."

"Bullshit," Ned snapped, his eyes gleaming dangerously. "Just because I can't remember how I got up there... I was there. I can tell you the color of the closet they were hiding in."

"So what? It's not like the closet's there anymore. The sorority house was a complete loss."

Nancy made a disgusted noise and pushed herself off the bed to face Brenda. "I'm going to spell it out for you: There is no story here, not like this. Why don't you go interview the two girls and see what they say."

"They confirm Ned's... 'version' of events," Brenda sneered. "But of course they would. You think this is a lot? You can barely walk into their room for all the flowers. You think they want to be revealed for the liars they are?"

Nancy's hands balled into fists at her sides. "Ned. Would not. Lie about this. Go home to your daddy and report some real news, before I..."

"Before you what?"

Ned's hand on her arm was the only thing that kept Nancy from delivering a right hook directly to Brenda's pointed and plastic-surgery-sculpted chin. "Call my father and have him prepare a suit against you," Nancy finished, panting, her muscles still tense with the urge to fight. "Slander, libel, and just generally being a miserable bitch."

"I really think you should go now," the doctor said, glancing between the two girls. "Ned needs his rest."

Nancy glanced down at Ned, who laced his fingers between hers. "Not just yet," he murmured. "Nancy can stay for a few more minutes." He glared in Brenda's direction. "She can go, though."

Nancy breathed a sigh of relief as Brenda vanished, her expression promising that this wouldn't be the last time they would see her. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," Ned said, tracing his fingertips over the back of her hand. "I just wish I could... but I can't remember. Not even to blow Brenda out of the water."

His eyes weren't meeting hers and Nancy took his chin in her hand. "It's okay," she said. "It'll come back. It was a miracle, like they said, and it doesn't matter; you're safe and they're safe and you're a hero."

Half his mouth turned up in a smile. "Not really," he murmured. "I'm glad you came."

Nancy leaned over to press another kiss against his mouth. "Rest," she ordered. "Finish your exams and come home and we'll spend every second together before I go."

He nodded. "Love you," he whispered, mindful of the doctor still hovering in the doorway.

"Love you too," she whispered, tracing her thumb over his lips, before she pushed herself off the bed.

Brenda was peeling out of the parking lot in her red sports car as Nancy lingered, her forearms resting on the steering wheel of her Mustang. She had known Ned for years; she could read his every expression. And even though Nancy did despise Brenda Carlton, she had to admit that Ned's body language had agreed with what the amateur reporter had said.

Ned was hiding something.

Nancy shook her head. But he wouldn't lie about this, not the way she said. He's not like that. He's not that kind of person. It has to be something else.

Fighting back her lingering doubt, Nancy started her Mustang and began the drive back to River Heights.