ECHO Jane Doe
I’m moving.
My body is cold, unbelievably cold, and I begin to shiver as I come awake. I’m lying on something, and the first face I see is that of an incredibly handsome man wearing a baseball cap. His jaw is stubbled, his face serious.
Who is he?
Whatever we’re on jolts, and I hiss as pain shoots through my body. The first real thing I’ve felt in the moments since I first opened my eyes.
He looks down at me, and our gazes hold. Beautiful hazel eyes that somehow seem so kind and harsh all at the same time. “Hang in there, okay?” he says to me, his voice deep.
“Okay.” I’m not sure what else to say. Hang in there for what? My body aches, my stomach feeling like it’s full of heavy stones. I manage to tilt my head enough to see blood staining the front of my shirt. Panic thrums through my veins. “What happened to me?” I try to sit up, but the stranger holds me tighter.
His arms feel strong. Good. But the panic mutes whatever comfort he’s trying to offer.
“Stay still,” he orders. “We don’t know how extensive the damage is yet. I’m getting you help, okay?”
I close my eyes and nod, obeying him because lying still is easier than moving.
“Bradyn!” he roars.
“What is it?” a second man calls back.
“Call an ambulance! I found her in the creek. She’s been shot.”
Creek? Shot?
I’ve been shot?
We come to an abrupt stop, which jolts me, and I hiss in pain once more as it radiates up through my body.
“Bradyn called,” a woman says, though I can’t see her face.
“Hold her steady so I can get down,” he says.
Slender hands hold me up while he climbs down then reaches up for me. His strong arms surround me once more, pulling me down off of what I now see is a horse. The man shifts me so carefully I might as well be made of delicate porcelain. He carries me into the house and sets me down on a couch.
People move around me in a blur of movement, but he’s all I can see. The hazel-eyed stranger. He kneels beside me, and his face contorts in anger as he reaches up and brushes wet hair from my face. “Who did this to you?” he growls.
“I don’t—I don’t know,” I stammer. I try to remember, but everything is blank. Everything, except for this man’s beautiful face as I woke.
“What is your name, honey?” An older woman pushes through and presses a clean towel to my abdomen.
I groan, pain shooting through me.
“I’m Ruth Hunt,” she says. “What is your name?”
“I—” I trail off. What is my name? Panic pushes through the pain. Why can’t I remember? Why don’t I know? “I don’t know my name.” My heart begins to pound. “Why can’t I remember? Who am I?”
“Easy,” the stranger says, reaching up to rest his hand on my forehead. I stare up at him. How can he calm the storm so easily? Who is he?
“Hey! Is dinner—what happened?” Another woman pushes through the crowd, and the man pulls away.
I want to call him back. My heart begins to hammer again, and I try to steady my breathing, but the panic is too much. It’s all too much.
The woman kneels at my side, her nearly black hair braided back. “My bag is in my car. Grab it, please.”
“On it,” an older man replies as he leaves the room.
The woman’s face is serious as she lifts my shirt and checks the wound. “Is there an exit wound?” she asks.
“I didn’t check,” the man who’d brought me here says from somewhere out of view. “Bradyn called an ambulance.”
“Good.” The woman reaches into her pocket and withdraws a light then holds open my eyelids and shines it in. The brightness has me seeing spots. “What is your name?”
“She said she doesn’t know it,” Ruth answers.
The other woman nods. “She’s likely in shock. My name is Lani. We called an ambulance, but I’m a doctor, okay?”
“O-okay.” I want to ask where the beautiful man went. I want him back here at my side.
“Do you have any idea what happened to you?” Lani questions.
“No.” I suck in a breath as a fresh wave of pain shoots through me.
“I found her in the creek. She was draped over a fallen branch.”
There he is. Come back. His face swims into view, and my heart stops racing so fast. Do I know him? Is that why I feel so calm in his presence? But I immediately brush that thought aside. If I knew him, he would know me. Which means he’d know my name.
Unless—did he do this to me?
But I disregard that thought the moment our gazes hold. “Who did this to you?” Would he really ask that if it were him? Would he have tried to save me if he’d been the one to put me in that creek?
My vision blurs, and I close my eyes. I’m so tired.
“I need you to stay with me, okay?” Lani says.
I try to open my eyes, but they’re heavy. Everything hurts. I just want it to stop hurting.
The voices begin to fade, and a numbness settles over me. If I can just linger here long enough, I feel like I’ll be okay. Like everything will be back to normal. If only I can remain in this place of peace.
I come awake slowly. My brain is foggy, my vision a bit blurry. I rapidly blink to clear it and find myself lying in a hospital room full of beeping machines.
How did I get here?
I try to sit up. “Easy, you need rest, honey.” A woman comes into view and gently presses me back onto the bed.
“Ruth?” I choke out. That was her name, right?
She smiles softly. “Yes, honey. That’s right. Do you happen to remember your name?”
I shake my head and lie back down. A tube of oxygen blows cold air up my nose, and whatever drugs they have me on have taken the pain. I glance down at my belly. I’m covered by a blanket, so I slowly push it down and gently touch the outside of the gown. “I was shot.”
“Yes. Doctors had to go in and get the bullet out. You were just moved here from recovery about half an hour ago.”
“Who shot me?”
Her mouth flattens in a tight line. “We don’t know, honey, but we’ll get it figured out, okay? You don’t worry about such things right now. You worry about getting rest.”
“Where is the guy?”
“What guy, honey?” she asks, her eyes full of concern.
“The guy. The one who saved me.”
“Oh, Elliot. He and his brothers are combing the ranch, looking for any sign of what happened to you.”
Elliot. “His name is Elliot?”
She nods, a soft smile replacing the worry. “He’s my son.”
The door opens, so I turn my head as the dark-haired woman I’d seen before—Lani? Was that her name—walks in carrying a clipboard. She’s wearing a white coat and blue scrubs.
She looks up and smiles. “I see you’re awake.”
“Am I going to live?”
“Yes, you’ll be fine.” Lani smiles. “We were able to get the bullet out. We’re not sure how long you were in that water, but I do know that the only reason you survived is because of it. The cold slowed the bleeding. Otherwise, you probably would have bled out before Elliot found you.”
“I would have died?”
She nods. “Do you have any idea what happened to you?”
I try to think back, to come up with anything that answers her questions, but I come up completely blank. “No. I have no idea.”
She smiles. “Mom, can you give us a minute?”
“Of course. I’ll be right outside.” She gently squeezes my foot then leaves. As soon as the door has closed behind her, Lani sets the clipboard aside.
“What is it?”
Lani takes a deep breath. “I want your permission to check for signs of assault.”
“What?”
“You were found in a party dress with a man’s shirt wrapped around you.”
“I was?”
She nods. “I want to make sure nothing happened to you. And if it did, we might be able to pull some DNA. That’s if the water didn’t wash it all away.”
Tears blur my vision. Surely this nightmare won’t get worse, will it? “I don’t feel different.” My stomach rolls at the mere idea. Would I feel different? Surely, I would, right?
“It’s totally up to you,” she says softly. “No pressure from me at all. I cannot even begin to imagine how confused you are, and the last thing I want to do is be pushy. I can even perform a quick physical examination that will tell me if there’s any cause for concern. I can look for bruises or any other signs of trauma. But I won’t do it without your consent.”
I swallow hard then nod.
“Okay.” She reaches down and squeezes my hand gently. “I will come back in and do it in just a few. Right now, there’s a deputy from the Sheriff’s department here, and he wants to speak with you.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll get you taken care of, okay?”
Unable to stomach saying the word ‘okay’ even one more time when I feel anything but, I simply nod.
“Come on in, Gibson,” she calls out.
The door opens, and a man wearing a brown and black Sheriff’s uniform strolls in, notepad in hand. He looks friendly and offers me a soft smile. “Ma’am,” he says. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“I don’t know how helpful I’ll be. I don’t even remember my own name.”
“We can get all of that figured out.” He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a device that looks like an oversized cell phone. “With your permission, I’ll scan your fingerprints, and we’ll run them through our database, see what pops.”
“Yes, please.” Eager to find out who I am, I offer him my right hand. He quickly scans my fingerprints by pressing them onto the glass screen then shoves it back into his pocket.
“I’ll let you know if we find anything.” He makes a note on his pad. “Now, can you tell me the last thing you remember?”
“I remember waking up and seeing Elliot. Right after he found me.”
“Not anything prior to that?”
I shake my head.
“That’s okay,” Lani insists. “Sometimes a traumatic event can cause memory loss.”
“Will it come back?” I ask Lani.
Her expression is one of hope. “Only time will tell.”
The officer makes a few notes on his notepad then puts it back into his pocket. “Until then, we’ll do everything we can to find out who you are and who did this to you.”