5. Jane Doe
CHAPTER 5
JANE DOE
T his hospital room is going to drive me insane. It’s only been a day, and I’m already stir-crazy. It’s not even like I have memories to keep me occupied. I can’t even remember my own name, let alone things that have happened in the past. No matter how many times I try to make myself remember, I get nothing but a haze. Seriously, how does someone forget something they literally spent their entire life memorizing?
Who knows how many years I’ve walked this earth? I made a joke to the nurse earlier about cutting me back open and counting the rings so we could figure it out. She did not find it funny.
The TV is on, some show about a mother and daughter who talk fast and are burdened by forced family dinners on Friday nights. I have no idea if I’ve ever watched it before, and I checked out about an hour ago because I’m unable to focus on anything but my desperate need for freedom.
I’m frustrated. Hungry. And beyond tired of being cooped up.
The door opens, and Lani breezes in, a big smile on her face. “Good morning,” she greets then steps in front of the monitor to check the readout. “How do you feel?”
“A little sore,” I admit. “But I also really want to get out of this room.”
Lani taps a couple of things on the tablet in her hand then crosses her arms and folds it against her chest as she faces me. “We can see about getting you an escort to take you out for a walk. How does that sound?”
“That depends. Do I get to go outside?”
“Yes, of course. The hospital has some great gardens you can stroll through. We just have to wait until we can spare someone. I would love to take you, but the hospital is massively understaffed right now. Hence why I’m here and not seeing my patients in my clinic.”
“I would love a walk. Please. I’m willing to beg.”
She chuckles. “No begging necessary. As soon as we have someone who can help, we’ll get you on your feet. It would be good for you to move around a bit.”
I open my mouth to plead with her to take me now when there’s a soft knock on the partially opened door.
“Hey, come on in,” Lani calls out.
The door opens all the way, and the man who saved me steps in. He’s wearing the same baseball cap he had on before as well as dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and a brown jacket that’s hanging open in the front.
As I drink in the sight of him, the air is sucked out of my lungs, and my heart begins to pound. I may have been mostly dead a day ago, but I can still appreciate the sheer masculine beauty that is the man who pulled me from that creek. “Elliot,” I whisper.
Both he and Lani shift their attention to me.
His gaze darkens, and he shoves both hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Your mom told me your name,” I reply quickly.
“I figured.” He clears his throat. “I, uh, just wanted to check in on you and see how you were feeling.”
“Much better. Thank you.” Nerves twist in my stomach, and I begin fidgeting with the top of the blankets. He’s a presence—a gorgeous yet haunted presence.
“Good.”
Lani looks from me to him. “Actually, we were just hoping to find someone to escort Jane here out for a walk.”
Jane. I hate when they call me that. It feels so impersonal. And it just reminds me that I still have no idea who I am. Not even a blip of memory. I’d even take the first letter of my name at this point. Do I prefer coffee or tea? How do I like my eggs? Anything.
“Oh, I can get out of your hair,” he says and starts to back toward the door.
Please don’t leave.
“Nonsense.” Lani crosses over to him and grips his arm then tugs him back into the room. “You’re a big, strong guy. You don’t mind getting her out of the room, do you? She’s desperate for some fresh air.”
His hazel gaze narrows, and his jaw clenches. “Oh, I don’t know, I need to get back to?—”
“You can spare fifteen minutes. Come on, big brother, I’m swamped, and she needs fresh air.”
“It really is okay,” I say, feeling the disappointment settle in. Why doesn’t he want to be around me? I don’t have to know who I am to see that this man would rather be anywhere but here. He’s practically trying to bolt out of the door.
“Nonsense. You don’t mind, do you?” Lani asks.
He shifts his gaze from Lani to me, and the earlier annoyance dissipates. “Of course not. I’m happy to take you out, Jane.”
Jane. When he says it, it doesn’t sound so bad. “It really is okay,” I repeat again. “I’m tired anyway.”
“Stop saying something you don’t mean just to spare Elliot. He doesn’t mind.”
“I really don’t,” he assures me. “I was just caught off guard. I’ve got time if you want to go outside.”
A moment of silence settles around us, and while I still get the sense that he would rather be anywhere but here, my desire to escape these four pale yellow walls is apparently stronger than my pride. “If you don’t mind escorting me for a walk, I would truly appreciate it.”
“Not a problem.” He smiles tightly. “I’ll be in the hall when you’re ready.” Without another word, he leaves the room and closes the door gently behind him.
Lani sets the tablet down on the table at the end of the bed then folds the blankets back.
“I feel bad that you just backed him into that corner.”
Lani waves a hand in dismissal then helps me sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The move brings a wave of pain through my abdomen, but I bite back a groan, unwilling to let her know how uncomfortable it is. I can do this.
“Elliot really doesn’t mind. His hesitation has nothing to do with you.”
“Then what does it have to do with?”
She smiles sadly. “My brother has been through hell and back. Really, they all have. But Elliot most recently. It’s not my story to tell though, so that’s all I’ll say.”
Even as curious as I am, I know poking at a painful memory is not the best way to handle a conversation. I might not know my name or the day I was born, but at least manners weren’t lost along with everything else. “Understood.”
After five minutes, a pair of sweats, and an oversized sweater, I’m on my feet. Since my IV was disconnected earlier this morning, I only have the catheter in my arm. Which thankfully means I don’t have to drag that large pole on wheels around.
I’m shaky on my feet though and doing everything I can to hide the bone-deep ache radiating through my body out of fear she’ll make me get back into bed.
Lani pulls the door open, and Elliot pushes off the wall he was leaning against. His gaze is guarded, his expression neutral. What does a man like that think about? Is he running over a to-do list? Thinking about future plans? Plotting an escape? All of the above?
“She’s ready.” Lani transfers my arm from hers to his, and I have to keep my gaze trained down to keep from staring at him. Aside from the brief hazy moment of being awake on that horse, this is the closest I’ve come to Elliot Hunt.
He smells amazing.
Like leather and sunshine. If the latter could be a smell, anyway.
“Keep your arm on her at all times. And no more than thirty minutes, okay?”
“Yes, doc,” he replies.
“Good.” She turns to me. “You doing okay?”
I force a smile even though the pain in my abdomen is far worse than I thought it would be. “Doing great.”
Her expression reflects the fact that she clearly doesn’t believe me. “Uh-huh.” A phone clipped to her waist rings, so she offers us a wave as she steps away to answer it.
Elliot and I begin walking, and thankfully, with every step, my body seems to loosen up just a bit. By the time we’ve reached the door, the stabbing pain has subsided to more of an intense ache.
The glass doors slide open, and I’m hit with a cool blast of air that erases all of the stress I’d felt at being kept inside.
I smile. It feels great to be outside.
“She was always bossy.”
“Huh?”
“Lani,” Elliot replies as we cross the pavement of the drop-off area and reach the garden on the other side. “Even when she was little. She’d carry around a spatula and tell us that she was queen and we were her loyal subjects.”
I smile, trying to picture the competent doctor playing royals as a child. “And I’m betting you listened?”
“To every word,” he replies with a smile. “She was the queen, after all.”
“True.”
We pass by a glittering fountain surrounded by tiles that appear to have been hand-decorated by people of various ages. I lean closer, noting the titles of Bible verses written on some of them while others have paintings of a cross or crown of thorns. “This is beautiful.”
“Our church donated this prayer garden, and the kids in the Sunday school classes painted all of the tiles.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Jogging any memories?”
“Unfortunately not. I know they’re from the Bible, but I couldn’t tell you what any of them mean.” Disappointment resonates deep within me. One more thing I don’t remember. Reaching up, I touch the cross around my neck.
It’s honestly the only thing that stirs emotion within me. Even if I can’t remember when I got it, I know it’s important. This silver cross and my faith tell me that everything will be okay. That I will survive this because I’m not doing it alone.
Elliot uses his free hand to point to one that reads Proverbs 17:22. “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength.”
I study him. “You have that one memorized.”
“I have a lot of them memorized.” He smiles, and even as it doesn’t quite reach his haunted gaze, it feels like a piece of me slips back into place. I still can’t remember anything, but it feels closer somehow.
“I wonder if I knew any.”
“I’d say it’s likely.” We start walking again. “You were wearing that cross when I found you. Do you know where you got it from?”
I twirl it in my fingers and glance down at the silver. “No. I know what it is; I know who He is, but that’s where it ends. I guess if I’m going to remember anything, faith is a good place to start.”
“It’s all we need,” he says, though there’s a tone to his voice that is a bit hollow. Almost as though he’s not quite sure. We continue walking, and I shift my attention to the garden around me.
Even as cold as it is outside, flowers have begun to bloom in the garden, making for a beautiful and colorful backdrop. I like flowers. And being outside. Two things I didn’t know about myself before. I mentally file them away, hoping that these building blocks will be the foundation I need to build on in order to remember.
“Thank you, by the way.”
“You already said that,” he replies.
“No, not for this.” My cheeks heat. “For saving me. You’re the only reason I’m alive.”
“I did what anyone would have done.”
“Maybe. But it was you who saved me,” I repeat. “And I will always be grateful for that.”
He doesn’t respond, just continues walking and staring straight ahead.
After a few moments, he clears his throat. “Sorry about the haircut I had to give you. I think I cut off quite a few inches in the back to get you free of the log.”
I reach back behind my head. “I couldn’t tell.”
He smiles, the joke landing just as I’d hoped. “Fair enough.”
Minutes tick by in silence, and before I know it, we’re coming back around the prayer garden with the hospital straight ahead.
Anxiety begins raging within me, those walls already closing in despite me still being outside. “Can we just sit for a minute?”
“Lani said thirty minutes,” he replies, checking his watch. “We’re coming up on that.”
“Please?” I ask. “Just a few more minutes.”
He starts to shake his head but then stops, likely noting the panic that must be present on my face. “I don’t see what a few minutes will hurt.”
“Thank you.”
Elliot guides me over toward an “In memory of” bench, and we take a seat side by side. He releases my arm. “Has anything about your life come back?”
I lean back and close my eyes, basking in the warm rays of the sun even as the air around me is cool. “No. It’s so weird, it’s all a blank slate. I mean, I remember waking up on the horse with you. But before that—” I trail off, trying to come up with something that describes this feeling accurately. “I feel like there’s something there, but my brain has blocked me from accessing it. Like there’s a wall that I can’t get through. Does that make sense?” I turn my head to look at him.
Light hits his gorgeous hazel eyes, showcasing golden flecks within the greens and browns. Stunning. This man is stunning. “It does make sense.” He breaks the eye contact by shifting his gaze straight ahead. “Lani said it might be temporary.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t sound so sure?”
I laugh. “It’s not that, it’s just—do I really want to remember?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Someone clearly tried to kill me. While I do want to know who, for the obvious reason of not having someone attempt to remove me from this world again, what if the things I forgot make me a bad person?” I vocalize the biggest fear I’ve had since I woke up in that hospital bed. I’m not even entirely sure why it worries me. It’s not like there’s any actual proof that I’ve ever done anything wrong.
But what if?
“You think you’re a bad person?”
“I don’t feel like a bad person. If that makes sense. But I worry I might have been. How many good people do you know have gotten shot? To be wrapped up in something that would end like that, I must not have been around the best people.”
“I’ve been shot. As have each of my brothers—Tucker excluded. Though he’s been stabbed a few times.”
My jaw drops open. “What?”
Elliot chuckles. “We were soldiers. Special Forces in the Army.”
I let out the breath I was holding and press a hand over my heart. “Okay, sir, that is not the same. I doubt I was a soldier.”
He shrugs. “There are different types of soldiers. Different battles to fight.” The way he says it settles around me, lifting the fear from my shoulders. “Either way, good people get hurt by bad people all the time.” His expression darkens once more. “Doesn’t make it your fault.”
“But it also doesn’t mean I’m a good person.”
“You are.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.” When I don’t immediately respond, he takes off his baseball hat and runs a hand through his thick dark hair before placing the hat back on his head. “Don’t stress about something before you have all the facts. Not when you have other things to be worried about.”
“Like who put me in that creek?”
“Exactly.”
I take a deep breath. “Is it weird that I’m not scared?”
“You don’t have anything to be worried about. You’re protected here.”
“I know that, but shouldn’t I at least be a bit worried that whoever did it is going to realize the job isn’t finished? That they’re going to come for me? Aside from the confusion when I first woke up, I feel like I’ve been pretty calm about this whole thing.” I laugh nervously. “I even asked the nurse if they could take me back to surgery and cut me open again, that way they could count the rings and tell me how old I am.”
Elliot stares back at me, and for a moment, I wonder if he’s as horrified at the dark joke as she was. But then, to my absolute delight, he throws his head back and laughs. It’s completely unburdened, a beautiful happy sound that brings a smile to my face.
“You asked nurse Jan that?”
“How did you know it was Nurse Jan?”
“Her name was written on the whiteboard in your room.” He’s still laughing. “Oh, I bet she just loved that joke.”
“Not really,” I reply with a laugh. “She looked honestly horrified.”
“That’s Jan. She’s always been serious. Once, when I was fifteen, Bradyn and I were wrestling, and he broke my nose. It was a total accident, but while I was sitting in the emergency room bed, nose all bandaged up, I challenged Bradyn to a do-over. Jan gave us a thirty-minute lecture on safety and how being able to physically subdue each other wasn’t what makes us men.”
“Did the lecture work?” I ask, fighting another smile. He looks so much lighter now, unburdened compared to earlier.
“Absolutely not. We were back at it the next day. I had something to prove, you know? Younger brother syndrome and all that.”
“Are you the youngest?”
He shakes his head. “Bradyn is the oldest, I’m next; then it’s Riley and the twins. Lani is the youngest.”
“The twins?”
“Tucker and Dylan. They’re out of town right now.”
“Wow, there are six of you?”
He chuckles. “Feeling sorry for my mom?”
“A little,” I admit. Darkness settles over my mood. “I wish I knew if I had parents out there looking for me.”
“I’m sure someone is,” he says.
“Maybe. Do you think that whoever shot me thinks I’m already dead? Or do you think they’re going to try to come for me again?”
“No one is going to get to you.” The words are spoken with such anger that it leaves me breathless. It’s completely contrasted to the laughter from mere moments ago.
I tilt my face up to look into his eyes, noting the storm raging behind his intense glare.
“No one will hurt you again,” he says.
“I’m not worried,” I remind him honestly. “Part of me hopes they come for me so I get the chance to ask some questions. They might be the only one who knows who I am.”
“Lani told me she thinks it may have just been a hit-and-run. That someone accidentally ran you down then panicked and tried to finish the job.”
“Your tone doesn’t make me think you believe that,” I say. His tone is too flat, too emotionless for me to think he actually believes that theory.
He shrugs. “My gut tells me there’s more to the story. Either way, we’ll figure it out.”
I smile at him. “I know.” Our gazes hold for a moment, and I’m captivated by the way he watches me. Does he feel this connection, too? Or is it one-sided since he’s the one who saved me?
He turns away from me then stands, his mood shifting back to neutral. “We need to get you back inside before Lani comes looking for us.”
I long to remain out here—to stay with him—but since I sense he’s desperate to get away from me for some reason, I force a smile. “You’re probably right. I’m getting tired.”
He helps me to my feet, and we start toward the hospital.
A loud bang fills my ears, and my heart rate skyrockets. I rip my arm free of Elliot and whirl toward the sound, pain shooting through my abdomen.
And then another bang.
Suddenly, the prayer garden is gone, and I’m in the woods. It’s dark. I’m running. Feet pounding against the wet ground.
Someone is behind me, but I can’t see who. I have to get away though. I have to run. It all depends on me.
Calloused hands cup my cheeks. “Breathe.”
The memory fades, and I stare up into Elliot’s hazel eyes. “I?—”
“It was just a car backfiring,” he tells me. “Are you okay?” He pulls back and looks down at my abdomen. “You’re bleeding again.”
“What?” I follow his gaze down to the front of my gray sweatshirt, the fabric now stained with blood. “I?—”
Elliot lifts me into his arms and rushes toward the hospital. We’re just reaching the door when Lani comes out of one of the patient rooms.
“What is it?” she demands.
“Car backfired. It spooked her, and she lunged. Tore the stitches, I think.”
“I’ll get the kit.” She rushes off, and Elliot carries me into my room. He sets me down on the bed.
“I saw something.”
“It was just a car,” he assures me.
“No.” I look up at him. “I remembered something.”