Chapter 15
Auggie
I clicked my pen nervously against my desk as I stared at the arrest file I was supposed to be filling out.
The file had been sitting on my desk for nearly half an hour but was still just as blank as when I first opened it.
Every time I tried to put pen to paper, I ended up getting distracted and my thoughts wandered off to memories from the previous night.
Of all the things I thought would happen when I brought Melody to the hospital, the worst I imagined was that the other kids wouldn’t appreciate her reading or that she would get freaked out by all the medical equipment.
I never expected that the John Doe, who I’d been visiting for weeks, would suddenly wake up.
No, not a John Doe any longer. We finally had a name for the man. His name was Mia.
Giving up on my paperwork, I pushed it aside with a sigh and pulled up the missing person’s database on my computer.
I still didn’t know the newly awakened man’s surname, but Mia was a unique name for a man.
There couldn’t be more than a handful of men with this name, at most. Maybe not even that many.
It was entirely possible that the man in the hospital was the only man named Mia in the country.
Even without a surname, that should make him easy to track down.
I sighed and sat back in my chair, my new hope of finding a report on the man rapidly deflated.
There were no missing person reports for men named Mia.
Surprisingly, across the whole country, there were very few women named Mia reported missing as well.
The name Mia seemed to be extremely lucky at the moment.
Either that or people with the name were so unlucky that they didn’t even have anyone to report them missing.
So, missing person reports were doing me no good.
Whoever Mia was, he hadn’t been reported missing by anyone.
Still, Mia was a unique name for a man. It shouldn’t have been that hard to track down his identity.
Even if he was a resident of a different state, I should have been able to find something.
Yet, there was nothing. Even awake and with a name, Mia remained as much of a mystery as when he’d been in a coma.
As I sat there staring at the infuriatingly unhelpful computer screen, the sound of humming caught my attention.
Just a desk away, Roland was tapping his pen and staring off into space with a smile on his face, clearly not getting any work done.
Near his elbow sat a series of Tupperware containers filled with a fancy homemade lunch.
For as long as I’d known him, Roland had always been the type to either get takeout for lunch or bring a simple sandwich.
The man could burn water and seemed to think the fire alarm was the same as a cooking timer.
That lunch had clearly not been made by his own hands.
Between that and the dreamy smile on his face, I could guess why he was so distracted, but I couldn’t help calling him out.
“What’s got you so happy today? You’re glowing like the northern lights.” Smirking, I leaned over to whisper. “Tell me the truth. Are you pregnant?”
Sputtering in shock, Roland dropped his pen, which rolled under the desk to be forgotten until cleaning day.
“Shut up,” he grumbled as he shoved my face away. “Ain’t a man allowed to be happy?”
“Of course,” I shrugged as I let the wheels of my chair drift farther away from my desk than necessary after his shrug. “But you seem a little more than just happy. I’m guessing something good happened this weekend.”
My smile and the tone of my voice made it clear. I already knew. And Roland knew that I knew. There was no use denying it unless he wanted me to keep teasing him.
“Fine, you gossipy hen,” he said as he tossed another pen at me. “Tyler visited this weekend.”
I raised an eyebrow, letting my disbelief show on my face. There was no way Roland would be this happy if Tyler had already left, and that lunch looked too fresh to be leftovers.
“Just the weekend?”
Another pen came sailing toward my head with enough accuracy that I had to duck.
“It’s spring break, and he manage to get his assignments turned in early so he could take some extra time off. He’s going to be here for two weeks. Happy now?”
I knew from previous conversations, that after a rough start in life because of a learning disability, when Roland and Tyler got together, Tyler had gotten a great job at a pub but had finally decided to go back to school now that his disability had been identified and there were so many programs where he could get help getting an education.
For a moment, I considered teasing Roland more. It was great stress relief after my own chaotic weekend. However, I didn’t want to risk upsetting him and damaging a relatively new friendship. So, I changed the subject to something more series.
“That’s right. I forgot your partner’s a university student. What’s he studying again?”
“Criminology.” Roland turned his attention back to the homemade lunch on his desk, gazing at it as if his partner’s very heart were packed within the plastic.
“We considered having him transfer somewhere closer, but it would be such a waste after he got accepted into a top-rated university. Plus, I know he loves his school and would hate to leave it behind. It’s only four years.
Then he’ll graduate with his degree. There’s plenty of jobs in Baton Rouge he can use a Criminology degree for, including here at FPA if that’s the route he chooses to go, so moving here shouldn’t be too hard, and then we can finally put an end to this whole long-distance thing. ”
I hoped everything would work as easily as he made it sound.
I really did. Long-distance had killed my marriage, but Roland had an advantage that I didn’t.
His long-distance relationship had a built-in end date.
That had to help. When it came to my marriage with Chantal, our future had always been ambiguous.
We never knew exactly when I’d get leave, or if I’d even survive to come home at all, and I couldn’t commit to a certain retirement date.
The uncertainty had probably killed our relationship even more than the distance had, so maybe that meant Roland really did have a chance.
Before I could say any of that, however, the familiar tune of my phone ringing interrupted me.
It was probably for the best. Wishing Roland luck by comparing his relationship to my own doomed marriage would probably just sound like I was cursing him. Under my breath, I whispered a silent thank you to my phone for saving me from sticking my foot in my mouth, before hitting the answer button.
There were only a few people who would call me on my personal phone in the middle of the day. I mentally ran down the list, trying to prepare myself for what I was about to hear. However, nothing could have prepared me for the unexpected sound of Newt’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Um, is this Augustine Conway?” the nurse asked, his voice on the phone making him sound even smaller than he was in person.
“Yep, you’ve got the right guy,” I said, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible, despite my mounting confusion. “Newt, right? Why are you calling? Is everything okay?”
There was only one reason I could think of for him to call me so suddenly. It must have something to do with the coma patient, Mia.
“Well…”
Newt hesitated and my stomach immediately dropped. That wasn’t a good hesitation. I knew the sound of that hesitation. It meant I wasn’t going to like whatever the other person was going to say, and they were trying to figure out the least upsetting way to say it.
On the other side of the phone, I heard Newt sigh. “Mister Conway, I hate to ask you this, but could you come back to visit Mia?”
Although I’d been expecting Newt to mention the recently awakened coma patient, the abruptness of his request still left me speechless. Several moments passed with nothing but the static of the phone line passing between us as I tried to figure out what to say.
Newt must have misinterpreted my silence as confusion, because he quickly rambled out a further explanation.
“I’m talking about the John Doe patient.
You know that his name is Mia, right? Oh, right.
Of course you do. You were there when he finally managed to tell us his name.
Anyway, we’ve been having trouble keeping him calm, and we don’t want to sedate him if we don’t have to, so I was hoping you could come in and keep him company. ”
“Um…” It was a lot of words to process all at once, but I managed to pick out the most important information. “Why is he so upset? And what good can I possibly do? I don’t even really know him.”
“Maybe it’s because you spent so much time reading to him, but he seems to find your presence calming. He’s asked about you several times since he woke up. As for why he’s so upset…”
Again, Newt hesitated, but this time the sound of the silence was different. Newt wasn’t exactly trying to pick carefully through his words, but rather, it seemed he wasn’t even sure what he was saying, either.
“Honestly, we’re not entirely sure what’s upsetting him. He hasn’t been the most communicative since waking up. But whenever we try to sedate him, it seems to upset him even more, so we’re trying to find other ways to keep him calm.”
“And you think I can do that,” I reiterated, just to hear the words out loud.
It sounded so ridiculous that I was certain I had misunderstood something.
I’d been called many things throughout my life, but “calming” was not one of them.
The FPA used me as an intimidation tool during interrogations simply by putting me in the room with suspects.
At best, I was maybe able to create a sense of camaraderie with certain criminals by tricking them into thinking I agreed with them.
None of that sounded like the “calming presence” that Newt was describing.
Yet, apparently Mia had asked for me by name.
Well, Newt was the professional. If he thought I could help Mia by simply paying the recently awakened coma patient another visit, then I was happy to help.
The poor man had already been trapped in that hospital for so long.
Giving him one extra afternoon of my time barely seemed like a sacrifice in comparison.