Chapter Three
THREE
She had killed the most glorious-looking creature on Earth.
Faye sat in the waiting room of the ER at Woodstock Hospital, anxiously replaying the accident inside her mind. Granted, he had been jaywalking. But the accident was her fault. If she had been less hungover, not speeding, more careful when zigzagging in and out of traffic on her bike, she wouldn’t have hit the most spectacular creature she had ever laid eyes on.
Faye needed a break from her catastrophizing.
“Excuse me,” Faye said, heading to the window of the ER. “I was wondering if there was a place I could get a soda?”
The nurse pointed to the double doors. “There’s a vending machine past the nurse’s kiosk...right before the bathrooms.”
“Great,” Faye said. “Thank you.”
She doubted the soda would help, but she needed something to soothe her upset stomach. In truth, she was wracked with guilt.
Heading to the machine to buy a drink with her card, she tried to focus on the positive. The collision was an accident. She had tried to do her best for the man, too. She had called an ambulance for him. Gotten in her car and followed him to the hospital. And then, hoping to hear good news, she had waited to see him emerge from the ER. She had asked the nurse at the front desk about his status several times, only to be told he was still being evaluated. Now it had been two hours. Faye couldn’t help but wonder if the stranger had been moved to the morgue.
Her mother’s voice reappeared in her mind. It’s all your fault. You are stupid. Unlovable. You ruin every good thing you touch.
She needed that soda.
Heading down the hall, through the double doors and past the nurse’s station, Faye found the vending machines. She was debating the value of sugar over water in terms of nursing the world’s worst hangover when the sound of two voices having a discussion around the nurse’s station caused her ears to perk up.
“What do you want to do about the bike accident in room 102?”
“Did you call social services?”
“They said they can’t get here today.”
“Great.”
Her heart sped up inside her chest. They were talking about the man she had hit. Relief. The handsome stranger was alive.
“And you checked his belongings?”
“Twice. Nothing.”
“And no one has come by to claim him?”
“Not a soul.”
“Well, what about holding him overnight?”
“He’s physically fine...other than the fact that he has amnesia.”
Her stomach dipped. Amnesia. Aphasia. Coordination difficulties. Social services. The words floated by but didn’t make her feel better. In fact, she felt worse. A whole lot more terrible. She hadn’t killed the man. Instead, she had gone and given him a brain injury.
“So, we’re just supposed to release him with an address to the local shelter?”
“I can hold him till the end of the day, but unless someone comes by to claim him...what else can we do? Our job is to patch ’em up. He’s patched up. Let social services deal with the rest.”
“I’ll get the paperwork started.”
Faye had heard enough. Driven by her guilt, she waited for those voices to depart the nurse’s station, and then snuck down the hall towards room 102.
She had no idea what she was doing. But she felt compelled—bound, really—to talk with the man. It was her fault she had given him amnesia, and that they were planning on sending him to a shelter, and she wasn’t sure what she could do about any of it...but she knew she needed to do something.
She would never forgive herself otherwise.
Slipping inside his room, peering left, then right down the hallway to make sure that no one had seen her entering, she quickly closed the door behind her. The stranger with red hair sat up on his bed, a large pack of ice held across his forehead with gauze, and blinked in her direction.
“Hi,” Faye said quickly. Quietly.
“Hello,” he said.
That was good. He could talk.
“My name is Faye,” she said, glancing back to the door. Any minute, some nurse or doctor could come barging in, and then how would she explain herself? “Do you remember me?”
He did not answer, but his eyes darted around the room, unfocused. It reminded her of her father—of the way he would try to speak, try to find the words to communicate, but couldn’t.
She moved closer. “I’m the woman who hit you with my bike. Sorry about that, by the way.”
He stared blankly at her.
“I heard the doctors talking,” Faye continued. “Apparently, you have amnesia.” Obviously, he had some other things going on, too. Some form of aphasia. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. What was she even doing in here? “I’ll leave you alone now.”
Embarrassed by her behavior, she headed for the door.
“No,” the man said.
Faye caught on her step. Slowly, she turned back around. “Excuse me?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping closer to him. “I don’t understand.”
“Niirrrrrr.” The word came out slurred and garbled.
“Oh,” she said, putting it together. “You want me to stay?”
He grunted. Still, she got his meaning.
Returning to his side, she grabbed a chair and sat down.
“I suppose I should properly introduce myself then,” she said, trying to keep things as normal as possible. “My name is Faye. Faye Kaplan. And I’m a local potter. I run Magic Mud Pottery in downtown Woodstock.”
She held her hand out to him. The man didn’t take it. Faye patted him gently on the wrist.
“I imagine the doctors explained the situation to you,” she continued, “but just in case they didn’t—”
She told him he was in the hospital in Woodstock and that the doctors believed him to have amnesia and would be sending him to a shelter until he could remember. “That’s why things might seem fuzzy to you right now, and why your language skills are off. I’d love to ask the doctors to give me more information about your condition, but, obviously, there are rules about these things.”
In law, they would call it a medical directive.
“Faye,” he said suddenly.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s me.”
“Home.”
“What?” Faye said, unsure of his meaning.
“Faye...home.”
The statement took her back. “No. No, Faye do not take home .”
He grunted again—clearly a question.
“Because...” she stammered, touching her heart. “Because you don’t belong with me.”
He looked so sad at the news.
She thought back to her childhood. To all the people who had never really been there for her, never protected her. As a child, she had worn out the backside of her blue jeans, sitting on curbs outside her home, waiting for someone to save her. The independent streak she’d developed in the wake of all that trauma was born from necessity—a tool for survival.
“Home.” The stranger was adamant. “Faye.”
“No,” Faye repeated, just as resolute. “You belong to someone else. You just don’t remember. The doctors are going to send you to a shelter, and then someone will come for you from social services. They will find your people, get you back to where you belong.”
“No,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, lifting from her seat. “Absolutely.”
And then, he shouted one word at her. “Remember!”
It came out crystal clear. Loud and powerful. Faye sighed, slumping back into her chair. Despite his limited vocabulary, he certainly seemed to understand what he wanted.
He wasn’t wrong. The man was in no place to go to a shelter. Faye couldn’t even begin to imagine how anyone, especially doctors, would sign off on a such a thing. Then again, she considered the economics. He was a man without a wallet and a memory—and a voice—which meant he had no ID, no health insurance, and no money to pay for expenses out of pocket.
Welcome to health care in America.
Or maybe it was something else. Maybe the way he looked at her—the lost eyes, scanning the room, desperate for someone to help him—reminded her of herself. She had been abandoned countless times in her life. Perhaps this was the universe offering healing, a way to right the wrongs of her past by saving the life of another.
Faye took a deep breath. “You don’t want to go to the shelter.”
He grunted.
“I actually agree with you,” she said, taking responsibility, feeling the weight of her words—the absurdity of them, honestly—even while she continued to utter them aloud. “I don’t think the shelter is the right place for you. I just wish...we could figure out who you belong to. Do you remember anything about who you were before? Maybe a name? Or something about where you lived? Anything that might give me a hint about who I can call...or find? Someone to come pick you up, perhaps. A friend. Or family member. Maybe even a wife?”
She always did stuff like this. She always leaped without thinking. Passionate to the point of recklessness. It had always been her downfall.
“You.” He said it definitively.
“You only remember me?”
“You,” he repeated. “Home.”
Time slowed. Faye swallowed.
He wanted to go home with her. Obviously. But even more surprising—she found herself actually considering it. Bringing this man home with her, taking him back to Magic Mud Pottery, letting him live in her apartment, nursing him back to health.
She ran through the arguments in her head like she was preparing a legal briefing. On the one hand, despite the faulty language skills, he was clearly capable of understanding the current situation and making choices for himself. She was also the person who’d injured him.
On the other hand, she didn’t know this man. At all. He could be an axe murderer. A serial killer. A Nazi. Believing in the “inherent goodness of people” felt especially dangerous in the wake of an anti-Semitic incident affecting the town. She needed to be careful. Suss him out. Feel for any kernels of hatred.
“Can I ask you a question?” Faye pulled her chair in closer. “It’s gonna sound a little strange. Especially since, well, you have no memory. But you see, the other night, there was an anti-Semitic incident in town. We don’t know who did it...and the thing is, I’m Jewish.”
“Jewish?”
“It’s a religion,” she said, before adding, “and an ethnicity. Actually, the question is really complicated because Judaism existed long before our modern-day concepts of race... And you know what? It’s not that important. I guess I just need to know...if you hate Jews.”
He stared back blankly at her.
“You know,” she said, trying to trigger something inside his head. “Do you think they run the media, or are responsible for COVID? Do you believe they sacrifice Christian babies and drink their blood as part of their Shabbat ritual? Do you think that Jews are secretly puppeteering the affairs of our government behind the scenes? Or maybe...you believe that Jews have space lasers? Basically, do you hate Jews? Do you think the world would be better off without them? Do you believe the Holocaust never happened?”
He squinted, clearly confused. “Jews...bad?”
“No,” she said, suddenly panicking. “No, Jews are not bad. Jews are not bad, at all.”
Great. She had, inadvertently, taken a man with no memory and filled his brain with anti-Semitic rhetoric.
“I just...” she stammered, backtracking, “I just need to know, if I help you...if I agree to do something really unlike myself...something I would never normally in a thousand years do... I need to know you won’t one day wake up and remember who you are and hurt me. I need to know I’m safe with you.”
It felt like a much larger question than she had originally intended.
“No.”
“No, you won’t hurt me?” Faye said, needing clarification. “Or no, you can’t make that promise?”
“Safe.”
“I’m safe with you?”
He grunted.
Almost like a promise.
“So, you really want to come home with me?” she asked.
The man did not hesitate. “Home.”
“I should warn you, though. I don’t have a big place. You’d have to sleep on the couch. And this isn’t for the long term, okay?” She needed to make that clear. “Just until we figure out who you are, or until your memory returns. Hopefully, once I find out more from the doctors, we’ll have a better idea on the status of your condition. You okay with that as a general rule between us going forward?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” she said, and quickly began developing a plan of action inside her head. “Then here’s what I need you to do. I’m going outside to grab the doctors...and when I do, you need to tell them that I’m your wife.”
“You...wife?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not your wife. It’s just...there are laws and things. I don’t have any paperwork on me to prove we’re married, but if you tell the hospital staff that you suddenly remember me—that I’m your wife—then not only will they give me a full rundown on your condition, but I’ll be able to sign the discharge papers as your spouse and bring you home. They won’t send you to a shelter. But it’s very important that you tell the doctors I’m your wife when they come in. That we’re married. You remember my name, by the way?”
“Wife.”
“Close enough,” she said comfortingly. “And where do you want to go?”
“Wife,” he repeated.
“And who am I again?”
“Wife.”
She patted him on the wrist one more time. “Excellent. Very good.”
Faye gathered her belongings, and then headed towards a nurse’s station outside the man’s room. “Excuse me,” she said, waving down a doctor. “My name is Faye Kaplan. I’d like to speak to a doctor about the patient in room 102... He’s my husband.”