Round Four
JANE DOE
I just want to sleep. To cuddle into my blankets and close my eyes. If unconsciousness promised a reprieve from the headache sawing my skull straight down the middle, I’d take it. But my stomach swirls with sickness, and my palms sweat, despite the shivers tormenting me.
I’m so freakin’ cold. So insanely achy and sore. But no matter how tempting sleep is, I can’t find the strength to close my eyes and leave the door unwatched.
Everything hurts. My body. My hands. My feet and legs.
My chest aches, and every time I move, it’s like lightning bolts scorch through my neck and into my back.
My lips feel like sandpaper, and my eyes are excruciatingly dry.
But closing them is out of the question.
Even blinking feels like an eternity in the dark.
Watching the door is my only comfort, as nurses wander past, visiting their other patients, and as Doctor Oliver Darling goes about his day in a long, white coat that almost covers blue jeans and a button-up shirt.
Every time he passes, he glances this way. Every time our gazes meet, he smiles.
But then he’s gone again, and when he’s gone, it’s just me…
alone with my thoughts, except my thoughts are mostly empty.
I feel sick. I feel scared. I feel like I need to watch the door like my life depends on it.
But I don’t know why, and I can’t see past the dirty glass shielding my brain from whatever is hidden on the other side.
Lost my memories.
Something about a brain bleed. A hematoma.
Risk of stroke. Blindness. Don’t move too fast, ma’am.
Don’t get up. If you need to pee, press the button and a nurse will help you.
If you’re hungry, let us know. But if you can get by without eating, that’s better for now, just in case we need to do surgery later.
How the hell does someone lose their memories?
I mean… on a logical, intellectual level, I understand. But this is my brain. This is me.
Except… who am I?
My jaw trembles, achingly persistent enough to make my teeth chatter and my entire face hurt. So I pull my blankets a little higher, tucking my hands under my chin. And still, my shivering persists.
Sniffling, I swallow and look to the television bolted to the wall, its twelve inches by twelve inches hardly enough screen to make out the details written at the bottom.
But I catch a long stretch of highway behind a thick-coated reporter, snow covering the tree line on both sides, and wind blowing the reporter’s fur-lined hood back.
A woman was struck down by a vehicle last night…
You can see shards of glass and a portion of the driver’s headlight right behind me…
The victim is alive and currently in Plainview General Hospital, while the driver is cooperating with local police as they piece together what happened…
“They haven’t mentioned your memory loss.”
I startle and wrench my gaze toward the door.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Contrite, Ollie drops his hands into his pockets and wanders into the room, tilting his head forward so dirty blonde, almost brown hair falls onto his forehead.
His nose is crooked—just a little—and his jaw is square.
He has striking blue eyes, almost as blue as I wish the sky was outside.
Anything to bring a little warmth to my frozen limbs.
But he uses those blue eyes like he knows they’re a superpower.
Like he knows they’re comforting to a patient who feels none otherwise.
Stopping beside my bed, he takes my wrist in his hand, wrapping his fingers around and pressing his fingertips to my pulse, and while he does that, he reads the machine hooked up beside me.
“Your resting heart rate is still too high.” Dismissing the machine, he brings his focus back down.
“I need you to relax. This kind of stress on your heart is dangerous.”
“Not doing it on purpose.” I press my free hand to my chest, to the thud-thud-thud pounding entirely too fast against my diaphragm. “Every time I try to rest, my brain gets loud with questions. But I don’t know the answers.”
“I could give you something.” He cocks his hip and rests against the side of my bed. “Knock you out for a good long while and give you a chance to rest.”
“I don’t want to.” I dig my head into my pillow and drag my other hand under the covers. “I’m tired, but every time I close my eyes, my heart sprints faster.” I bring my shoulders up in a shrug. “Maybe I’m afraid of the dark.”
“That would suck. And,” he adds, his eyes warming the side of my face. “Makes me wonder why you’d be walking along a mostly empty stretch of road in the middle of the night. People who are afraid of the dark usually stay inside once the sun goes down, no?”
“I d-don—”
“Are you cold?” He rubs my shoulder with rough, body-jolting swipes of his hand. “You need extra blankets?”
I clamp my lips shut and nod. Short, sharp, and thankfully, to the point. He shoves off the bed and heads into the hall, returning mere seconds later with an entire stack of crisp white blankets.
Setting the pile on my unused visitor chair, he grabs the one on top, snaps it open—which makes things a million times worse as a chilly breeze flutters over my face—then he lays the fabric over me, grabs a second, and repeats.
Then a third. With each additional layer, heavier than the one before, my cocoon grows warmer, and the weight provides reprieve from my whole-body tremors.
“You need to sleep.” He tucks me in, tightly scooping the blanket under my side and pinning me to the mattress.
But it’s not a restriction that makes my pulse sprint faster.
It’s not something that makes the ache in my belly worse.
“Sleep is important, especially so soon after your ordeal. The longer you force yourself to stay awake, the worse your brain injury may become.” He goes back to rubbing my shoulder. “Rest is how we heal, ma’am.”
“I’m not t-trying to make things worse. And you’re right… ma’am s-sounds weird.”
“Well, when you’ve slept and your brain hurts a little less, we’ll get back to guessing. If we’re lucky, maybe the cops will fingerprint you and find a yards-long rap sheet with your name all over it. Robbed any banks lately?”
“M-maybe.” Goddddd. I squeeze my eyes shut and groan as pain radiates from my toes to my hair.
I feel the ache in every pore. In my thighs.
My hips. My back. I feel it in my fingers.
My shoulders. Even my ears. “N-not to brag or anything, but if I robbed a bank, I probably wouldn’t have gotten caught. ”
He laughs, rubbing his hands together so the sound of friction and warmth draws my eyes open. I wish it were mine to grab on to. To curl into. To experience the toastiness for the first time in… I don’t remember the last time I wasn’t cold.
Literally.
“You’re funny.” He digs his hand beneath my blankets, surprising my monitor into a frenzied staccato, but then he sandwiches my hands between his and does exactly what I wanted.
He lends me his warmth. “I look forward to meeting the real you. When things are better, and you remember who you are, and you’re not wearing my sewing skills on your ribs.
When you’re living—not just surviving—and you have time and emotional capacity to feel at ease, instead of staring at the door like you think a monster is gonna come barreling through. ”
Busted, I peel my eyes away from the door and stop on his kind stare.
“There’s someone out there searching for you,” he murmurs.
“Someone good and decent and completely beside themselves with worry. They know your name. And your favorite color. Your favorite food. They know your job. And your secrets. And your birthday. And your first pet.” He drags his thumb along my wrist, almost painful in how deeply he presses the digit in.
But he knows how to make it feel nice. How to make it feel like a massage.
“You’ll know who you are soon, and as you heal, your memories will come back.
If you’re feeling up to it, maybe you could call the hospital sometime while I’m on shift and let me know if you’re a bank robber on the run.
Or an international hit-woman, since women are allowed to have dangerous jobs, too. ”
I snicker, watery and silly and ridiculously whimpery. But damn, Oliver Darling really has the older brother comfort thing down to an art.
“Cats or dogs?”
Frowning, I look up into his eyes, then down again. Then up. “What?”
He flashes a charming smile. “Figured we could play a game. I’ll give you options, and you have to say the first thing that comes into your head. Cats or dogs?”
“Like… which is my favorite?”
He shrugs. “Tacos or pizza?”
“Uh…”
“Island vacation or European tour?”
“Cats… I think. Tacos. Island. Maybe.”
Victorious, he rubs his hands over mine, creating friction with the same fervor as a man attempting to start a fire with flint. “Could be true. Could be completely wrong. But it’s fun, and it won’t hurt anything. Books or movies?”
Reading hurts my eyes. Even attempting to read the poster on the side of my bedside table, with words large enough to compete with the size of my palm, is like poking my brain with a sharp stick.
So I exhale a long sigh and answer with the opposite, even if the before-a-car-hit-me version of me would disagree.
“Movies. But the screen is tiny in here, so it’s hard to see. ”
“Budget cuts,” he counters playfully. “We don’t even have a proper cafeteria in this joint.
We have a coffee cart that was parked outside a decade or two ago.
The engine blew, and the tires dried out.
The rust on the rims made it impossible to get them off, so instead of moving the cart, the board threw a thousand bucks at a local contractor and told him to build walls around it.
Now it’s like a drive-thru coffee window, except we’re the ones driving through. ”