Round Six
OLLIE
Eat. Sleep. Wake up. Repeat.
The old Mr. Forrester, my oncology patient, dies just three days after Jane arrives, surrounded by his family as he takes his last breaths and moves on to whatever comes next.
Four generations of Forresters squash into a single room, touching from wall to wall while the youngest, his three-year-old great-granddaughter, bounces from family member to family member.
Because while they mourn and whisper their goodbyes, she has no clue what the hell is happening.
She just knows there’ll be food later.
I hang out at the nurse’s station and keep my ears pricked for drama as the family says their goodbyes.
It’s been my experience that death invites nastiness amongst most families at some point, and Mr. Forrester is dying a relatively wealthy man.
But for now, all is calm, so I study my untouched lunch, then I glance toward the room three doors down from the one in mourning.
From overflowing to… all but empty. From swelling grief to…
silence. One patient has more family than he can fit in to a single room, while the other has nothing.
No one.
And still, no recollection of who the hell she is.
“Dammit.” Jane bites out a frustrated grunt, slamming something onto her bedside table, the squeak and groan of her bed railings following right after.
“Why won’t you just…” She huffs. But when that huff turns to a whimper, I collect my lunch and cross the hall, striding through her door to find her sitting cross-legged on her bed, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Hey. You okay?”
She startles and jumps, her eyes flaring wide and her back slamming to the railing as she skitters in retreat.
Her whimper turns to a cry of distress, and that distress swings back around to sad acceptance and a hiccupped breath when she realizes it’s just Ollie.
“Jesus. Can you not knock or something?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” I slow my steps and carefully set my things on her rolling table. My juice box. My jelly cup. Francine takes good care of me. Emptying my hands, I brush them together and bend until I can search Jane’s teary brown eyes. “What’s up?”
She scoffs, viciously snatching a tissue from the box. “Seriously?”
I shrug. “I’m not Doctor Darling right now.
I’m just a dude who has a sweet hookup with the lunch cart lady and a sick obsession with jelly cups.
” And yet, I discreetly peek across at her monitor to check her stats.
“If I was Doctor Darling right now, I might ask if you have a nasty headache. Or if you needed to talk about something medical. But since I’m not…
” I peel a sandwich packet open—I have two—and pull out a cheese and ham on rye triangle.
“I’m gonna eat and chill.” I take a noisy bite and earn a glare from the woman who, I can tell, doesn’t much appreciate people who eat audibly. “So what’s got you upset?”
“I’m not upset.” She tugs her blankets higher, covering her legs and unhappily dropping her hands to her lap.
“The bed rail doesn’t work properly. I was trying to get up and grab the television remote, but I couldn’t get the stupid rail down, and if I climb over the top, I’ll probably fall and crack my head open. ”
“Right… interesting…” I take another bite and smile around chewed food.
She’s lying. It’s so insanely obvious, so I snag the remote from the end of her bed and lower into her visitor chair.
And since I’ve done this a million times over the years, I kick my foot up and release the latch, so with a smooth whoosh, the rail falls and swings on its hinges, each vibration rolling through the frame and up to torment the woman with a pounding headache. “All fixed.”
I point the remote at the TV and flip it on. The Bold and The Beautiful. Ellen repeats. Doctor Oz. Absolutely not. I stop on a game show, then, smiling at the woman flirting with an emotional crisis, I settle back and set my feet on the very end corner of her bed. “Wanna talk about it yet?”
“It’s been days!” she explodes. “And you said if I slept, my memory would come back. But—”
“It’s been a weekend, not an eternity. And you shouldn’t discount the sleep. You might not have your memories back yet, but you found your bad temper.”
She glares, fiery and mean and just cranky enough to make me smirk.
“It’s only been three days,” I repeat, gentler this time.
“You went through something extremely traumatic, smacked your head really friggin’ hard, and you’ve been in a heightened state of emotional distress ever since you woke.
This place scares you. People scare you.
Sleep scares you. It’s okay that things are taking time. ”
“I don’t know my name,” she whines. “I don’t know who I am or how I got here.
I don’t know the face I see in the mirror or the voice I hear when I speak.
I don’t know where I’m supposed to be or who is looking for me.
I probably have a job, right? I haven’t turned up for three days.
And what if I have a cat? I bet it’s hungry!
The police didn’t find me in their computers—”
“Means you’re a good, upstanding citizen,” I counter. “No criminal record. Not even a wanted poster because you stole a candy bar from the local corner store.”
She tries so hard to stay focused. To stay mad. But curiosity wins out, and her posture loosens. “What?”
“It was me. I stole candy and got my face printed on a wanted poster.” Smug, I take another bite and yearn for my dessert.
“If you have a cat and a job, then you have people who already noticed you’re gone.
Billy and Ramone are doing their part, scouring missing persons reports, and the people on the other end, the ones looking for you, are doing their part, too.
Eventually, everyone will end up in the same room, which means folks’ll be crying and snotting and babbling all over you. Which you’ll hate… probably.”
She hunches forward, glowering and pouty. “I don’t think I want a room full people. That doesn’t sound fun.”
Called it.
“It takes only one person. Your person.” I toss the last of the sandwich into my mouth and snag my juice box, peeling the straw off the side. “Your person is gonna come looking for you. We just have to be patient.”
“And in the meantime?” Scowling, she fists her blanket and fusses with a loose thread.
“When you’re doing nothing, or eating your lunch, or going to the bathroom, I bet you still get to think about what you’re planning to do after your shift ends.
Or thinking about your sisters. Or your other patients.
Even when you’re resting, your brain is not blank.
But mine is.” She draws a shaky, shuddering breath, her shoulders moving with the inhale.
“I don’t know if I have sisters. Or if I was supposed to attend a really important meeting today.
Or maybe I left the stove on, and now my house is burning down.
You sit there, and your life still exists.
I sit here and it’s just…” She groans. “The waiting is horrible.”
I lower my feet and push up to stand, then, snagging the rolling tray table, I butt it up against the bed and position it so the ugly laminate-fake-wood top stops near her elbow.
“I agree. The waiting sucks. So…” I gesture toward the second half of my ham and cheese sandwich.
And then to the entirety of an egg salad sandwich. “Pick one.”
Lines wrinkle her forehead as she puzzles out my request. Then she brings her beautiful, doe-like eyes up to mine. “What?”
“We don’t know what we don’t know. Your name, your job, your crispy kitty back home…
” I offer her a gentle smile. “In time, you’ll get all that back.
But we can’t rush it, and there isn’t a damn thing we can do to cheat the process or skip ahead a few steps.
The woman you were and the life you lived before three nights ago…
she still exists. That life still exists.
But you’re this woman now, too. You’re Jane Doe, even if you don’t like that name, and she currently owns nothing but a hospital gown and half a sandwich.
When this is all over, both versions of you will exist, and eventually, you’ll have to find a way to make them co-exist.”
“So you’re offering me a half-eaten sandwich?”
“I’m offering you a chance to find out who Jane Doe is.
Does she prefer ham and cheese, or egg salad?
” And I’m laying down a challenge, dammit, because you’re still too fucking skinny.
I peel both packages open and hold her soulful stare.
“I’m the guy who saves the best for last. Always.
That jelly cup?” I tap the foil lid, sealing in a magical, delicious raspberry heaven.
“It’s the highlight of my day. It’s the icing on my lunch cake.
I’m a hungry man, so Francine drops me extra every day, but I prefer jelly over egg salad, and I prefer egg salad over ham and cheese.
So…” Pulling my coat up, I sit on the edge of her bed and nudge my offerings forward.
“What does this person right in front of me like? Egg salad, or ham and cheese?”
She sniffles and swipes beneath her nose, frowning until a deep line digs between her brows and tugs on the grazing along her temple and cheek.
Her hands shake, and her teeth come out to abuse her lower lip.
But she takes the ham and cheese half, carefully pulling the sandwich from the plastic packaging, and then she nibbles on the very corner.
“Excellent choice.” I take out an egg salad half before my stomach threatens to jump out of my mouth and sweep everything up, but then a shadow in the hall catches my attention.
A hopeful idea blooms, followed by a familiar squeak I would know anywhere in any lifetime.
I bound off the bed and dash through the door, skidding in front of Francine’s lunch trolley and surprising the poor, plump woman with my abrupt appearance.
With a devious grin, I scoop up a juice box, one in each flavor, and an extra jelly cup, too.
Then I dash back into the room and place the apple juice on the tray.
Orange beside it. Tropical beside those.
Setting the jelly aside, I gesture toward my offerings. “Pick.”
She chews and considers. Frowns and peeks up at me from beneath long lashes. “Which is your favorite?”
I grab my already-opened apple juice and sip from the paper straw.
I’m all for saving the planet, but fuckkkkk, I would do nasty things to secure the return of plastic straws.
“I’m not particularly opinionated on the subject.
I tend toward apple and orange more than blackcurrant and tropical.
But I like them all.” I nudge the tray just a quarter of an inch closer. “Which do you choose?”
She swallows. It’s slow and pained, unenthusiastic and wary. But she reluctantly takes the tropical, peeling the straw off the side and opening the plastic sleeve with her teeth, all to avoid setting her sandwich down. “Thank you.”
“I’ll be sure to pass your appreciation on to Francine.
” I take a loaded bite of egg salad, knowing that just-on-lunch-Ollie has no choice but to be Doctor Ollie the moment someone turns up in the ER.
A lunch break is never truly promised when you work at Plainview General. “I think we should continue our game.”
She stabs the end of the straw through the top of her juice box. “What game?”
“Word association. Beach or mountains?”
She sighs, exhausted by me. If this were high school and she weren’t plagued by a pesky head injury, I reckon she’d be the exact type to tell me to fuck right off.
She’s too cool for me. Too pretty and popular to waste her time slumming so low.
But she’s stuck here, all alone and with no visitors, so she sips her juice and grumbles, “Mountains, I think.”
“Summer or winter?”
“Summer.” She answers this one quickly. Too quickly. The word is sharp on her tongue and has nothing to do with our game, and everything to do with hating the cold. “I don’t even remember being in the snow the other night, but I know I don’t wanna do it again.”
“So mountains, which implies snow outside, but you’ll have a nice warm fire crackling in the hearth. Hot chocolate in your mug. A dog on the rug, maybe.”
“You’re projecting.” Her lips curl into a teasing smirk. “Also, it feels kind of weird knowing words. Knowing their meaning, but not knowing how I learned them.”
“You’re smart.” I pick up my juice and hold it in the space between us, waiting, hoping, and then grinning when she lifts hers and taps them together. “Maybe you’re a rocket scientist and you were up in space testing your theories.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Maybe Billy was right. You dropped out of the sky, ya know, ‘cos you fell out of your rocket. Only the smartest women get into the NASA program.”
“Sure, but that would mean I’m employed by the US government, which would make the police’s job quite easy, don’t you think? Facial recognition and fingerprint records would be popping off.”
“Unless you’re working undercover. It’s entirely possible a rogue criminal cartel is running black-market space lasers through the Milky Way, so NASA assigned you the mission of shutting those bandits down.
That would require a top-secret identity, or you risk the aliens scooping you up and performing weird alien experiments on you.
Billy’s a small-town nobody; no way he’s got the clearance needed to receive that kind of intel. ”
“Well…” Amused, she sets her juice and half a sandwich down.
But then she reaches across and takes the extra jelly cup—lemon, as opposed to my raspberry—and peels the foil lid off.
“If that’s all true, then I guess some pretty important-looking agents will come knocking soon.
If I disappear in the middle of the night and no one briefs you on my next mission, then I suppose it’s safe to assume you don’t have the clearance either. ”
From fun to dread, I drop my smile and frown. “Leave a note or somethin’, okay? I don’t think I could go the rest of my life without closure.”