Round 7
ROUND SEVEN
OLLIE
I rummage through Eliza’s closet in search of clothes.
Warm clothes. Clothes she hopefully won’t miss, since I’m kind of stealing, and I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever return them again.
I noisily whip a heavy knee-length coat free of its overstuffed confines, so not even the metal hanger swings on the rack, then, looking at the floor, I select a pair of boots.
Moving to the shelves, I take a pair of sweatpants I know she only wears in the dead of winter when her period is approaching and her whole life—according to her—sucks, and stuffing the lot into a flimsy save-the-environment plastic bag, I scoot to the drawers and yank the top one open.
“I don’t even wanna ask what the hell you think you’re doing, Oliver, but stay the hell out of my underwear drawer.”
“Fuck!” I startle and spin, left hand up and right foot back. I’m ready to fight, if not for the plastic bag dangling from my thumb, crinkling with each swing.
Smirking, Eliza looks me up and down. She studies the bag, her brows sitting high on her forehead.
“Everyone thinks Doctor Oliver Darling is sooooo respectable, ‘cos you got that fancy degree and an ability to save lives. But here you go, escalating from candy theft to home invasion. Explain yourself.”
“No. Shut up.” I turn again and continue my work. “I’m borrowing some of your stuff.”
“Because you’ve taken a sudden interest in squeezing into women’s clothing that absolutely won’t fit you?
” She wanders forward, her hair in messy braids that prove she’s been rolling around at the gym today.
She stops on my left, her shoulder brushing mine, and digs her hands into the pockets of her faded Love & War gym hoodie. “Oliver?”
“Jane doesn’t have any clothes.” I select a pair of regular socks from the drawer, the kind we wear with sneakers, but then I grab a pair of extra thick, extra-long, hanging-out-at-the-house socks, too.
Because Jane deserves a lazy weekend just as much as the next person.
“She’s been stuck wearing hospital gowns for a week already, and it occurred to me she has no money and no way to buy something else.
She can’t even swing by a second-hand store. ”
“So instead of you swinging by the second-hand store for her, or ya know, dropping a fifty in her palm and telling her to go nuts, you thought stealing my stuff was a better idea?” She takes the plastic bag and pulls her coat out. “This cost me four hundred dollars, by the way.”
“Why the hell would you spend four hundred dollars on a coat?” I snatch it back again. “That was dumb.”
“And these boots?” She takes just one out, dangling the brown suede by the tag on the back. “They were on sale for seven hundred.”
“Are you insane?” I snatch a shirt—Walmart brand—before she can take it, and I cling to the fluffy socks. “You can buy boots for sixty dollars, Eliza, and they do the damn job.”
“Yeah, but I have oodles of money, and plenty of time to spend it, and since I work so hard not getting my face smashed in every single day, I’d say I earned my sexy seven-hundred-dollar boots.
” She spins back to her closet and tugs out a duffel bag with leather tassels and a gold zipper—cost six hundred bucks, probably—then she tosses it onto her massive, unmade bed, and places the boots inside.
Whipping the coat from my grip, she carefully rolls it into a smaller size. “Don’t give her those sweatpants.”
“They’re ratty and old. You can do without them.”
“Exactly. They’re ratty and old.” She snatches them up and yeets them back into her closet. But then she selects a brand-new pair still with the tags on and tosses them at my chest. “Don’t talk to me about my shopping habits. It’s none of your business.”
I spy the price tag attached—ninety-nine dollars—and shaking my head, I walk back to the bed and slide them into the bag. “It’s been a week, Lize. She isn’t remembering.”
“You sound emotionally invested.” She closes her drawers and rotates, casting her judgy little-sister eyes on me. “You’re her doctor, Ollie. You treat ‘em, you send ‘em home. It’s a catch-and-release system you’re supposed to abide by.”
“Can’t catch and release someone who has no clue where her home is. Can’t send her anywhere if she has no ID, no money, and no fucking clue which way she should turn when she walks out the hospital doors. She doesn’t even have a pair of shoes.”
One shoe. She has one shoe. And the clothes she arrived in are currently bundled into evidence bags and sitting at the state lab.
“What’s she saying?” Eliza strides into her ensuite bathroom and rummages around in a drawer, before turning around and coming back with a toothbrush and toothpaste pack I know for a damn fact she stole from the dentist’s office.
“A week of rest. A week of healing. And she still can’t remember anything? ”
“Those toothbrush packs are for children, Eliza.”
She looks down at her thievery, smiling, before she tosses it into the bag.
“I pay out the wazoo to see that man, so the least he can do is toss me a Dora the Explorer toothbrush every now and then.” She whips the zipper closed and folds her arms. “If he has a problem with our current arrangement, he can say so to my face.”
“Sure. Because threatening to beat everyone up is how you encourage honest communication.”
She chokes out a silly giggle and plops onto the end of her bed.
“I threaten no one. If people are afraid because their instincts tell them to be, the way the antelope knows to be afraid of the lion, then that’s human nature doing what it’s supposed to.
Protect them, feed me. Pretty sure Mufasa mentioned something about that in the movie. ”
“You’re special.” I drag my hand down my face, scratching the stubble I really need to shave. “And I don’t mean that in a good way.”
“Shut the hell up. And stop avoiding my question.”
“What question?”
“Jane! A whole week and nothing? Not even her own name? Her address? Nothing?”
“Not even her name. Not her address.” I drop my hand and release a noisy sigh. “She sleeps like shit every single night, barely more than an hour at a time. I’ve had her hooked up to a monitor, just to see what’s going on with her brain while she’s down.”
“And?”
“It’s like a car crash.” I firm my lips.
“No pun intended. Her brain’s on fire. Her dreams are chaotic.
Her sleep is fitful at best, and because she’s not resting properly, her days are basically torture.
She’s sensitive to light and noise, and every time she sneezes, I’m worried she’s gonna stroke out.
She’s a ball of anxiety, lying in her bed all day long and staring at the door. ”
“But she trusts you.”
“She panics whenever anyone else walks in, male or female.”
Her eyes flicker with smug playfulness. “Mmhm. But not you. She likes you.”
“She’s used to me because I hang around and force the friendship.
Being alone sends her nuts, but being with anyone else is just as bad.
I sent Henry down to collect her for another CT yesterday.
I swear, I heard her screaming from the other side of the hospital.
It curdled my stomach, Lize. She was terrified. ”
“You’re not this dense, are you?” She raises a single, challenging brow. “A woman has lost her memories, but not her instincts. It doesn’t take an Einstein Academy kid to figure this out, Ollie.”
“I mean… sure. We can assume. But we don’t know.
We need to figure out who she is and how to get her home, but I’m kinda scared that if we do, we’re only sending her back to a place she already escaped once.
I try not to bring this stuff home. I go to work, do my time, and leave it all behind until the next day.
But she’s got me worrying about her even when I’m off shift.
She’s got me ransacking my sister’s closet and talking about a patient’s private business when we both know I shouldn’t… and don’t.”
“That’s because you insist on being the savior,” she counters with a smile. “It’s okay to admit it. You want to fix this for her, just like you want to fix everything for Alana. And Billy.”
I scowl. “Don’t talk about him.”
“You’d micromanage every facet of my life if you could, and stare over Raquel’s shoulder if she let you. Which, by the way, is half the reason she moved away in the first place. Now, she enjoys her life of freedom, and she only ever calls to give you the highlights. Never the shitty stuff.”
“What shitty stuff?” I swing my eyes across and lock onto a pair of bright blues, the same as Raquel’s. The same as mine. “What does she tell you that she doesn’t tell me?”
“Literally everything that would set you off and make you act like…” She scrunches her nose and gestures straight at me.
Then she pushes off her bed and grabs the duffel bag, holding it in two hands and offering it forward.
“Give these to Jane, because doing so will make you feel better. And maybe having something to call her own will help her, too.”
I accept the bag, frowning and frustrated, and drawing a long breath, I stop in front of her and exhale.
“I was thinking—to help Jane—that I could bring the news folks in. They’re already reporting the accident, but they don’t have her face, and they’re just…
” I shrug. “Plainview local news, which means the story isn’t spreading very far.
I thought, if we get her onto a few other channels and appeal to the public, maybe someone out there will be able to identify her. ”
“It’s the logical next step.” She tilts her head to the side, intuitively searching my eyes. “So why are you hesitating?”
“Because someone might identify her.” Fuck, fuck, fuck. “They might come and take her away.”
“Which is literally the whole point.” A deep, concerned V digs between her brows.
“If she has a life somewhere else, Ollie… a family, a home, a career… then that’s where she belongs.
If putting her on the news helps her find her name again, then that’s a good thing, and if someone calls to claim her, we know Billy and Ramone will search their record all the way down to their sixth-grade school reports to make sure they’re decent.
No one will get to talk to her till they’re deemed safe.
If Jane escaped a dangerous situation, you’ll get eyes on him long before he gets eyes on her.
But since we don’t know, it’s entirely possible—probable, even—that she has a good, loving family out there, frantically searching for her right now.
Robbing her of that family because you’re worried about the what-ifs isn’t fair.
” She rubs my arm, softening her eyes. “You’re her doctor, Ollie, not her keeper.
And you’re letting the Alana stuff cloud your judgment. ”
“You’re reaching.”
She scoffs. “I’m absolutely not, and we both know it.
” She steps in, wraps her arms around my torso and rests her cheek on my chest for a long, soothing hug.
“You need to forgive yourself for the things that were never your fault, Ol. And for the love of God, don’t put Jane in this protective little bubble you insist Alana, Raquel, and I sit in.
It wouldn’t be fair to her. And it’s definitely not fair to you. ”
“I just don’t want to make things worse.” I cough, clearing the painful lump from the base of my throat. “She’s safe here in Plainview.”
She’s miserable. Sad. Scared. But fuck, she’s safe.