Chapter 3
Chapter Three
James
Ahand touches my shoulder, shaking it slightly. “Lieutenant Davis, can you open your eyes?”
I try to do what the woman asks, but… damn my head hurts. Not only my head, other things hurt. My right arm. My left side. My legs. One of my eyes and my entire face.
What the hell? Was I in a car accident?
“Lieutenant Davis?” More shoulder shakes. “James, can you hear me?” I feel fingers slip beneath my left hand. “Can you squeeze my fingers?”
I do as she asks.
“Good. Now try to open your eyes.”
Bright fluorescent overhead lights assault my vision as I attempt to figure out where I am and what happened. But it’s difficult considering I can barely even see out of one of my eyes.
“That’s it. There you go.”
I try to sit up, but groan when various pains shoot through me.
“Easy now,” the woman says. “You’ve been out of it for weeks. I’ll adjust the bed up a bit. You shouldn’t try to sit for a while.”
I make eye contact with the woman wearing a lab coat. She’s a doctor. So I was in an accident. I go to speak, but nothing comes out.
The doctor puts a straw to my mouth. “Take a sip. It’ll help you speak.”
I drink, which is hard because I could swear I’m nursing one hell of a split lip.
I clear my throat and try again. “What, um…” I look around the room. There’s a shit ton of medical equipment in here. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
I shake my head and immediately utter a quiet curse as I regret the motion.
“It’s okay,” she says. “That’s pretty typical for what you’ve been through. I’m Dr. Simms. Can you tell me where you are?”
“Hospital.”
“That’s right. And can you tell me what month it is?”
I cock my head and think. She said I’ve been here for weeks, that would make it…
I glance around the room again, looking for clues. I have no idea what month it is. Strange.
A whiteboard across the room has the names of my care team, along with a date. “February.”
She raises a brow when I look back at her. “That’s cheating. How about you tell me where you’ve been stationed?”
“Stationed?”
She starts to look concerned, which is concerning. Because somehow I know that look.
“What’s your full name, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant? Yeah, I guess that is what she called me. What was the other name?
I stiffen. Because, what the fuck? Jesus, why can’t I remember my name?
The alarm on the patient monitor goes off even before I physically feel my heart start to race. Panic sets in when I realize I don’t know my name. I don’t know the month. I don’t know fucking anything.
“Breathe,” she says. “You’ve been sedated for a while. It can be confusing waking up after so long. Let’s give it a moment, shall we?”
The calming way she speaks, along with the gentle squeeze of her hand on mine, has my heart slowing. Right, I’ve been under sedation. That explains it.
My eyelids grow heavy as sleep pulls me under.
I’m awakened by the activity around me. It takes a minute to get my bearings. I see Dr—Simms, was it?—and the familiar walls of my hospital room. There are two other people with her.
Dr. Simms steps forward. “Feeling better?”
I take stock. My arm still hurts. It’s super stiff. When I look down, I discover why. My forearm is in a cast that ends just below the elbow. Damn, I hope it wasn’t a compound fracture that required surgery. My left side is still tender, but not as sore as last time. My legs hurt the most.
“My legs,” I say, gingerly lifting one slightly off the bed.
“You sustained partial thickness burns to your lower extremities.”
“Superficial or deep?” I ask.
She nods, looking pleased. “Superficial.”
Makes sense, those are typically the most painful as the nerve endings aren’t as damaged. “And my arm?” I hold it a few inches off the bed. “Open or closed radial fracture?”
“Closed.”
“Head?” I ask, worried about the slight throbbing.
“You sustained blunt force trauma to the skull. It’s why we had you in a medically induced coma. Your brain needed time to heal due to the swelling.”
“What’s my ICP?”
Now she’s smiling. “I’m impressed you know to ask about intracranial pressure. I suppose as part of the support team for a medevac unit, you picked up on a lot of things.”
“Support team? Medevac unit?” I ask.
Her smile fades and she looks to one of the other doctors who steps forward. “I’m Dr. Schulz, staff neurologist,” he says in a heavy German accent.
A neurologist. Good. He’ll know. “What’s my ICP, Dr. Schulz?”
“You gave us a scare when it went as high as twenty-five. But it’s been declining for days and has remained nearly steady at twelve for the past twenty-four hours, which is why we weaned you off the sedation.”
“Twelve. That’s normal.”
“Yes, it is, Lieutenant…?” He pauses, waiting for me to fill in the blank.
Fuck. Seriously? I still can’t answer, and it’s starting to really piss me off. I wrack my brain to remember what Dr. Simms called me earlier. “James?”
“You say it like you aren’t sure.”
All three people share a look. It’s now that I realize only two of them are doctors. The third is dressed in… fatigues?
Using my good hand, I thumb to him. “Who’s he?”
All three look disappointed, and the guy in fatigues steps closer. “You don’t know who I am?”
“Should I?”
He shrugs as he addresses the other two.
“We only crossed paths briefly. Once in meeting then again during drills. And honestly, soldiers and officers tend to blur together after a while. I meet so many of them, I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup, even if his face were completely recognizable. ”
My left hand comes off the bed to feel my face. Holy shit it’s swollen. I need to get in front of a mirror. I go to swing my legs off the bed but am stopped when Dr. Schulz places an arm across my chest.
“No getting out of bed just yet,” he says. “You still have a catheter in.”
“Well, take it out. Hell, I’ll do it myself.”
“All in good time,” Dr. Simms says in the reassuring tone of a doctor with a practiced bedside manner.
I turn to the built guy wearing the fatigues. “Want to tell me why I should know you? And while you’re at it, why are you dressed in fatigues?”
“I’m Colonel Fernandez, commanding officer of your unit.”
Commanding officer? Soldier? Fatigues? I sit up despite the throbbing in my head. “Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?”
Dr. Schulz adjusts the pillow behind me. “You’ve been in an accident, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah? No shit.”
“Might want to watch that tone in the presence of your commanding officer,” that colonel guy warns.
I’m completely and utterly baffled. What the hell is going on?
“Let’s try again, shall we?” Dr. Simms asks. “Can you tell us your name? Your full name?”
The muscle man glares at me, and even though all I want to do is yell at these people for not telling me a single goddamn thing about what’s happening, I decide against any further belligerence.
Instead, I just shake my head, mostly because I’m still unnerved as to why I can’t remember something as simple as my own name.
“How about your hometown?” Dr. Schulz says. “Can you tell me where you grew up?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t say anything because there’s nothing to say. There’s just… nothing.
I try to rustle up the name of my hometown.
A beloved family pet. My high school. The girl who took my virginity.
Shouldn’t all of these things be seared into my brain for all of eternity?
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I concentrate as hard as I can.
But… fuck… the only memories I can recall are of this room, that window, Dr. Simms, and the beeping of the machines. I huff in frustration.
“You took a pretty big blow to the head,” Simms says sympathetically. “Temporary memory loss isn’t completely unexpected after blunt force trauma, increased ICP, and we can’t rule out PTSD at this point.”
“Why would I have PTSD?” I look between the three of them. “Listen, you obviously know more about my situation than you’re telling me. Please just tell me what happened.”
“Lieutenant,” the colonel says, “your vehicle hit an IED in a combat zone. You were medevacked here to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.”
My eyes go wide. Well, one of them does anyway, the other still feels swollen shut. “As in Germany?”
Dr. Simms studies me, then says to the others, “It’s amazing. He can’t recall details about himself or remember who the colonel is, but he knows about Landstuhl, partial-thickness burns, and ICP.”
They have a whispered conversation among themselves while my mind is reeling over the bits and pieces of information they’ve fed me.
I wave my good hand. “Excuse me!” They stop talking and look my way. “Someone care to explain more about my vehicle hitting an IED in a combat zone? What the hell was I doing in a combat zone?”
Dr. Schulz walks over. “Considering your condition, we think it’s best to wait on the details until your brain has more time to heal and the memories come back naturally.
What you need to concentrate on now is resting and recovering.
Everything else will come in time. I’ve been told we were finally able to get in touch with your sister, who’s flying in tomorrow.
I’m sure seeing a loved one will stimulate your memory. Let’s all touch base again then.”
“Seriously?” I make eye contact with all three of them. “Nobody is going to tell me squat about anything?” I’m met with steadfast stares. “Jesus, can someone at least remove the cath and the leads so I can take a piss by myself?”
“I’ll send a nurse in,” Dr. Simms says. “If you can stand without falling, I’ll allow the removal of the catheter.
But after you relieve yourself, we’ll continue monitoring your vitals.
Your ventricular drain will have to be clamped temporarily so you can move about, but you’ll have to be extremely careful not to disturb it in any way.
” She looks at me pointedly. “Do you understand?”
“I get it. I have a thin intraventricular catheter inserted in my brain to monitor and manage the cerebrospinal fluid pressure. It cannot be dislodged, wiggled, or tapped. Can we get on with it?”
The three of them share more confused looks. I don’t know what the hell they have to be confused about when I’m the one with all the unanswered questions.
A few minutes after they leave, a nurse comes in and untethers me from everything keeping me a prisoner in the bed. He helps me stand, and when I don’t fall over, he guides me across the room to the bathroom with minimal support. He must be pleased, because he lets me enter the bathroom by myself.
“I’ll be right out here,” he says. “Just call out if you need anything.”
When I get my first look in the mirror, my jaw drops.
My face is swollen. Damn… even after several weeks?
Bruises have faded to a sickly green color.
There are a few stitches in my lower lip.
Another row of them is up near my hairline.
I lift my hospital gown and appraise my torso where four more sets of sutures are scattered along my left side.
I concentrate back on my face and work hard to open my damaged eye. I can just barely open it enough to allow both my eyes to focus on the person in the mirror—the man who might as well be a complete fucking stranger.