Many people in town looked at her and thought of Tyra Banks, though their features were completely different to an educated observer.
She was a beautiful woman, by anyone's standards. But her skin was a little too dark. It wasn't overt discrimination, really. There weren't any diehard racists in town. She had been welcomed and still felt welcome. But she was just different enough that men shied away from her, drifting toward the more familiar.
At least in terms of serious relationships, anyway. Men flirted with her, and their eyes consumed her like ice cream on a summer day, trying to lick it all up before it melted. She flirted back, sometimes, but it didn't lead to anything serious.
She knew why no man in town pursued her seriously, but there was nothing she could do about it. At twenty-four, though, she was in no particular hurry. Her biological clock wasn't screaming at her. Still, in a fit of pique, one day, she had purchased a sex toy to help her try to manage the normal urges she faced. Her pique had driven her to choose a thick, coal black dildo, obviously supposed to be an exaggerated representation of a black man's penis. If the white men in town wouldn't pursue the prize, then they would lose out, both literally and figuratively.
She'd only shown it to one other person. Lulu, her best friend, had goggled at the huge thing, when she'd shown it to her, and then laughed out loud.
"You'll kill yourself with that thing!" Lulu had laughed.
"I like it just fine!" said a slightly miffed Jessica. She'd had a fantasy that Lulu would fall in love with the long, amazingly realistic looking thing, and ask to borrow it.
"Well, don't use it too much," said Lulu, seriously. "Because if you do, and you ever
do
meet a man, he won't be able to compete in any way ... shape ... or form!" She'd ended laughing hysterically, waving the twelve inch long rubber penis around like it was a floppy sword of some kind.
Jessica's patient groaned suddenly and she jumped again. She'd been daydreaming
again!
She moved to the man's head, watching his closed eye carefully. If he was awakening, she'd need to call the doctor in as soon as possible.
Hurriedly she took time to pull the hospital gown over the man's nakedness and the blanket up over him.
Jessica stood back while the resident on duty looked the man over. His eye was open, but looked glazed, and he wasn't trying to speak. The resident fussed with tubes and looked at the readouts of the monitors. Obviously he didn't have anything in mind to actually do, and was just going through motions. Jessica was constantly amazed at how much art was involved in medicine, which most people thought of as a science. Doctors had only touched the surface, as far as really understanding what went on in a human body. More than half the time, they had no idea what was actually wrong with someone, especially in circumstances like this.
"Keep an eye on him," said the young man. He left without another word, probably going back to the room with the cot in it, where the residents who had the night shift spent as much time as possible, trying to sleep.
"Sure thing," said Jessica, trying to suppress the impatience in her voice. What did he think she was going to do ... take a nap-like him?
She stepped closer to the bed.
"Hi," she said, leaning over him so his eye could see her without him having to move his head. "How are you feeling?"
It was a silly question. She knew that. But it was a way to get the patient talking. He mumbled something and licked his lips.
She checked the chart. Nothing about restricting liquids. She told him she'd be right back and went to get a cup. She put mostly ice in it, and just a little water, and got a straw that would bend at the top. Taking it back, she tilted the cup carefully and put the straw between his lips. His tongue pushed it out and, as if it were a tool of exploration, moved the end of the straw to one side and then back again. His head lifted fractionally and she put the straw back between his lips.
He gave a tiny suck, and dropped his head back to the pillow. She could see him swishing the water around in his mouth before swallowing. His lips opened again and she gave him the straw once more. Three tiny sips later, he spoke.
"What happened?"
"We were hoping you could tell us that," she said softly. "You were in some kind of accident. You're in the hospital now."
His eye moved around her upper body, and she imagined him thinking, "Well duh ... you're a nurse!" She felt her face get hot.
"You lost a lot of blood," she said, for lack of anything else to say. "You're kind of banged up." She didn't mention the suspected gunshot wound on his temple. She couldn't have said why she didn't mention it, but she left that part out intentionally.
"What's your name?" she asked.
He seemed to think about that for a while.
When he'd first awakened, he knew he was waking up, and he knew he was someplace "different than usual." He could tell that something had happened to him, because he could feel pain in various parts of his body. He'd centered on that, initially. Now he went beyond his body.
What
was
his name?
He realized that his mind was curiously empty. It was a little like knowing you'd gone shopping recently, but opening the pantry door and finding empty shelves. Where was all the stuff that was supposed to be on them?
He felt mildly frustrated. She had asked such an easy question, and he couldn't answer it. He looked at her. She looked odd ... flat somehow, two dimensional instead of three dimensional. He realized only one of his eyes was working. He brought his hand up and felt a lump with a cloth feel to it covering the eye he couldn't see out of. Bandages. He was in a hospital and he was bandaged up.
"Can you hear me?" asked the nurse.
"I don't know," he said.
"You don't know if you can hear me?"
"I don't know my name."
"You wait right there," she said. "I'll go get the doctor."
He smiled. Where did she think he was going to go? She sounded cute and he wished he could see her better. He did an inventory of his body, sliding his hands around and moving his legs and toes. Everything seemed to work okay. There was a generalized ache all over his body, and a few sharper pains where his fingers probed. His face hurt, under the bandages, but the covered eye felt all right. He wondered why they'd covered it, if it was okay. He wondered what had happened to him. His curiously empty mind was fascinating, and he began to look around the bare shelves, to see what memories were still there.
Visions of a computer screen, with words appearing on it-letter by letter-were clear in his mind. He couldn't see the fingers on the keyboard, but he knew they were his. He couldn't see the words clearly enough to see what they said, but he knew they were words. His mind continued to watch the blurred words appear. Then there was a carriage return and larger letters formed: Chapter Two.
"I'm a writer," he said softly.
There was the rustle of clothing, as a man came into the room, followed by the nurse.
"How are you feeling?" asked the man. He was dressed in a white coat over baggy shirt and pants that were blue. Scrubs. This was the doctor.
He smiled again. He thought it was funny for a doctor to ask someone in his condition that question.
"I think I'm all fucked up."
A very bright light suddenly flashed into his one eye and he blinked.
"Ow."
"Did that hurt?" asked the doctor, leaning back. He had something silver in his hand. A flashlight.
"No. It just surprised me, that's all."
"No apparent concussion," said the doctor, apparently to the nurse. He leaned back over.
"What do you remember?" he asked.
"I'm an author."
"An author," the doctor repeated. "What else?"
"That's about it."
"When I say the word 'home' ... " The doctor paused for a few seconds before going on. "What do you remember?"
He thought. He knew he
had
a home, somehow. He had a vision of a brown couch sitting on a hard wood floor. Everything around it was fuzzy and indistinct. He suddenly saw a commode. The walls in the bathroom were white. He wondered if he spent most of his time on that couch and commode, because that was all he could remember.
"Not much," he said.
The doctor did things with his hands. They were out of sight.
"His vitals are normal. Other than the memory loss, he's doing much better. Change him to guarded and get him something to eat." The doctor bent over him. "They're going to get you something to eat," he said, as if he suspected the man in the bed were deaf. "After that, try to get some sleep."
"I'm not sleepy," the patient said.
"Try to get some sleep," said the doctor again. "Your memory loss is probably only temporary. I don't think you have a concussion. There might be a little residual swelling in the brain, but I feel pretty good about your condition."
As if he'd lost interest, he turned and left the room, leaving the patient alone with the nurse.
"Why am I being guarded?" he asked.
"What?" The nurse sounded confused. He wished he could see her better.
"He said for you to make me guarded. Why? Am I dangerous?"
She giggled. "No. He just meant you're condition isn't serious anymore, just guarded."
"Oh," he said. "What does that mean? I mean I understand serious. But what is guarded?"
She knew that "guarded" meant that his physical condition had improved to the point that he no longer needed constant monitoring. She'd been around long enough to know it also meant that, physically, this man would probably recover completely. But the doctor had no idea how his mental condition would progress. "Guarded" was simply a way of him stating that something bad could still happen, but maybe not. Some doctors used the term to cover their asses, in case the patient tanked. She didn't want to tell the patient that, though.
"Oh, it just means that we don't have to spend quite as much time keeping an eye on you, that's all." She tried to sound cheerful.
"Oh." There was a long pause. "You really don't know my name?"
She tried to think about what Mitch would want her to say ... or not say. She knew there was some mystery about this man. Since he'd awakened, he'd seemed like any other guy ... not dangerous or scary. It occurred to her that Mitch would want to know he was awake.
"Um ... " She stalled. "I think there was a billfold in your pants when they brought you in. They just probably haven't had time to update your records."
"How long have I been here?" he asked.
"About eight hours," she said.
"And they couldn't update my records in eight hours?" He sounded skeptical.
"It's seven in the morning," she said. "You came in around midnight. The police were here, but didn't say much to me about you. They might want to talk to you, now that you're awake. The Patient Affairs Office will open up soon and I'm sure everything will get updated."
"Oh," he said. "okay."
"I'll get you something to eat."
"Okay."
He watched her as she left, and when she swung the door open, he had a sudden vision of a car door, right in front of him. He was driving and the door opened. He made a startled sound as the memory flooded back into his mind. There had been a man too. He had hit the car door ... and he had hit the man!
Then the memory just stopped. That was all he could remember. He'd been in an accident and had hit a man. But he couldn't remember anything after that.
While she was gone, he lay there, exploring his mind. Misty things wavered in and out of existence. She had said the police wanted to talk to him. That was no wonder. But why hadn't they
told
him he'd been in an automobile accident?
He thought back. She had asked
him
what had happened. What had she said? He closed his eye. She'd said "some kind of accident," as if she didn't know what kind of accident. Surely if he'd been in a car accident ... if he'd
hit
a man ... they would know that. He began to doubt his own memory ... what seemed to be left of it.
Nothing else came to him. The vision of that opening door, and the man he'd hit -
if
he'd actually hit him - was clear as could be, but there was nothing else at all, except the words, appearing on a computer monitor, that told him he wrote.
What did he write? He couldn't read the words in his mind. They were just amorphous black blobs on a white background. But he
knew