Chapter One
The Hospital
The first thing he heard were the regular beeps of a machine. Evenly spaced, they were soothing, almost rhythmic. He tried to open his eyes, but it was too much to ask, it seemed, for they remained shut. There were vague, indistinct voices to be heard, somewhere at the blurry edges of his mind, though if he concentrated, they became louder, as though he weren't simply imagining them.
"The police are waiting outside again, doctor," one voice said, a woman's.
"We shall have to tell them that he isn't awake," said another, this time a man.
"They said they're treating the fire as suspicious."
"They think he set it himself?"
"I don't think so, but they want to talk to him," the girl said.
The man hummed briefly before she spoke again.
"Gaius, who is he?" she asked, and there was movement, something being lifted, pages being turned.
"All we have is the name on the identification he was carrying. Lucky for us, I suppose, but aside from a name on a card, he is no one. No friends have come to look for him, the police have located his records such as they are, no criminal activity, no, but they found traces of him in the care system. He has no family. And now, he has no home," the doctor, Gaius, said, and his voice sounded as though it were sorry for the one they were discussing. "He has suffered some smoke inhalation, but there is no reason he should have been unconscious for this long. Gwen, I want you to organise a MRI scan for me, please. And if you can bring up the medical history again, it would be useful, please. We've tried glucose, but I'd like to try him on antibiotics now, in case there is an infection we might have missed," he said. Some rustling could be heard, and a presence approached the bed when, with no warning, there were fingers tugging at his eyelid and exposing his eyes to the bright, near blinding light of a thin torch. He winced, trying to close his eyes to the light as the indistinct silhouette of a man froze above him.
"Welcome back, Mr. Wyllt," the man said.
He opened his other eye slowly, squinting up, grateful that the doctor was blocking the majority of the brightness in the room as he stood over him.
He opened his mouth to speak, to ask who Mr. Wyllt was, but his mouth was dry, as though he'd not drunk in years. He closed his mouth again, trying to swallow, to speak, but all that could leave him was the hint of a rough whisper. He lacked the ability to make any sound at all. Luckily, the doctor appeared to be competent enough that he saw the problem before it could get any worse.
"Gwen, the water, please," he said, holding out his hand expectantly without taking his eyes from his patient. The nurse moved quickly, filling a glass from a jug on the bedside table, placing a straw that seemed to have come from nowhere into the glass, then handing it all over. Still, the doctor did not remove his gaze from that of the man who had been unconscious for a month now. He looked both curious and concerned as he held the straw to his patient's chapped lips, instructing him to drink, but to take small sips, now.
The man in the hospital bed did as he was told, for he had no reason not to. He wondered who these people were. They were a doctor and a nurse, yes, and he supposed must be in hospital, but he couldn't remember how he had come to be here. He furrowed his brows together, closing his eyes for a moment as he tried to recall, as he tried to think about what had happened, but in the space where there might have been memory, there was nothing. He couldn't remember.
He swallowed, opening his eyes, he wanted to take another drink because he was so thirsty, but the doctor was taking the water away, and the nurse was setting it down, and they probably knew best, but he so desperately needed to drink, he was so dehydrated that he felt near dizzy with it, but perhaps that was also down to the effort he'd spent in trying to reach into the fuzzy, dark depths of his own mind. Why couldn't he remember?
"Now, what were you trying to say?" the doctor asked, sitting on the very edge of the bed and leaning in close that he could hear him when he next attempted speech.
"Who…" the patient swallowed again, closed his eyes again, and tried to gather the jumble in his head long enough to form his question. His voice was quiet, so quiet that whenever the pulse of the machine's beeps interjected, his words were lost. "Who is—" he took a breath, the effort of speaking after so long asleep almost too much for him to bear. "Mr. Wyllt?" he finally managed to gasp out, training his gaze on the doctor because he would have the answer, whatever it may have been.
As it turned out, it was the nurse who spoke, interrupting the old doctor without perhaps meaning to do so.
"You are," she said, sounding so utterly convinced of this fact that he was forced to listen, to consider that she may well be telling the truth. "That is, you had your wallet on you when you escaped the fire," she fumbled with something on the bedside table, something just out of his field of vision, and he didn't want to turn his head to follow her. As it turned out, he didn't have to.
"What fire?" he began to ask as the nurse handed him a brown wallet made of leather that he was entirely too weak to hold. His grip just seemed nonexistent.
"Guinevere," chided the doctor gently as he took the wallet from where it had dropped to the bedsheets. Moments passed before he produced a card from inside, and this, rather than attempt having him hold anything again, was placed where he could see it with ease.
It was a driver's licence. A little pink card that declared the holder could apparently drive both car and motorbike. There was a small photograph of a man in black and white. He was a bit strange looking. Sharp, high cheekbones and a shock of barely wavy, dark hair beneath which sat a pair of ears as big as they came, the man was not obviously handsome, but he certainly looked friendly, approachable, even. Beside the photo, there were words. The name of the man. The first line read 'Wyllt', and the second read 'Myrddin'. Myrddin Wyllt. The name belonged to the man in the photograph. From what the nurse had said, that name belonged to him.
"Is this me?" he asked, confused, looking up at the sympathetic nurse, then down at the card again. He couldn't even begin to fathom how to pronounce the name it claimed as his own. "Meer— Meerdin?" he asked, looking up, desperate for help, for anything that might aid him now. He looked back at the photograph. Was that really what he looked like? He brought up a hand to touch the shell of his ear, to feel the height of his cheekbone, and then down where he discovered hair on his face that he couldn't see in the photograph. He wondered how long he'd been here for.
"Mer-thin," supplied the doctor, speaking the word slowly. He looked worried now, but the patient was more concerned with repeating his own name.
"Guinevere," he said, looking away from Myrddin long enough to address her. "I am concerned that the time Mr. Wyllt has spent unconscious is to blame for his apparent memory loss. If you could call down to radiology for me and schedule the MRI scan, please," he said.
The nurse gave a quick nod, went to a door painted as white as the rest of the too-bright room, opened the door to the corridor beyond, and left.
Myrddin caught a brief glimpse of uniformed men, saw her exchange words that seemed to hold authority behind them. Then the door closed.
"The police have been waiting for you to wake up for some time now, but I think that an hour or two more shan't hurt them," the doctor said with a warm smile.
Somehow, in spite of the confusion, in spite of the edge of panic that he didn't know who he was, it made Myrddin feel safe.
"Look straight ahead for me," he said, and the torch was out again, shining into his eyes. First one, then the other. "As I thought," he said at length, sitting back and looking at his patient with renewed interest.
"What did you think?"
"Your eyes are blue," said the doctor, and before he could ask what he meant by that, the nurse, Sister Guinevere, he supposed, had returned to the room.
"They're ready for him downstairs," she said.
"What did you mean, my eyes are blue?" Myrddin asked the doctor. His voice seemed to be coming back to itself now. Still rough, still with the edge of breathlessness, but audible. His efforts were rewarded with another smile.
"I mean to say that when you awoke, for just a moment, I thought they might have been gold."
The experience of an MRI scan was not one that Myrddin wished to ever have again. One would assume that he was quite good at lying very still after his time spent unconscious, but there was something about lying down in the near claustrophobic confines of the scanner that made him long to fidget. Thankfully, really, he was still too weak for that sort of thing.
As for the results of the scan, well, he could hear the frustrated murmuring that sounded the tiniest bit relieved, too, as he lay there silently waiting.
Everything, as far as the doctor could see, was perfect. There was no real reason that Myrddin Wyllt should be experiencing this level of memory loss. As he was helped out of the machine and into the wheelchair until such a time as his strength returned enough that he could walk, he was told that as far as they could tell, the memory loss would only be temporary, that it was as they had thought.
They wheeled him to the lift, then back to the ward and room where, he was told, he had spent the last month alone but for the care they had been giving him.
One of the police officers stopped them before they could wheel him inside, but the doctor interrupted before they could speak.
"He will be no use to you. He can hardly remember his own name."
"He can hardly say his own name," Gwen said, leaving their patient to frown, embarrassed at his own shortcomings whether he could help them or not.
"We have some information to be going with, but not enough. And even if he can't give us anything, he's a right to know what we're doing to find the one responsible for his being laid up here," the officer said.
It was with a sigh that the doctor agreed and allowed a single police officer into the room with them.
"Mr. Wyllt," the officer began, removing his hat once Myrddin had been settled back in his bed. "As you may know, you narrowly escaped with your life from a fire that began in your home. We've reason to believe that the fire was no accident, given the place it began, and the pattern of spread. For now, we've just one suspect, although we're having trouble finding him. This man," he removed a photograph from his pocket and passed it to Myrddin who managed to grasp it between his fingers, "Was seen outside your home on the night of the fire by more than one squad car. We're looking for him now. It's lucky you live in a city, mind, or there'd have been no trace of him on the CCTV."
"If you caught him setting the fire on camera, why is he only a suspect?"
"That's the thing," the officer said to the nurse, ignoring Myrddin for a moment, but it didn't matter, really, given that he had no answers. "Something happened to the cameras in the area that night, we think they were disabled somehow, but we managed to retrieve this image from the system, thankfully. We've officers out looking for him as we speak."
"…why are you searching for him?" Myrddin asked as he looked down at the grainy photograph of an old man with long, white hair. He wore layers upon layers of clothing, and carried a staff, it looked like, though the image was blurred. It could have just been a walking stick. There was something about the old man, something that he could not place, and the more he tried to think about it, the further it slipped away. Perhaps he had known him before. Before the fire.
"We've reason to believe he wanted you dead. Whoever this man is, and we've been unable to name him yet in spite of appeals to the public, he went to a great deal of trouble to ensure that he was not caught. We believe he did not work alone, that he had assistance in setting the fire, given his advanced years. We're looking for him, but since we don't know his motive for attempting to kill you, and we have no way of knowing what your relationship may have been to this man, we're going to leave one of my colleagues on the ward for now with your personal safety in mind, just in case."
He could hardly believe his ears. How was it that he had managed to land himself an enemy so terrible that they had wanted to kill him? He couldn't remember his friends, if he had any, much less any enemies. It seemed, though, that whatever association he'd had with the old man they were looking for, it had ended badly. Badly enough that he had wanted him dead. He wondered what he had done to deserve that.
"May I keep this?" he asked the officer of the photograph. A nod was the answer, and he was glad for it. While he did not relish the idea of holding onto an image of his would-be killer, it would help him, he hoped. He would at least be able to identify the old man if he came after him again. If he realised that he had not succeeded. And perhaps the vague sense of familiarity he felt at seeing it would fade to understanding and memory of just what he had done to have someone hate him that much.
"That's enough now, please," said the doctor rather abruptly, gesturing to the door. "Mr. Wyllt cannot help you. Can you not see that he is distressed enough as it is without you telling him that someone was out to get him? Hm?"
It was a rare thing to see an officer of the law looking thoroughly chastised, but it truly was a sight to behold. Guinevere thought as much, it seemed, for she hardly managed to hide her smile in time.
As the police officer left the room and the nurse helped him drink again, Myrddin tried to go over all that had happened in his mind. But what did he really know? What did he really have? A wallet and a name, it seemed, and the knowledge that someone had been out to get him. And not only that, but it seemed he had not a friend in the world, either. Perhaps he had been a terrible man, or surely, someone would have noticed that he had nearly died. Although, hadn't they said he had been an orphan? Perhaps he had only recently moved to the city, and with no family, he had simply lost touch with his friends? He could only hope that it was a thing like that.
"What happens now?" he wanted to know. He looked to the doctor who had apparently been expecting the question.
"Well, once you have regained your strength, you will be free to leave. Given the nature of your memory loss, you ought to begin remembering things over the coming weeks," the older man said, seating himself on the edge of Myrddin's bed once more. It was a familiar action, and friendly besides. He liked it, he thought.
"But where do I go?" he found himself asking. He needed an answer. "I don't… I can hardly remember my own name, and if what they said is true, then the place I lived in is nothing more than a ruin now."
The doctor's expression softened at that, and he reached to clasp his patient's hand. "I should like to be able to keep an eye on you, Myrddin. As your doctor, I feel a sense of responsibility for you. And for that, it would be best that you not stray too far…" he fell quiet for a moment, deep in thought before releasing the young man's hand. "Yes, that will do well," he said, standing, apparently decided. "I will call Alice, and have her wash the guest room's bedding. Given that you've no family to call your own, and should not be left alone with the extent of memory loss you appear to be suffering, it would be best that you stay with us."
It was more than Myrddin could have hoped for. The devastating revelations of the day had come blow by blow and here, finally, was some light. Someone who wanted to help him.
"Really?" he asked, the hint of a smile reaching his face for the first time since he had woken up. He fidgeted slightly where he sat up in bed, excited and hopeful all at once.
"Really. Once I think you safe to leave the hospital, you can come and stay with us."
Myrddin barely refrained from embracing the man. Instead, he settled on beaming from apparently oversized ear to ear.
"Thank you, doctor," he said as he watched the medic make his way to the door, relieved that he did not have to worry about what he would do next, at least. Relieved that there was someone who seemed to care.
"Please, call me Gaius."
