Someone was shining a bright light into his eyes. He felt groggy and dizzy, and he tried to squirm away from whoever was putting a flash light in his face, but he found he had a difficult time moving at all. His body felt limp.
"He's coming to now." Someone above him said, and he tried to lift his head to see who it was. He couldn't. "Sir, everything is alright. You're going to be feeling a little groggy from anesthesia, but the feeling should pass in a few minutes. Can you tell me if you understand?"
He blinked hard, trying to clear his throbbing head, and when he opened his eyes again he could see a little better. Things were still blurry, though. Somehow, he managed to get out the words, "Course I 'nderstand. 'm no stupid." He became very frustrated very quickly by how difficult it was to move his mouth.
"It's alright now, take a few minutes to relax." The person above him said. Then he spoke again, but he seemed to be talking to someone else. "You can come in now. He'll be alert enough to speak in a few minutes."
Out of the corner of his eye, something red and grey entered his vision. And blonde, he realized, as his eyes started to focus. And pretty.
Something must have happened, because in what seemed like only a second to him, everyone around him shifted into different positions, but now his vision was clearer. Not perfect, though.
On his left, a short man with short dark hair in a white jacket was talking across him to the man on his right, a tall blonde who had a very strange shirt on and looked very tired.
"…not unusual for people to drift in and out after a head injury. We'll do some basic tests to make sure his cognitive functioning is intact while the police look into the attack." Said the man in the white coat.
Across from him, the blonde man was nodding. He looked down and raised his eyebrows for some reason, and then the doctor was looking back down at him too.
"Welcome back, there. My name is Dr. Huang. How are you feeling?" He asked.
He was finally able to lift his head, but it throbbed a bit, and he squinted at the doctor. He just couldn't make him come completely into focus. "My head hurts."
Dr. Huang smiled. "That's because you had a pretty nasty head wound, but we've patched you up."
He looked around again, and it hit him where he was. "I'm in a hospital?"
Dr. Huang nodded. "Don't be alarmed," he said, placing a hand on his arm. "You were attacked, but you were very lucky. This man saved your life, and you're going to be alright."
He looked over at the pretty man again, who waved. "Hi."
"Do I… know you?" He asked, suddenly feeling very uncertain. Of everything.
The man shook his head. "Not really. I'm Hunter. I just wanted to, uh, make sure you were okay."
Hunter, he thought. Hunter. He said he didn't know him, but he seemed so familiar…
His head hurt again, and he groaned without meaning to.
"Are you in very much pain?" Dr. Huang asked, checking some kind of machine next to the bed.
"Feel like I'm dying." He answered, and for some reason that made the Doctor smile.
"I can assure you, that's one thing you're not going to do today. I'll adjust your morphine to help with the pain as soon as we get some information from you. Can you tell me the year?"
He tilted his head to glare at the man. Really? Question and answer session for morphine? It wasn't like he was drug seeking, here. He was legitimately in pain. He played along anyway, though. "2003."
"Very good," Dr. Huang marked something on a sheet of paper. "When we found you, you didn't have any identification on you. Can you tell me your name?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. "I… what?"
The Doctor exchanged a glance with Hunter. "I asked for your name."
He paused, uncertain. How could they not know his name? It…
Panic ceased him. His name. What was his name?
Why didn't he know his name?
"This is a joke," he said, feeling far too vulnerable in the presence of these strangers.
"Do you know your name?" Dr. Huang asked again, and there was concern in his voice and on his face now.
"Of course I know my name!" He said, but he was annoyed to hear his voice crack. He froze, with both Hunter and the doctor looking at him expectantly, and he could produce nothing. After a long silence, he raised both tube-laden hands to his face and whispered. "Why don't I know my name?"
Hunter waited in the hallway, his back to the closed blinds of the room window. He had been shooed from the room when the man he had rescued had started crying and demanding to know what had been done to him.
It was strange to Hunter that he wasn't even really annoyed at having stayed for nothing at all, but instead he was worried about the man with no name. Was this usual for a head injury, like the doctor had said about the drifting in and out? Was the guy just confused from anesthesia and surgery? Or did he really not know who he was?
Dr. Huang came out of the door with a nurse and closed it behind him. Hunter stood up from his place against the wall, expectantly. The doctor had wanted him to stay, and he was damn sure going to tell him what was going on now.
"What's wrong with him?" Hunter asked quietly.
Dr. Huang sighed. "It's called traumatic retrograde amnesia. He knows the year, right from left, and has a basic understanding of social norms and cognitive functioning, but he appears to have lost all autobiographical memories."
That sounded pretty bad to Hunter. "So he has no idea who he is?"
"Not a clue," Dr. Huang agreed. "He can't tell me where he's from, who his family is, where he lives, or even what his favorite food is. I'm going to prep him for an MRI to see if there's been any permanent brain damage, but this does happen some times in cases like this."
"So, it might not be permanent? Is there any chance he's going to remember?" Hunter asked, processing.
"There's just no way to tell," Dr. Huang gave Hunter a sorrowful look. "In most cases, the subject will recover and eventually begin to recall things about their life. In severe cases, sufferers of traumatic amnesia never remember who they were prior to the event. In his case, he suffered a traumatic event, being attacked, and trauma to his head, the attack itself. It's impossible to know how much of the amnesia is attributed to either one."
Hunter paused, thinking. The man he had rescued didn't know who he was, and things were not as simple as they had been half an hour ago. The guy had no one in the world… save for Hunter. What had he gotten himself into here? "But it's possible he could recover, right?"
"It's possible, yes." Dr. Huang scratched the back of his neck.
"How long does that take?" Hunter wanted to know.
"There's just no way to know. In most cases, people suffering from amnesia have an identity and family who can help remind them of who they are, but…" Dr. Huang paused, and then sympathetically touched Hunters arm. "I'm sorry, Hunter. I shouldn't have asked you to stay."
Hunter shook his head. "No, it's okay. I mean, it's obviously not okay, but…" Hunter trailed off, but Dr. Huang nodded at him like he understood.
A nurse came up and called Dr. Huang away, and he excused himself, leaving Hunter alone in the hallway.
Hunter looked in through the window. The blinds were down, but he could just barely make out the man's form from in between the cracks. He was lying with his head tilted back, his arms full of IVs and hook ups to monitors, his head bandaged heavily. He looked so incredibly alone… he was alone, Hunter knew.
But he didn't have to be.
Hunter went back into the room, knowing he probably wasn't supposed to but not really caring. He closed the door behind him. The man didn't even look up.
"What do you want?" He snarled from the bed.
Hunter was a little taken aback. "Whoa. You always so nice?"
This made the man look up. With a scowl, he said "I want to know how pleasant you'd be if you woke up alone, in a strange place, and didn't know anything about yourself."
"You weren't alone, actually," Hunter pointed out. This did nothing to abate the man's anger. Hunter went over and sat in the chair next to his bed. "Hey, you're right. I'm sure you're scared-"
"If you came in here to patronize me, you can go." He said, but there was less venom in his voice this time. "I'm not a child."
Hunter didn't comment on that. Instead, he said, "I just wanted you to know… its okay to be scared. Not that you are," he added hastily when the man shot him a look. "Man, it'd only be fair if you were a little scared after what you put me through today!"
This seemed to puzzle the man. "What?"
Hunter sat up straighter, glad to finally have this guy's attention in a non hostile way. "Well, yeah. There I was, jogging, and you come stumbling out of the forest, bleeding and half dead."
The man contemplated this. "They said I was attacked. Did they find who attacked me?"
Hunter shook his head.
"What did you do? When you found me?" He asked, trying to sit up but failing. "Dang this bed."
"You want me to adjust it?" Hunter asked, trying to be helpful.
The man eyed him suspiciously, but then said, "Sure."
Hunter picked up the control on the bed and gently started lifting it so he was sitting a little bit. He wasn't sure how high to go, what with the head wound and all, but he figured they wouldn't have left it there if they didn't want him messing with it. When he finished, the man stared blankly at the bed control Hunter had sat back down next to him.
Finally, he looked up and said, "so?"
Hunter remembered he was supposed to be recounting the events of the day. He let that stop him from being annoyed at this guys apparent lack of ability to say thank you. "Well, uh, I picked you up and carried you to my truck and brought you here," Hunter said, thinking what would be right to say. "It was pretty frightening, because you were unconscious and well, bleeding, and…" he trailed off, uncertain what else to say. Finally he settled for, "Trust me, it was an ordeal, okay?"
The man didn't miss a beat. "That was very brave of you. Are you a life guard, or something?"
"What? No." Hunter answered, baffled. "I'm a mechanic."
The man nodded. Silence fell over them, and the man raised his hands back to his head. He rubbed his eyes.
"Is your head hurting again? Do you want me to get the nurse?" Hunter asked.
"No," he said. "It's just… I can't see righ-correctly." He caught himself in a strange correcting way, and continued. "Everything's blurry and it's not getting better."
"Well, you have to give it time." Hunter consoled.
The man dropped his hands exasperatedly. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"
Hunter scowled. Again, no thanks whatsoever. "Actually, yeah. At home, with my family, eating dinner, that would be great. But hey, I just saved your life, so, shame on me."
The man sighed and looked away. "Then you should go. There's no reason for you to be hanging out with an injured man who can't remember who he is."
Hunter pursed his lips. This hadn't turned out like he'd expected it to at all. Few things did, of course, but he was hoping for at least the spark of a friendship. Instead, it seemed to have been a waste of his time, and his dinner at home was probably long gone by now.
He stood, pushed in the chair and headed for the door. "Nice meeting you."
"Thank you," the man said, just as Hunter was closing the door behind him, "For saving my life."
Well. How about that. Maybe it hadn't been a waste of time, after all.