Part Four
"When you're done eating you can go through there and get cleaned up. There's a shower and a new toothbrush and razor in the cabinet by the sink and you'll find clean clothes in the closet, then we can talk, all right?"
He nodded, chewing, trying to ignore the throbbing that was splitting his head into pieces and wishing like hell that he had some of those pain killers they were giving him in the hospital.
He let the hot water run until it grew cool and was back out with the woman in twenty minutes, seated in the visitor's chair on the other side of her desk. She was maybe late-thirties and no-nonsense. There was something vaguely familiar about her but he wasn't sure why. He has an impression of someone, a woman who was older but with the same manner but it as gone almost as soon as it flashed in his mind, leaving him depressed.
"What should I call you?"
He was stumped for a moment then, "John."
"Hello John, I'm Rose. Could you tell me how you wound up sleeping in the bus terminal? Were you going to catch a bus or were you newly arrived?"
"I was cold."
She nodded, unfazed. "Fair enough. Did your parents or wife or someone throw you out? Are you in trouble?"
He looked around nervously, unsure what to say. "I, I think I, I might have been mugged."
She regarded him for a long moment. "You're not sure? Were you maybe mugged by your supplier?"
"What?"
"'You owed him money and he took it out in trade?"
"I..." He looked lost.
She nodded, satisfied with that answer. "You're in pain?"
"A little."
"That's normal when you go cold turkey. Have you been in rehab before?"
"Rehab?"
Rose seemed to be getting annoyed. "What do you use, heroin, meth? Don't jerk me around—I've been doing this longer than you have and I promise you I'm not nearly as fucked up as you are. You want me to help you? Fine. Now what do you use?"
"'Don't know."
Pause as she considered. He didn't act like the usual junkie, he seemed frightened about something, though that could have just been that he was worried about his next fix. "Who beat you up?"
"I don't know. I sort of woke up, came to in an alley and then I was in a hospital. They said I had a concussion—that may be where the pain—why my head hurts."
"Which hospital? And don't lie because I'm going to check." Junkies always lie.
"Rabe."
Picking up the phone, she dialed a memorized number. "Fred? Run a quick check for me, will you? John..." She looked across the desk.
"Doe."
A moment for a hard look. "John Doe, early twenties, Caucasian, admitted in the last couple of days and sitting in front of me now. Might be an assault victim. I need to know if he's using...I know it's against the law to tell me—fuck that...okay. Okay. Good. Thanks and I owe you. Okay, I owe you again and tell Mary I said hello."
"What did he say?"
"You're blood work was clean so you're either not a user or you were clean long enough to pass a blood test. You were admitted day before yesterday with a severe concussion and amnesia. You were treated and disappeared yesterday ADO."
"ADO?"
"Against doctor's orders."
"Oh." He shifted in his chair. "Now what?"
"Now we try to see where you came from and why you had the crap beaten out of you. Have you ever been in a shelter or half-way house?" All she got was a blank look. "Well, you're about to be. I'll do what I can to see that you're in one of the better ones and tell them your story so they can look out after you. I'm also going to send you to be checked out at a clinic top make sure that you're all right to be out of the hospital. I assume that you don't have any insurance?"
"I..."
"Of course." She picked up the phone, hit a number on speed dial and spoke without preamble. "I'm sending you another customer, John Doe. He decided to walk out of Rabe after a beating and seems to have no memory...I know, don't they all. Just see what you can find, see if he's okay to be out and if he is send him on to Henry House, otherwise readmit him. Thanks, Gina."
She filled out a form while he sat quietly for a few minutes. "If I put you in a cab will you go where I s end you and cooperate, let the doctors look you over and do what they tell you to?"
"Yes." Just one word, flat and without emotion.
Rose weighed his demeanor and he seemed like he was a fish out of water. Maybe he really had been mugged and left, maybe he wasn't a user and maybe he had a family or somebody waiting for him to call or walk through the door. He wasn't the usual kind she saw, this one had some polish under the dirt and confusion and his hair—it had been cut by someone who didn't work in a strip mall. Anyone could be born handsome, but this one didn't belong in an alley; she was sure of that. If he was younger, if he were fifteen or so she'd have just thought he was a runaway but not at his age.
He didn't fit the usual profile of the people who usually ended up with her. This one was a little different.
* * *
"Lisa, I'm going to rounds, call me if there's anything you can't handle. I'll be back in a couple of hours."
"Okay, Dr. Thompkins, 'later."
Ten minutes later the cab pulled up to the clinic and John Doe got out, holding a folder with a few papers from Rose for the staff. He gave them to the receptionist and took a seat to wait as he was told. An hour and a half later he was called into an examining room where his particulars were taken, he was given a complete workup by one of the physician's assistants and then declared reasonably healthy aside from the after effects of a severe concussion and being generally stressed. His blood pressure was a bit elevated and he was still suffering from amnesia.
He was prescribed painkillers and told he needed to come back in a week or immediately if he experienced any double vision, dizziness or nausea.
Following Rose's directions, he walked the five blocks to the halfway house she'd arranged for him to have a bed.
Two hours later, after two emergencies, Dr. Thompkins returned to the clinic. "Anything happen while I was gone?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary."
"Good, let me review the charts , please and then you might as well go home." Sitting at her desk in the small, cluttered office, she read through them; Lisa was right, nothing unusual, just the run of the mill pregnancies, sick children whose parents couldn't afford or didn't believe in inoculations and a sprinkling of beating victims, knife wounds and sprains. The only case that even vaguely stood out was the amnesiac, simply because they were uncommon. Oh, patients pretending to having memory problems came in now and then, but a genuine case was always interesting but there wasn't anything she could do unless he came back and she could examine him herself.
Glancing up she saw that it was after nine PM, she was hungry and tired, there were no patients waiting and so she left early.
There was something about that patient that had stayed with her; there wasn't really anything unusual about the client himself for a clinic like this, just another young man down on his luck from the looks of things. He'd either been on the wrong end of a drug deal or was in the wrong place at the wrong time—same thing, when you came down to it.
With any luck he'd recover without any complications, but unless he took care of himself there was no guarantee.
And the amnesia thing, that could be...well, if he ran true to form they would probably never see him again.
She wished him well.
* * *
"Anybody hear from him?"
"You know how he is, he's probably just working a case, he'll check in when he's free. Let's order—Chinese okay with everybody?" He reached behind him to get the take-out menus.
"You're just taking advantage of him not being here to not eat pizza."
"Y'know, you'd think that will all the money he had, dude would be a little more upscale in his food tastes."
"Pizza, corn dogs and funnel cake; comfort food."
"And he still has a six-pack, the bastard."
* * *
He was laying in the too soft mattress which was making his back ache, listening to the snoring coming from the next bed. His memory was still gone and, try as he might, the best he could do were brief flashes of half formed images or phrases which disappeared as soon as they floated through his mind. There was some part of his brain which found this so frightening, so terrifying, that he came to the conscious conclusion that this was, in fact, not happening. He was dreaming and the fleeting thought of a man who had some connection to either oil or TV (or both) in a shower being a dream made him smile, though he wasn't sure why. Oh yeah, it was from old TV show. Stupid.
That had to be what was happening; one of those nightmares where you know you're dreaming but you can't wake yourself up.
It was the only thing that made sense and the only way he could understand what was going on—if it wasn't real than maybe he hadn't been beaten, maybe he had people who cared about him and would be looking for him if he went missing.
Flashes of what might have been memory came and went all day; a large, well tended lawn, an impression of enclosed dark coupled with a feeling of cold and dank, a half memory of an English accent telling him to wake up, the sound of fabric flapping in wind—a flag? A coat? A tent flap? He didn't know.
The calluses on his hand, if he could remember where he got them and why, maybe that would be the key. He'd have a clue about his job, maybe a hobby. It could be the key.
His head still hurt, though not as much and the painkillers weren't as needed as they were a couple of days ago. His face was still a mess, swollen and bruised. Maybe when it healed and he knew what he really looked like, maybe that would help.
He fought the panic rising again.
TBC