Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. Any medical errors are my own. I did as much research as I could, but mistakes are sometimes unavoidable. Please suspend disbelief insomuch as is possible, but please let me know of any glaring errors. I will attempt to fix what I can.

JOHN DOE

"Sir?" The voice cut through the thick fog that had muddled his brain, and he slowly blinked his eyes open. A woman's face filled his vision, and he took a few more seconds to wake fully as she checked his vitals. "Here," she said, stepping on a small pedal to lift the top half of his bed. Once he was in a sitting position, she walked around to his right side and checked a few tubes.

He tried to ask what had happened, but his throat refused to work. He coughed dryly, and the woman gave him a sympathetic smile. He tried to swallow a few times, but his throat still felt like it was on fire.

"Take it easy, sugar," she warned him. "You've been through some kind of hell and you're still recovering." He shifted uncomfortably in his bed, gasping when a stab of pain lanced through him. "Broken ribs," she affirmed. "Try not to move too much." She took a few more readings, then began jotting things down.

"What happened?" he managed to croak.

"I was hoping you could tell us, hon. A couple of campers brought you in early this morning." She pressed a button on the wall beside him, but nothing happened. He clenched his teeth in pain as his arm throbbed, and she made more notes. He tried to push past the pain, tried to think about how he'd gotten here, but he could only shake his head.

"It's alright," she fastened the pen back to the clipboard and laid her free hand on his shoulder. "Let's start with something simple. What's your name? You didn't have any identification on you when you came in."

He opened his mouth to give her an answer, to utter the name he must have said thousands of times, but nothing came out. He tried again, but his mind refused to work. He began to panic and the monitor next to him began beeping rapidly.

"I need you to calm down," she spoke in even tones as the door opened and an older man entered. "Take deep breaths, in and out, just like me," she prompted. "Come on, honey." The man came to his other side, checking readouts and furrowing his brow in concern.

"He shouldn't be awake yet," he admonished, and the woman shrugged and handed him the clipboard.

"He started to wake up a few minutes ago. I checked his chart; he hasn't missed or been given the wrong dosage." She waited a few more moments until her patient had calmed down. "That's it, honey. Good. It's alright," she told him, "you've been through significant trauma. Between that and the medication we're giving you, it's not uncommon for the mind to be a bit sluggish. Just give it a minute."

The doctor looked up sharply from the chart, but didn't comment. Instead, he said, "I'll talk to Dr. Cormick about managing his medication. He might be having a reaction to the cocktail." He scribbled on the paper for a second then handed it back to the nurse. "Floor conference in five."

She nodded and waited until he was out the door before turning her attention back to the patient. "Just close your eyes and rest," she told him. "The best thing for you is to sleep. If you need anything, just press this button here," she indicated the call button next to the bed. "I'm Maggy, by the way."

He registered about half of what she was saying, too preoccupied by the fact that he couldn't remember his own name. He didn't know where he was, or even what had happened to him. He barely noticed when she left him alone, the beeping of his heart monitor the only sound in the otherwise silent room.

He spent the next two hours trying to piece together anything at all. He kept getting fragments of time, voices that didn't make sense, but each time he tried to focus on one his head would scream in pain and he had to take calm, steadying breaths to get his heart rate under control again.

"...please, just let it be over..."

"...I've got you. I'm not letting go..."

"...I don't want to die..."

What the hell had happened to him? A car accident? An attack? A bomb? Whatever it was, it had been traumatic enough to erase not only the event itself, but everything else as well.

Changing tack, he tried to think about himself - about his life before, even just faces or names. Several images flashed across his mind's eye, but he couldn't put a name to any of the faces. A man in a three piece suit with close cropped brown hair. A young, mocha-skinned woman with sharp features and a stern expression. A bespectacled blonde with a teasing smile. Other faces young and old, some friendly and some not, came and went.

By the time the door to his room opened again, his head was throbbing in time with his arm. The doctor from before entered, frowning slightly as he saw his patient awake.

"Good afternoon," he closed the door and moved over with easy strides. "I'm Doctor Stevens, one of your attending physicians. How are you feeling?"

"Arm hurts," his whisper was rough and raw, and Doctor Stevens winced sympathetically.

"We had to intubate you when you first arrived. You lost a lot of blood, and you stopped breathing on your own. Right before you woke up, you starting choking so we removed the tube. Do you remember any of that?" The man paused for a moment, then shook his head. "That's alright," he smiled flatly. "Often when we see this type of severe injury, the brain has troubled recording new memories. I'm bringing in a specialist to talk to you, to see if we can't jump start that brain of yours. In the meantime, I'm here to check on your physical injuries."

"How bad?" He'd managed to swallow a few times, and speaking this time wasn't nearly as painful.

"Other than the head injury, you have three broken ribs on your right side," he said. "It appears that your right arm was outstretched when they were broken. One of them had punctured your lung, but we managed to get it inflated again. Your left arm was dislocated at the shoulder from what appears to be an acute impact. There were leaves and dirt in your clothes, so we deduced that you had fallen as you walked through the woods."

The sound of the leaves crunching beneath his body filled his ears, and he nodded slowly. "I fell," he said.

"Do you remember that?"

"I remember the sound of the leaves," he answered slowly.

"That's good," Stevens made a note on the clipboard. "Any other sounds you remember?"

"Just..." he shook his head and turned his gaze out the window. "I hear voices."

"What are they telling you?" Doctor Stevens was making more notes, and the man knew he sounded more than a little crazy.

"Nothing," he replied. "I think...I think they're from the accident."

"Accident?"

"I remember..." he screwed his eyes tight and clenched his teeth as a wave of pain engulfed him.

"Okay," Doctor Stevens placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it gently. "That's good enough for now. You did great. I really think you should rest now. This type of post-traumatic amnesia usually clears up on its own, depending on the severity of the injury. You didn't lose consciousness for an extended period of time, and you don't seem to have lost any discernable cognitive function. I'll confer with our specialist, but I believe your mind is still trying to sort through whatever trauma you experienced."

"But I'll get my memories back?"

"I can't say right now," Stevens skirted around an outright yes, but he sounded optimistic. "Like I said, the best thing for you right now is rest."

"Thank you," the man offered the best grateful smile he could muster. Doctor Stevens patted him on the shoulder one last time before leaving him alone with his thoughts. It wasn't long until exhaustion crept up on him, and he slept.