Thank you for the sweets reviews! Glad you've enjoyed the cuteness, cause now we're back to the angst. . .
Chapter 9
The way he looked at her instantly told Clara that something wasn't right, but she refused to give in to her fears and believe the worst. It couldn't be. She simply would not allow it.
"John," Clara said urgently and squeezed his hand, "It's me. Clara. Your wife."
Even now that the sedation was lifting there was no sign of recognition in his eyes, not even a glimmer of it. John looked at her with the odd fascination of their early days of friendship, but no more.
Then finally he scoffed. "I think I knew if I was married to you," John said, a smile on his lips.
"But you are!" she almost shouted back and then suddenly Clara felt a hand on her shoulder. She struggled against it, but eventually Dr Jones managed to drag her away from the bed.
"Let me go!" Clara protested instantly and tried to shake the doctor off.
"Please, Mrs Smith, your husband needs rest," Martha Jones told her calmly.
"No! I'm not leaving him. John!" She turned around to where John was slowly scrambling into a sitting position. "Tell her I'm not leaving!"
Yet John said nothing at all and when the nurses came to Dr Jones' aid Clara had no other choice but to let them walk her outside and she vowed to save the yelling for the moment John couldn't hear her.
"What do you think you're doing?! Let me see my husband!" Clara shouted at the young doctor as soon as the door had closed behind them, "I need to know what's wrong with him!"
"Mrs Smith, please, calm down," Martha Jones said in an infuriatingly calm tone, "Your husband needs rest above all."
"Why didn't he recognize me?" She demanded to know, the panic showing in her voice, "Why doesn't he know me?!"
The doctor took a moment to reply and inhaled deeply before she spoke. Even though Clara had been yelling at the woman her voice still remained calm. "Your husband may suffer from a retrograde amnesia. It can happen after a head trauma, but we will need to run further tests. In most cases the memory returns after a few days."
For the first time since she had stepped outside Clara seemed to take a breath. Amnesia. John couldn't remember her. He couldn't remember the past five years of his life. "And in the worst cases?" she demanded to know.
She heard Dr Jones inhale sharply. "In rare cases the patients don't remember at all, but that really is the rarest exception, Mrs Smith. In the meantime there are things you can do to help him remember. Old photographs, music, familiar places. But for now he still needs rest and we need to run more tests. Please, go home, get some sleep if you can, come back tomorrow."
"I can't just leave him here," Clara protested weakly and slowly but surely she felt the exhaustion creep up on her along with her tears.
Dr Jones placed her hand on Clara's shoulder in a comforting gesture. "Your husband is in good hands, I promise. Come back tomorrow when you're both more rested."
Finally Clara nodded and slowly turned around and headed out of the hospital, but not without glancing back at the door to John's room a few more times before she finally turned around the corner.
When Clara stepped outside she felt as if she had been drained of all her energy. She just wanted to lie down next to John and sleep in his arms until this nightmare was over, but before she went home she still had one more thing to do. Clara drew her phone from out of her pocket and dialled the one number she almost knew by heart by now because she must have called it about thirty times in the past few days.
"Hello, this is Missy. I switched off this annoying device because I'm currently on the Bahamas, lying on the white sand beach and drinking a cocktail. I may or may not come back, but if I do I might call you if you leave a message after the beep."
"Missy, this is Clara. Again. Please, call me as soon as you get this. John needs you," she paused, "I need you."
John was used to being tired, but what he felt right now was a whole new level of exhaustion and he also knew it probably came from the sedation they had given him. Whatever they had done that for. He should probably start to try to make sense of everything that was happening around him – the hospital, the pretty woman named Clara who said she was his wife, the nurses and doctors, but he felt too tired to even form a coherent thought.
Then the door to his room opened once more the young doctor stepped inside, wearing a friendly smile on her face.
"Hello, Dr Smith," she said, "I'm Dr Martha Jones and I'm here to make sure you're back on your feet soon."
John let his gaze wander down his body and suddenly noticed a dull ache in his left leg that he hadn't really been aware of before. His sense were only slowly returning to him. He tried to move it, but soon realized that there was a cast restricting any possible movement.
"I know you don't remember me, but we've met before, here at the hospital," she told him with a smile, "You instructed the new doctors on their first day shortly before you left. I was one of them and I must say I was quite sad when you quit. You were the best instructor we had."
John frowned at her. "When I quit? Quit what?"
Dr Jones looked at him for a moment and John instantly recognized that flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. He was a doctor as well, he knew that look and he knew she was trying very hard to find a gentle way to break some bad news to him.
"Do you know why you're here, Mr Smith?" Martha Jones asked kindly.
Suddenly John thought that that should have been the obvious question from the beginning, that he should know the reason he was lying in a hospital bed with a cast around his leg, but he didn't.
"What is the last thing you remember before waking up?" she went on when he failed to reply.
"Uhm," John paused, thinking about his answer for a moment. He had woken up in a hospital bed, staring in the large, brown eyes of that pretty woman, but what had happened before that? "I'm not sure. I remember the hospital, going to work here. And I had an argument with my best friend on the phone. She told me I'm working to much."
He watched as Dr Jones took a deep breath. "You were in an accident a few days ago. A car hit you while you were crossing the road and you broke your leg and suffered a head trauma. You spent the fast few days in a medically induced coma before we woke you up today."
"That explains the cast," he mumbled more to himself than anyone else.
"I think you may be suffering from retrograde amnesia because of the trauma," the doctor said carefully, eyeing him closely as if waiting for his reaction. Yet John wasn't sure how he was supposed to react. What did she expect of him? "Can you tell me what year it is?"
John blew the air out between his teeth. "Uhm, I think that should be. . . 2012? Why? Is that the year?"
"It's 2017," Martha Jones explained.
"Oh," John uttered, not really knowing what else to say. 5 years. If Dr Jones was right, he had lost five years. Shouldn't he feel sad about that? Angry? Panicked? But how could he when he didn't even know what he had missed during that time?
Then suddenly it started to dawn on him.
"That woman, uhm, Clara? Is she really my wife?"
Martha Jones nodded.
"Is she still here?"
"No, but she will come back tomorrow. She's been here every day," she told him, "You can talk to her when we're done with the test, but for now you should try to get some sleep. Maybe you'll remember a little more in the morning. After all, you've only just woken up."
Dr Jones smiled at him as she rose from her chair and left his room, leaving John on his own again.
Apparently he had lost part of his memory, he had quit his job at the hospital and he had married a woman named Clara in the past five years. John had no idea what he was supposed to think about that. After a moment of consideration he reached for the phone on his bedside table and dialled Missy's number, only to have a very annoying voicemail answer him. His friend was away on holiday, so there was no way of finding any answers until the morning. John thought he should probably use the time until then to get some sleep.