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8
Jess
He didn’t tell me his name.
The thought plagued me. Where everything else seemed to flit through my brain as a mere passing idea, this one stuck like twelve-day-old gum on the bottom of a shoe in one-hundred-degree heat.
Here I was literally lying in a hospital bed with stitches in my head, a cast on my foot, an IV stabbed into the back of my hand, and I had no earthly clue how I got this way. But what was I worried about?
The fact that he didn’t tell me his name before walking out of here. Should I have been horrified by this turn of events? I wasn’t. I just wanted him to come back. How am I supposed to call for him if I don’t know who to ask for?
“How are you feeling, Miss Park?” the kind-faced nurse asked as she stepped close to the side of the bed.
“Confused,” I admitted.
She nodded as if the answer were expected. “You have a head injury and are just coming out of surgery, so it is completely normal and nothing to be alarmed by.”
Easy for you to say. “How long have I been here?”
“You were brought in last night.”
“Were you here then too?” I asked.
“No. My shift started this morning.”
I nodded, trying to remember arriving here, but the memory was gone. If I wasn’t lying here in this bed right now, I might even argue that anything happened at all. But the physical proof was undeniable, so I searched every corner of my brain for information I knew I should have but didn’t. It was like opening a book and finding all the pages blank. How could I read the story if all the words were erased?
I floundered in that void of emptiness, alarmed I’d forgotten so much and anxious I wouldn’t ever remember. “What happened to me?” I finally asked, frightened of that answer too.
“I’m not really sure.” The nurse was honest. “But that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is your recovery.”
But it did matter. I knew it did. I just wasn’t sure why.
“I need to check your vitals and ask you a few questions. I paged for the doctor, so he is on his way.”
I heard her talking but only half listened. Instead, my eyes lingered on the door he’d walked out of as I hugged the soft fabric of his hoodie closer to my chest. The scent of it relaxed me, the mix of chlorine and musk familiar even if I couldn’t place it. I clung to that familiarity because it was comforting and inexplicably made me less afraid.
“He’s not going anywhere.” The nurse’s assertion shifted my attention from the door back to her. “He’s been here all night. Slept in a chair beside your bed.” She gestured to the uncomfortable-looking seat that was pushed against the wall.
“He did?”
“Yes. Apparently, he gave the staff in the ER quite a time when you were brought in. Almost got himself thrown out.”
I felt my mouth drop open.
She chuckled a little beneath her breath, then added, “Even gave the surgeon the third degree before they operated.”
“How do you know if you weren’t here?” I asked, suspicious. What if she was lying? I had no context to be able to tell.
“Nurses talk.”
Well, I didn’t need context to believe people liked to gossip. A surge of warmth and giddiness overcame me, rivaling the pain and frustration dominating my world. I had no recollection of yesterday, but hearing he’d been here made the unknown seem less scary.
Ducking my face into the hoodie, I breathed deeply, feeling like everything I wanted to know was right there on the tip of my tongue but just out of reach.
“Could you get him for me?” I asked, suddenly intensely homesick for a man whose name I didn’t even know. I shouldn’t be homesick. I should be wary.
I was wary. But not of him. That meant something. Right?
