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“I was playing with the dog. Um…teaching her to fetch.”
“What was the date?”
“April…um…” I try to think as my memory focuses a little better. Rinaldo died on the fourth, and the funeral was on the seventh. Four days later Alina was collecting the last of her things. “April eleventh? Twelfth?”
“Mr. Arden,” Dr. Reiss says as she places her clipboard on the bedside table and leans closer to me, “I’m going to tell you some things that are going to be distressful. I need you to try to stay calm for me. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yeah.” I lick my lips. My mouth and throat are still dry. Talking and breathing seems to make it worse. I glance up at the water on the table, and the doctor holds a straw up to my lips again before she continues.
“Today’s date is May twenty-eighth. Mr. Arden, you’ve been in a coma for nearly seven weeks.”
I hear the words, but they don’t quite register. They don’t even make any sense. No one sleeps for seven weeks. I can barely sleep for seven hours.
“How did I get here?”
“Mr. Arden,” she says softly as she leans back on the stool and holds the clipboard to her chest, “you were picked up in an alley. You had a very serious gunshot wound.”
She reaches over and touches the side of my face, right below my jaw.
“The bullet entered your head here.” She lifts her hand and places it on the left side of my head, just above my temple. “It exited here. Odds against surviving such a wound are astronomical, Mr. Arden. Quite frankly, I’m surprised to see you conscious, let alone talking to me coherently.”
Dr. Reiss goes on to explain that I have had multiple surgeries and even had to be resuscitated at one point. The bullet entered with high velocity and miraculously exited without exploding. I had been conscious and talking the entire time I was riding in the ambulance and even joked with the paramedics.
I don’t remember any of it.
“It’s fairly common when you’ve suffered such a massive head trauma,” she tells me. “The events just prior to that time never make it to long-term memory.”
I can only stare at her. I hear what she’s saying, but I can’t quite make sense of it.
Maybe I’m still dreaming.
It doesn’t feel like a dream though. It all seems quite real.
“Where’s Alina?”
“Would that be Miss Marino?”
I nod.
“She’s been here very often, actually. She’s made quite a name for herself.” The doctor chuckles softly. “It’s against hospital policy to allow non-family members into this unit, but when your only listed emergency contact turned out to be deceased, we had to make some accommodations. The administrator wasn’t at all happy when your brother showed up, and we discovered you really did have a next of kin.”
“My brother was here?”
“Twice now,” Dr. Reiss says. “I believe he lives out of state.”
“He does.” I don’t know what to think. How did Bastian even know I was here? Who would have contacted him?
Jonathan. Who else?
“You obviously have a lot of people who care about you,” Dr. Reiss says. “They had to have some adoption records unsealed just to verify the relationship, especially after Mr. Ferris also claimed to be your brother.”
It hurts to smile, but I can just see Jonathan trying to pose as my kin. I’m actually surprised he didn’t have an app for it.
He probably does now.
“Can I see Alina?” I ask.
“It’s two in the morning, Mr. Arden,” she tells me. “However, I think this might just warrant a late-night call.”
