AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes,” I said in a flat tone. “I’m feeling oh so blessed.”
Her smile fell. “Your amnesia will likely clear eventually. It’ll be easier with the help of a loved one.”
Loved one? Did anyone love me? Did I care for them in return? In my heart, all I felt was numbness.
There wasn’t a ring on my finger. I wasn’t married. Good.
I decided then that I wouldn’t rely on a person from Tristan’s old life to tell me who I was. I would figure my truth out on my own. Self-reliance—that felt right.
“The repetition of familiar routines, seeing familiar places and people—that’s what you need. The best way to recover is to ease back into your life,” the nurse said.
What life? I had no idea who I was.
What if my routines included being chased by assassins? Then I’d be stepping into a trap, completely oblivious to the looming danger.
I could trust no one but myself.
“When can I leave?” I asked.
The nurse shot me a small look of concern. “Like the doctor said, we can’t release you until someone comes and can promise to watch over you for forty-eight hours.”
I must have missed that tidbit.
No one would come, no one I could trust anyway. I felt the truth of it in my bones. And if someone was trying to kill me, I wasn’t going to wait to find out.
With a placating smile, I leaned my head back on the pillow. “Okay, thank you. I’d like to take a rest now.”
“Of course,” she said. “If you need anything, push that button on the side of your bed and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
“Great.”I’d push that button over my dead body.I faked a yawn, clasped my hands together over my chest, and closed my good eye all but a peek. Through the thin slit between my lids, I watched the nurse move about, recording machine readings and taking her sweet time doing it.
Eventually she left.
I listened to the clack of her shoes as she retreated into the hall. Then a few moments later, I could hear her muffled voice in the room next to mine.
The timing had to be perfect or I’d end up strapped to the bed with a jailor perched in the corner. Restrained, I’d be as helpless as a newborn when the assassin returned to finish the job.
I couldn’t let that happen.
So I bided my time, waiting for the perfect moment to make my escape.
EIGHT
MORGAN
After about thirty-two hours of waiting, including a sleep in my car last night, and intermittent pleading, I still knew absolutely nothing about the man I’d possibly murdered. How exactly could I convince the receptionist to change her mind about being responsible and following rules and privacy laws?
She looked to be somewhere in her eighties, with a yellowy white pixie cut and a roadmap of laugh lines on her face that spoke to a life well-enjoyed. She smelled like patchouli and lavender. The golden name tag over her collarbone readJulie.
I paced the otherwise dead hospital lobby rolling my shoulders. What had started as a kink in my neck yesterday was now a full upper-body knot of stress.
“Is it too much to ask to get a hypothetical scenario up in here?” I smiled my friendliest smile at Julie the receptionist. “Hypothetical means it’snotabout real people, so there’s no confidentiality broken, no rules even bent.”
“I know what hypothetical means,” she said.
She’d stopped returning my smiles hours ago.
“Of course, of course.” I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it just hung out there, like a fat and sticky frog. “Say we’re rolling with this, and you happened to be talking to yourself saying something like:if some guy happened to be pummeled by a crafting hammer, that hypothetical man totally could have survived.Something along those lines, then I may or may not overhear, and potentially maybe I would hypothetically stop bothering you.”
