Chapter 2

Chapter Two

My name is Adam?

That didn't sound right. The hospital had been calling him John, short for John Doe. One of the nurses affectionately called him Mickey—for what reason he didn't know—but it was nicer in his head than Adam.

The name Adam didn't feel right. It grated and made him close his good eye. Once blind to the room, he could make sense of what he'd been told: Adam, twenty-eight. He didn't feel as young as that. He felt old and broken and exhausted. Surely at twenty-eight a man would heal fast, and wouldn't forget an entire lifetime.

"You know me?" he whispered, eyes still closed, to the guy who'd told him the name.

He heard the sigh in the sterile room, and then the shift of the bed as someone sat next to him.

"I do."

Adam let the words sink in. He had so many questions that this man could maybe answer. Was he, Adam, from Chicago? What had he been doing on UC Campus at some ungodly hour of the morning? Was he a visiting student, maybe? At twenty-eight, that couldn't be right. Maybe he was a mature student then or a visiting lecturer in something? But then people would know him. Why hadn't anyone reported him missing?

The last was the most important to him. They'd abandoned him in this place, with no memories, no family, just a nameless person in the system. Only this morning had he remembered anything. A name, Ethan, and a place, Crooked Tree. Was that what had brought the man here?

"Who are you?" he asked but still didn't open his eyes; to do that would be to admit that a stranger stood in his room knowing more about him than he did himself.

"My name is Ethan Allens. I'm a detective in Missoula."

There went the last of his hope. This wasn't a family member; this was a cop. The cops here, the ones that looked at him with pity, probably called every Ethan until they found someone who knew him.

"How do you know me, then?" He opened his good eye and looked sideways at the cop.

Ethan took a deep breath and exhaled. His hand raised as if he was going to touch Adam's leg, but Adam shied away. Ethan got the message; he dropped his hand back to the bed.

"I knew you as a baby, Adam. I'm two years older than you, and you were always part of my life."

"So why the hell has it taken this long for you to find me?" he snapped. Temper was his friend at the moment, a strong, grasping need for someone to blame about why he was in this damn place with no memories.

"We didn't know you were here," Ethan explained.

"In the hospital?"

"In Chicago."

"At all?"

"No. We haven't known where you were for a very long time."

What did he mean by that? And why did he sound like the world was falling down around him, so damn sad and despairing? "How much time?"

Had it been weeks? Had he come here for some reason without telling anyone and it had been longer than a week? Was he the kind of person to disappear for long periods—a salesperson, maybe?

He looked down at his hands, at the roughness of them, the calluses. He couldn't be a salesperson, he definitely worked with his hands, and the itch of wanting to be outside was like a siren's call.

"Adam…." Ethan paused and swallowed, then looked over at the other cop. In fact he did everything except tell him what he wanted to hear.

"Tell me."

Ethan looked right at him, his face a mask. Adam couldn't tell what the man was thinking until his gray eyes began to fill with tears.

What? What's wrong?

"Twelve years, Adam," Ethan whispered. "You've been missing for twelve years."

Adam stared right into those eyes and waited for more. Explanation, reasons, he didn't care what. When Ethan said nothing, Adam pressed his fingers against his temple; headaches were his constant companion. "Why?" he asked finally.

"You went missing in '04 along with another boy. My brother, Justin. We haven't been able to find you in all that time."

Anger poked at Adam. "Were you even looking? How hard is it to find someone?" Even as he said the words, he wanted to take them back. Not only did sorrow pinch Ethan's features, but regret, or maybe it was shame, crossed his expression. Adam couldn't tell. Maybe he wasn't one of those men who could read expressions and he was thinking all the wrong things.

And Adam knew if someone wanted to hide, they could. The US was one hell of a big place, full of towns and cities where you could lose yourself.

"I tried every day," Ethan said.

He wasn't lying. Ethan was looking at Adam steadily, and there was no guile in his expression.

"You said something about your brother. Justin, you called him."

"He vanished at the same time. Do you remember him?"

Adam searched what little memory he had. He could picture a horse, white with gray patches, and he remembered how to work the TV remote. He could even recall which news stations were his preferred ones to watch. But the names Justin or Adam? Neither meant a thing to him. Apparently the knowledge would mean something to this Ethan guy, so he pushed aside his frustration, searched for his compassion to someone else's need, and shook his head.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I don't know the name. Fuck, I don't even know my own name."

The throbbing in his head was getting worse, and the meds they'd given him were kicking in with a vengeance. His thoughts were turning wooly and unconnected. Damn it, he wanted to know more about Adam.

The door opened. Another man came in—Doctor Armitage, with a clipboard, several interns, and a nurse right behind him. He shook hands with Ethan and joined the little huddle around Adam's bed. In response, Adam scooted up the bed as best as he could and sat cross-legged. This was getting too much. As he moved, he became entangled with the blanket and cursed under his breath.

And now he had Doctor Asshole in his room. Great.

Ethan helped him, tugging at the blanket and holding up a hand to forestall whatever the doc was about to say while Adam got comfortable.

Finally, the doctor began to talk in the detached way Adam was so familiar with. He'd been doing it all week, discussing his case as if Adam weren't in the room. Hence Adam naming him Dr. Asshole. The name fit his complete lack of bedside manner well.

"John Doe presented with trauma to his face, chest, and left wrist?—"

"Yeah," Adam snapped to interrupt the description of all his injuries. "But my head is pretty hard. Designed to take a lot of punishment, it seems."

One of the interns smiled at him encouragingly, but Dr. Armitage was scowling. His expression didn't deter Adam and he waved his good hand to indicate his face.

"Cuts all over," he continued. " They told me the cuts bled out of proportion to their seriousness. None of them will scar, or they don't think so. I had a concussion, or at least they say I did. I don't actually know that for a fact because I was unconscious for a long time. I was in a coma apparently, but only a little one." He indicated the students in the room, assuming his most doctory type voice, mimicking Dr. Armitage. "Now, can anyone tell me what the AVPU scale is?"

Dr. Armitage opened his mouth to stop Adam's diatribe, but one of the interns spoke. She had a faint smile, which only encouraged Adam more.

"Alert, Vocal stimuli, Painful stimuli, Unresponsive. A scale to assess coma," the intern said. She immediately subsided when the doctor sent her a withering glance.

"As I was going to say?—"

" They said they were worried about brain damage," Adam interrupted. "But it's okay, I didn't have any skull fractures or bruising or bleeding on the brain. They also pointed out I have bruising on my left wrist and arm, which my helpful police friend suggested was my way of protecting myself from hits connecting with my face."

Adam lifted his bad arm and winced as he held it up in front of his face. It was, he knew, quite evident to see how the trauma on his wrist lined up with the injury on his eye.

A couple of the interns muttered between themselves. Adam knew he'd said everything he needed to say.

Dr. Armitage interjected and took back control of the assessment. "John Doe has been under my care for six days and is suffering from what is called psychogenic amnesia."

Adam tensed. He hated all this retelling of the whys and the wherefores; he wanted to know when he could get out of here. He didn't like the Doctor. Just because the man was the foremost whatever-it-was in brains and memory didn't make his bedside manner any better.

"I don't need to know the medical details here," Ethan said. Adam looked at him in surprise. "No one does unless it pertains to the case, and I assume the medical files will be appended to all evidence gathered at the hospital."

"I'm sorry?" Doctor Armitage looked perplexed; being stopped in mid flow was something that apparently didn't happen to him.

Behind him, the nurse lowered her gaze to the floor, but not before Adam had seen her smile. The two interns who had been muttering before exchanged pointed looks. The nurse was a pretty, young woman, all blonde hair and wide blue eyes; the kind of nurse you wanted at your bedside—if you weren't gay, that was, which Adam was pretty convinced he was.

Ethan frowned. "You can do all your teaching later. All I need to know is when can I take Adam home?"

Doctor Armitage looked at Detective Manning and back to Ethan. "I, uh, you can't, we don't know who you are…."

"I have full family support, photos, proof, and papers to vouch for me as Adam's representative, from his brother."

"I have a brother?" Adam asked. Of course I have a family; most people have a family. He sounded like an idiot. But a brother seemed a small thing with no mention of parents.

"I haven't told Cole yet, naturally." Ethan indicated the room. "He's a lieutenant in the US Navy and not easy to get hold of by anything except official channels. I have his full authority to locate and return Adam home, should we find him."

"This isn't right," Doctor Armitage said. "I have interns keen to learn about John's condition, and we need more time with John here."

"Adam." Ethan snapped.

"Yeah, Doc," Adam added. "My name is Adam. I'm not a John Doe anymore."

The doctor ignored him. "This case is fascinating and one we'd like to study."

"Fucking hell, I'm in the room," Adam said as exhaustion pulled at him. He leaned back on the white pillows, their softness calling him to sleep. "And if my brother said it was okay…."

"Adam is not a guinea pig," Ethan snapped. "He's going home."

Home? I wonder where home is? I have a brother. Did I know that?

"His scans show everything is clear," the nurse said, reading from the notes. The doctor scowled at her, which looked odd to Adam given he was now laying on his side and everything was slanted. She glanced at him, and there was a definite wink. "If there is no medical reason why he needs to stay, and Doctor McGuire signs off on it, then there is no reason he needs to stay.

"Against medical advice," Adam slurred. He shut his eyes. He could get out of here against medical advice anyway; he wasn't a prisoner if someone knew who he was. And Doctor McGuire… the other doc, the nice one who told him everything was going to be okay. "McGuire," he added.

Or at least he thought he did. Sleep was a mist in his head, and he had no pain.

He slept.