Stolen Memories. Liz Johnson
blinked and tried to ask who, but her voice cracked. Only a croak escaped before Tammy pressed a straw to her lips. “Drink a little bit of this.”
She did as the nurse instructed, the tepid water like a creek in the Sahara, soothing her throat as she swallowed it but leaving most of the area untouched. She tried for a longer sip and more water but choked on it. Tammy pulled the cup away and patted a tissue where a trickle had escaped down her chin.
She jolted at the touch, pain searing to the bone.
“I’m sorry. Your stitches are probably still a bit tender. But you’re healing nicely.”
Healing? How long had she been in the unit? How had she gotten there? Because she’d just been—
“If you’re ready, I’m going to let Detective Jones know that he can come in and see you. He’s been waiting to talk with you for three days.”
She tried to shake her head. A detective? As in a police officer? Why were the police coming to see her? What had she done?
She didn’t want to see anyone, let alone a detective. But Tammy disappeared before she could get her body to respond. Everything was moving slower than it should. Her muscles, her joints, her brain.
Only the low hum of Tammy’s voice carried across the room. “Now remember, she hasn’t even seen the doctor yet. Don’t give her a hard time.”
A deep voice agreed that he’d try not to.
As if to show off just how slow her mind was moving, Tammy reappeared almost the instant that the conversation ended, one hand resting on an arm that belonged to someone just outside her range of vision. “This is Detective Jones. He’s with the Minneapolis P.D. I’ll let you two talk while I call the doctor.”
Tammy disappeared. And then a face edged with dark hair appeared right above her. Eyes like deep amber seemed to smile even though the line of his mouth never twitched, and he pressed a hand against the mattress next to her arm, never quite touching her. But she could feel his presence, his strength.
She let out a slow breath.
“De—” Her voice cracked, and he held up a hand to stop her.
“Please. It’s Zach.” Generous lips formed the words, but they seemed to take a long time to reach her ears. He spoke with a familiarity that she couldn’t place. Was she supposed to know this man? “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” Apparently not. Thank goodness. “I’ve been checking in on you every day. The doctor said you thumped your head pretty good, but the swelling has been going down.”
How was she supposed to respond? “That’s good...I guess.”
“It is, indeed.” His lip twitched, but he didn’t give her more than half a smile. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he continued, “Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”
She wanted to shake her head, but then he’d come back and interrupt her sleep again. She really just wanted to drift back into oblivion where it had been warm and quiet. Where there’d been no pain and her stuttering thoughts were neither important nor questioned.
“Do you remember how you got here?”
She thought about it for a long moment. Blinking her only mobile eye—why wouldn’t her other eye respond?—she tried to peek around the curtain in her mind, to reveal the corners she couldn’t quite make out. The sheet wouldn’t budge, and the harder she tried to move it, the more her head throbbed.
Finally she shook her head.
He scratched at the little point of his chin, his smile dimming for a brief moment, the lines at the corners of his eyes disappearing. “That’s all right. We’ll come back to it. You’ve been through a pretty big ordeal.”
Oh, really? What had she been through that left her straining to uncover her memories and answering a strange detective’s questions? He’d said that it was nice to meet her, but he’d come into her room like he belonged there. Clearly he’d been waiting for her to wake up, and Tammy had gone straight to him. But she wasn’t expected to know him. Why did he seem to know her?
She wanted to ask, but the words just weren’t there.
Zach brushed a wayward strand of dark brown hair off his forehead with the back of his hand, plastering an easy grin in place. Really, it wasn’t so much a smile as it was a visual encouragement, like if he kept looking at her like that she’d be able to get up right then and walk out of this room. “Let’s try something a little easier. We’ve been calling you Julie Thomas because you were found in the park on Thomas Road across from Jack and Julie’s Grill.” So he didn’t know her, and she wasn’t supposed to recognize him. Relief washed over her like the bath she craved. “We didn’t find your ID.”
“It’s in my purse.” It was always in there.
He shook his head slowly. “We didn’t find a purse, either.”
She tried playing out all the movements she’d made before losing her bag. But she didn’t even know where to start. And every possible step was blank. No context. No location. No memories.
“Maybe you can tell me your real name?”
She nodded slowly, controlling every movement to keep the pain from flaring up again. Of course she could. There were just some things a woman never forgot.
He lifted his thick eyebrows as though his anticipation grew with every tick of the clock.
Closing her eye and swallowing against the sandpaper in her throat, she opened her mouth and tried to form the word.
But it wasn’t there.
The name she’d surely heard thousands of times floated just out of reach. Like the string on a balloon caught in the wind, it danced away until her lips sputtered and a tear leaked down her cheek.
Dear God, I don’t even know my own name.
TWO
Zach hated to see a woman cry. More than he despised all-night stakeouts and stale doughnuts, he hated when a woman cried.
He cleared his throat, offering a low whisper. “Your name. Can you tell me your name?”
“I don’t re-remember.” Her words, broken by a soft sob, barely made it to his ears.
He swung another glance across the room to see if the nurse had heard the same thing that he had, but she had yet to return with the doctor.
Turning back to Julie, he leaned a little closer. Maybe he’d misunderstood. “You don’t remember?”
She shook her head again, uneven brown locks falling just onto the white bandage taped to her forehead. “I’m not— I can’t—” She looked away before blinking one watery eye filled with more questions than he could answer. A trembling reached her bottom lip, and she sank her perfectly straight teeth into it. But that wasn’t enough to stop the returning tears from escaping closed lids. Moisture appeared even at the swollen seam of her left eye, still purple and red like an overripe strawberry.
Taking a deep breath, he did the only thing he could remember doing the handful of times Samantha had cried in his presence. With the tips of his fingers, he patted her forearm gingerly, avoiding the patch of road rash just below her elbow. She must have caught herself there because the scrape covered a good bit of real estate.
At his touch, Julie jerked her arm away, then squeaked as every muscle in her body tensed. The veins in her neck popped out, her lips pulling back to reveal clenched teeth.
“It’ll be all right.”
The words didn’t hold much weight. How could they? The only person who could help him solve her case couldn’t remember her own name. She was locked somewhere in her own mind, and he had yet to decipher a shred of evidence to help her fill in the missing pieces, to figure out who had left her beaten and