She gave me a sweet smile. “I hate to disturb your rest, dear, but I need to take your vitals quickly.”
At my scowl, her smile dimmed a little. I yanked at my shackles. “What did I do?”
“Nothing.” Her voice was equal parts annoying and soothing. “It’s for your protection. You were twisting and turning so much in your sleep that we thought you’d hurt yourself.”
I stared at her because that was clearly a lie. Fuck you, Brenda. Fuck you and all those puppies on your shirt. “I’m awake now. I guess we can take them off.”
“In a little bit,” she said evasively, and I glared. “The doctor will be in shortly.”
Well, good. I sat up as much as possible and scrubbed at my eyes with my hands, trying to look alert. When he showed up, I had a few things I wanted to say, and I couldn’t do that looking like I’d just landed a starring role in Zombieland. Nor was I willing to sleep any longer handcuffed to a bed like a common criminal.
My efforts were for naught. It was hours before I gave up staring at the door. Apparently, the doctor will be in shortly was just nurse code for get comfortable, sucka. I succumbed to a short nap. Then a long nap. I woke up again and flicked through the channels on the TV. As I passed one bland channel after another, I built up a fresh head of steam. I wasn’t a goddamned prisoner. I’d done nothing wrong…well, as far as I knew. I was the victim here. Whatever cop had been in here while I was sleeping had no right to handcuff me.
By the time lunch rolled around, my anger had withered away to nothingness. I was pathetically hungry, and hunger had a way of making a person abandon all principles. Food services brought me a pitiful-looking turkey sandwich adorned with limp lettuce, some lime and orange Jell-O—because it’s not a party until you had two colors of Jell-O—and two cartons of cranberry juice. I sneered at my tray for about five seconds before I wolfed it all down. Then I stared out the window a while, looking at the trees.
It was hard to avoid my reflection. My hair was shaved down right above my right ear, which made me look strange. I wasn’t sure I wanted to shave the rest down to match. The skin there was puckered and red from my wound and their efforts to fix it. I grimaced and looked away.
By the time the doctor finally came in, I was sleepy again and irritable. He was fresh-faced and rosy-cheeked, and I hated him pretty much immediately. He introduced himself as Dr. Michaels.
“How’re we doing today?” he asked.
“I’m pretty sure even my insurance provides me with an adult doctor,” I said acerbically.
His cheeks got pinker, but he ignored me. The fact that he was a goddamned professional annoyed me even more. “Can you tell me who you are?”
Can you go get me a doctor over the age of ten? “I would if I knew.”
“Okay, we won’t worry about that right now. Can you tell me how you were injured?”
“Is that what we’re calling a gunshot to the head?” I yanked at my wrists again.
A wry smile pulled at his lips. “Obviously, you like to answer questions with questions, but that's all I know about you. And that you have O neg blood.”
“Well that wraps up this mystery, I guess.”
“You gave us quite a scare, Maxim.”
“Maxim?” I squinted at him. “Why would you call me that?”
“That’s what the tattoo behind your ear says. We thought it could be your name.” He shrugged. “Even if it isn’t, it’s better than John Doe.”
Marginally. “I don’t want you to call me that,” I said with a slight frown. I wasn’t even really sure why. I just knew I didn’t like the sound of it.
“Is there some reason you have an aversion to that name?” he asked carefully.
Is there some reason you’re determined to piss me off today? “No,” I said. He continued to eye me, probably hoping that I would spontaneously become his chatty best friend. I quickly changed the subject. “What’s wrong with me?”
He looked vaguely disappointed that I didn’t offer him a friendship bracelet. “You have what I would classify as acute retrograde amnesia, probably as a direct result of the trauma to your head. The good news is that it seems as though your episodic memory is more affected than your semantic memory. Of course, we’ll have to do more testing to be sure and have you meet with a neurologist….” He glanced down at my chart as he ticked off the items on his checklist of everything I absolutely didn’t want to do. “At some point, we’ll probably try and assess your ADL skills—”
“Which means what?”
He chuckled as he glanced up from my chart. “Oh, sorry. Sometimes I forget not everyone is in the field. Acronyms are life, you know?”
I stared at him coldly. If someone didn’t get this sunshiny motherfucker out of my sight, I was going to do something I would regret but definitely enjoy.
He cleared his throat as the awkward pause stretched on. “Anyway, it stands for Activities of Daily Living. We want to see how you operate when you’re doing things you’ve done your entire life. Using the bathroom, getting undressed, tying your shoes—”
“I get the picture. What did you mean by episodic and semantic memory?”
“Simply put, the trauma to your head probably affected other areas of your brain than the hippocampus, where new memories are stored. That’s why you don’t seem to have a problem with general knowledge like colors and shapes, but you can’t remember specific events in your life.”
My brow furrowed as I processed that, and Dr. Michaels didn’t rush me. “I remember Gray, though,” I finally said. “I remember him…what he looks like. Sounds like.” Tastes like. I left that part out. “I remember my mother. I remember some events in my life, just not the ones that led me to a bullet in the head.”
“Ribot’s law,” he said with a faint smile. “Some events nearest to the time of the trauma won’t be recovered. The neural pathways of newer memories aren’t as strong as the older ones. Years of retrieval and consolidating those memories with other memories make them strong.”
“I can’t remember my own name,” I said quietly. “That pathway should be strong as hell.”
“Someone took a blowtorch to your mental file cabinet, Maxi—” He halted and changed course quickly. “—guy. You’ve got papers flying everywhere right now, and it’s going to take a while to get them in order.”
I followed that example easily enough. “But some stuff is burned forever.”
“The brain can be a tricky, delicate thing. For all that we know about it, neurology isn’t static—no field of medicine is. And before you ask, there is no cure,” he said gently. “Rest is about all we can provide as you heal from your injury. Then we’ll try and transport you to a familiar environment that could potentially help you recover some of your memory.”
“I don’t know where I come from,” I said, my voice tinged with frustration. “How are we going to find a familiar environment?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One step at a time.” He checked his chart again. “Have you gotten any surgery done out of the country?”