Prologue
Dear Jeff,
Nothing is different here since I last wrote to you. Things never change. Not anymore. That is the one reality I can count on now, other than the sun rising and setting every day. After eleven months, I’ve all but given up hope that we will ever get back to what we used to be. Sometimes I can’t even bring myself to write about what put me here in the first place. It all seems so unreal.
Yet, I continue to write my letters to you, even if I’m the only one that will ever read them. I haven’t seen you in what feels like forever, but I can still remember your strong eyes and the curves of your face. I don’t need a picture to remind me of you—I can’t afford myself that luxury when nobody else has the option.
In medical school, they taught us to be tough; to be the type of person others can count on in a crisis. I know that is what you would expect of me, too. I try every day not to let you down.
I won’t let this defeat me. I won’t lose faith . . .
I’ll write more later. I’m needed now.
Chapter One
“What do we have?” I ask, pulling an elastic band from my wrist to secure my long hair in a ponytail. I run over to help pull the stretcher through the front doors of the base medical clinic. I have to shield my eyes from the setting sun to get a clear look at our new patient.
“Male,” Bill says. “I’d say mid-twenties. He’s bad off, Doc. He ran his pickup truck straight into our rig when we came around a blind corner. He probably didn’t even see us coming.”
Bill tries to explain to me in detail what happened as he and Evan lift the man onto the bed in the examination area.
I quickly check his vitals. “Has he regained consciousness at all since the accident?” I ask them, flashing my pen light into the stranger’s eyes.
“No,” Bill answers. “But he never stopped breathing and he doesn’t seem to be bleeding, other than the cuts on his arm. Must have hit his head or something, poor guy.”
“Evan, can you please track down one of the nurses for me. Try the mess hall, or maybe the—”
“No need. I’m here,” interrupts Holly, coming up behind me. “I heard the truck driving over here and I figured something might be wrong.” I nod at her, knowing that if a crowd isn’t already gathering out front, it will be soon. Our few working vehicles never waste the gas to come back as far as the clinic unless there’s an emergency. And word travels fast around Camp Brady.
“We can take it from here, guys. Thanks for your help,” I say.
“No problem. Just let Colonel Andrews know when the guy wakes up,” Evan tells me.
“Yup,” I respond, “I know the procedures.”
I quickly explain to Holly what I know about our patient as we check him over for injuries. I run my hands through his unruly dark-as-night hair to check for head trauma. Then I re-check his eyes, confirming that his pupils are reactive and responsive to light. Holly and I remove his clothing and do a visual inspection of his body.
“Whoa!” she says. “Kay, I know I’m a nurse and all, and that I should be used to this by now, working on all the ripped bodies of army guys for so long, but . . . wow. Can I call dibbs?”
I roll my eyes at her. “Hol, I’m not sure Tom would appreciate that much. Can we please just concentrate on the patient right now?”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Anyway, Tom and I have an arrangement.” Her eyes continue to peruse his body like a cat that has found a mouse and is eager to eat it alive. I have to admit he is nice looking, in a sexy-rugged-unconscious kind of way. He’s tall, probably at least six feet. He’s got muscles, but not the kind of bulging ones the soldiers around the base have. No, his look like they are from a good hard day’s work, not from pumping iron for hours at the gym when there’s nothing better to do around here.
Our tall, dark stranger does not appear to have much more than a few bumps and bruises. “See here,” I say, pointing out a line of contusions running down his chest, “he was wearing a seat belt.”
“Huh,” Holly ponders. “Old habits die hard I guess.”
“Good thing,” I say, “it probably saved his life.” I continue palpating his chest area and move on to his extremities when I see a tattoo on his left arm. “He’s army.” I show her the tattoo that is similar to a Caduceus except it depicts two snakes around an army knife on top of a red cross. “This is a combat medic tattoo,” I tell her.
Holly’s eyes snap up to meet mine. “Gorgeous and humane, what a combination. The colonel will surely want him to stay with his medical training. God knows you could use the help.”
“We all could, Hol.” I bend down to check his eyes for the third time, knowing that evidence of head trauma doesn’t always present itself immediately. His pupils are still equal and reactive and I notice, now that it’s not so hectic, that he has incredible sapphire-blue eyes. Not that I tell Holly, she doesn’t need another reason to make her swoon over the mysterious stranger.
I love Holly Becker. She is my best friend. She is also one hell of a nurse, even learning more advanced procedures than the others, but she’s kind of a wild child, a wandering soul. Her on-again-off-again boyfriend Tom, bless his heart, puts up with her because she is nice, compassionate and very beautiful. Unlike my nothing-special straight brown hair, she has glorious spirals of golden-blonde locks. She is tall and voluptuous, while I’m of average height and lack her curves. The only thing I’ve got on her are my deep emerald-green eyes, and maybe my trademark freckles that extend from cheek to cheek spanning my nose. I hated the freckles as a child, but once boys discovered me and thought they were attractive, I learned to embrace them.
Holly and I didn’t even know each other until I came to Camp Brady, but we became friends almost instantly. We were bound not only by medicine, but the unfortunate reality that our loved ones might never return home. I watch in a trance as she cleans the abrasions on his arm.
Think, Mikayla! What’s wrong with him?
His vitals are normal, he’s breathing on his own, and he has no obvious injuries. It’s times like this I wish a more experienced physician were around. There is only so much I can do with my limited training. After I run every test possible under the conditions, Holly and I simply make him comfortable and set up an IV to keep him hydrated. “It’s a waiting game,” I tell her. “If he doesn’t regain consciousness within a few days, there’s no telling what will happen.”
She only nods. Holly knows the drill. She was once an army nurse; it’s how she met her husband, Carter, a soldier and part of the 7th Infantry Brigade stationed over in Afghanistan, who are now all among the missing.
The front door of the clinic opens and Major Burnell walks in. “Hey, Dr. Kay, I hear you have a new patient.”
“Hi, John,” I say, knowing he prefers civilians call him by his given name. “We do, but he’s still unconscious so there’s not much to tell at this point. Oh, except that it appears he’s a combat medic based on the tattoo on his arm.”
“Really?” His eyes light up. “The colonel will be pleased if that’s the case.” He looks around the room. “Did he come in with any belongings? Any ID?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I say, “but you can check with Bill and Evan. They were the ones who brought him in.”
“Alright, thanks Dr. Kay.” He gives me a more-than-friendly rub of the shoulders before he turns to leave. “Don’t work too hard. Maybe I’ll see you at The Oasis later?” he asks, referring to the local bar and general nighttime gathering place.
“Maybe. It all depends on our new patient here,” I tell him, glad to have a new excuse not to join him.
When he walks out, Holly asks, “He’s still at it, huh? You’d think after almost a year of your repeated rejections he’d give up already.”
I shrug my shoulders. “You can’t really fault him given the high ratio of men to women around here. I don’t know, maybe if it were under different circumstances, I might even date him. If he weren’t so creepy, that is.”
She sees my frown. “Kay, maybe you should then, or if not him, someone. It’s been almost a year.”
“I know that, Holly,” I say, using her full name so that she knows I’m serious, “but I’m not ready to give up hope yet. I don’t fault you or anyone else who has, but please, just respect my decision.”
She walks around the bed to pull me into a hug. “Okay. And I do know how you feel. I just want you to find some sliver of happiness in this God-forsaken place.” I nod my head at her and continue to embrace her while I stare down at the unconscious man lying on the bed.
~ ~ ~
The past twenty-four hours were spent with all the medical staff covering a shift—something we have to do on any occasion when one of our eight-hundred or so residents must be monitored continuously. Nancy, our oldest and most experienced nurse, took the first overnight shift. Holly and Jamie split the day shift. Jamie is a registered nurse who used to be a charge nurse at a large hospital in Tampa. She’s only thirty years old but sharp as a tack. The problem with her is that she’s just smart enough to think she’s a know-it-all but not trained enough to actually be one. She’s all too quick to point out my own limited training that ended during my second year of residency. Needless to say, we aren’t BFFs.
Dr. Jacobs is the senior physician here. However, he is almost useless when it comes to practicing emergency medicine considering he’s a psychiatrist who did his residency over forty years ago. He’s more of the administrative head of the clinic. All eyes still look to me when it comes to urgent medical issues. At twenty-seven, it’s a heavy burden to bear, but what choice do I have?
This evening, I take over for Holly who reports no change in our patient’s status. I sit by the tall stranger’s bed and read a book by the dim light of the setting sun shining through the window behind me. After a while, I get bored and decide to read to him. I’m a few chapters into an old Stephen King novel—not my favorite genre but pickings are slim—when he finally stirs.
“Uhh . . .” he mumbles. I quickly toss the book aside and check his vitals. He struggles to open his eyes and then under heavy lids, he looks up at me, confused and frightened.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, grabbing his hand to calm him. “You’re going to be okay. Can you speak?” He mumbles a few incoherent words as he stares at me. This is a positive sign, but I still won’t be able to assess brain function unless he can speak to me. I pull away to take my seat again, but he won’t let go of my hand. He’s scared—that’s another positive sign. If he were severely brain damaged, he wouldn’t be scared. Fear is something you only experience if you have most of your wits about you.
So I sit and hold his hand. I hold it for what seems like hours until his falls away, going limp as he slips back into unconsciousness. When I’m no longer holding it, I’m aware of the loss I feel at its absence. Of how our hands fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Of how nice it felt to have a man’s hand in mine after all this time.
Holly comes to relieve me in the morning, but I send her away. “He was in and out of consciousness all night so I’m going to stay with him. Can you go by the daycare for me and check on Katie and Cole to make sure their stomach bugs are gone? And then go see if Mr. Jones is doing okay without his blood pressure meds?”
“I’m on it, boss. I’ll come back later to let you have a nap.” She picks up a small medical bag and heads back out the door.
The dark-haired stranger’s hand keeps feeling frantically around the bed every so often when he comes to. Once I realized that he was searching for my hand, I just decided to leave it on the edge of the bed. From time to time, he will open his eyes and stare at me. Sometimes he will mumble, but so far I’ve been unable to understand anything.
Almost forty-eight hours after they brought him in, he fully wakes up. “Uhh . . .” he tries to speak again. He motions to his mouth with the hand that does not currently have mine in a vice grip. I know he wants a drink. His throat must be incredibly dry and scratchy after two days without taking fluids by mouth. I grab my bottle of water that is sitting on his side table.
“Have a drink, but not too much at first.” He takes the bottle with a trembling hand so I help guide it to his lips. Water spills out the sides of his mouth as he’s drinking like it’s the last water he’ll ever taste. “Whoa, hold on. Go slowly,” I say, gently easing the bottle back down. “You gave us quite a scare. Can you talk? Can you tell me your name?”
“Mmm . . .” he mumbles. He takes another drink and clears his throat. “M-Mitch,” he says with a low, shaky voice.
“Okay, Mitch, I’m going to check your vitals.” He watches me as I take his pulse, which is understandably higher than it was before. His blood pressure and respirations are within normal range.
He breaks his stare and looks around the room at his unfamiliar surroundings. “Where . . . ?”
“You’re at Camp Brady,” I inform him. He looks confused so I ask him some standard questions. “Mitch, can you tell me your last name?”
“Matheson,” he says.
“What about the date. Can you tell me what that is?”
He thinks about my question as his eyes shift from one side of the room to the other. “Um . . . March something?”
I look up at the makeshift calendar on the wall that has been turned to March for a couple of days now. “That’s right. It’s March the third. You were brought in two days ago. Do you remember anything about your accident?”
He stares at me, still confused. “I know you,” he says.
“Yes. I’m the doctor who has been tending to you these past few days. You’ve been in and out of consciousness since you were brought in.”
He looks me up and down and takes in his surroundings again. “Where are your fatigues? Is this a civilian hospital?”
“No, this is Camp Brady,” I repeat, knowing he’s probably still fuzzy about the details. “It’s an army base, but I’m a civilian. Everyone calls me Dr. Kay, but my given name is Mikayla.”
“Camp Brady?” He shakes his head. I can see that he is still clearly confused.
“Yes, Camp Brady. Just outside of Ocala, Florida, remember? You were driving your pickup truck just thirty miles or so from here when you had your accident.”
“Florida?” he asks, as his body stiffens and his eyes go wide with terror. “How . . . uh, why . . .?” He looks around at the table and the floor like he’s trying to locate something. “Um, can I have my cell phone?” he asks in a gravelly voice that’s probably still scratchy from his dry throat. “I’d like to call a friend of mine. Maybe Kevin can explain this.”
Cell phone? He’s asking for a cell phone? I realize in this moment that he has a memory deficit. It’s not all that uncommon to have some memory loss after an accident, but it’s usually a loss of the actual event itself, or the hours and maybe days leading up to the event. He said, correctly, that it was March so I can only assume he’s lost an entire year.
“Mitch, can you please tell me what year it is?” I ask him.
He looks at me like I’m asking a stupid question. When he rattles off the year, my eyes close and my chin falls to my chest as I absorb the reality of what he’s revealed. Two years. He’s lost two whole years. I raise my head and look around hoping Dr. Jacobs will magically appear. He is a psychiatrist. He may know what to do in this situation. But I see that the clinic is empty and Mitch and I are the only two people around.
“Uh, Mikayla is it?” Mitch asks. “You just went completely pale. Is something wrong with me?”
I try to think back to my psych rotation. Can I damage his remaining mental faculties if I tell him?
“Mikayla . . . Dr. Kay, whatever it is, just tell me,” he begs.
“Mitch, first tell me the last thing you remember.”
I sit in stunned silence as he tells me that he remembers flying out of a hot zone with a couple of wounded soldiers. He tells me that one of them, a young man who was only twenty years old, ended up dying from wounds sustained when a car bomb exploded, taking most of his leg off. He talks about a couple of men in his unit that he went out drinking with to toast the young fallen soldier. He tells me every detail, like it was only yesterday, and I didn’t even realize that sometime during his story, he grabbed my hand and is now holding it tight to his side.
“So, you’re a flight medic?” I ask.
He nods his head. “Yeah, a Sergeant.” He looks around again. “How did I get to an army base in Florida? Can I please call Kevin?” Then he looks down at the ground and closes his eyes as a frown crosses his face. “Kevin is my CO, but I guess if I’m in the states I should probably call my dad.”
He reaches up to grab his chest, pinching at the hospital gown between his pectorals, something I noticed a few times when he would come to. “Are you having chest pain?” I ask.
“No, why?”
“Because you keep grabbing at your chest,” I say.
He looks down at himself with his own questioning glance as if his hand has a mind of its own. “No, no chest pain. I don’t know why I did that.” He looks back at me. “Can you please get me a phone?” He’s starting to get irritated with me so I make a decision. Based on his strong vitals and the fact that he’s a medic and probably would understand traumatic memory loss, I decide to tell him.
“Mitch.” I take in a deep breath and blow it out. “It seems you are experiencing a gap in your memory. It may be from the accident, but without the proper equipment, I can’t be sure if you have any swelling in your brain.”
“Gap in my memory? What do you mean no proper equipment? Didn’t you do a CT scan?”
“I’m sorry, no. We don’t have a CT scanner here, but even if we did, it wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?” he asks, clearly in a desperate state of confusion.
“Mitch, I’m just going to come out and say it.” I squeeze his hand tight, the hand that has encompassed mine throughout our entire conversation. “You’ve lost two years of your memory.” When I tell him what year it is, he looks at me in utter disbelief so I quickly say, “Most traumatic memory loss is temporary and does return in time. Since you remembered my face from a few days ago, I’d say you have retrograde amnesia that was caused by you slamming your pickup truck into another vehicle at a high speed, causing your brain to keep moving while your skull was held back thanks to your seatbelt. It’s a condition called DAI, diffuse axonal injury, and it’s common in auto accidents. However, if that’s what it is, you are very lucky as most people never wake up afterwards, about ninety percent if I remember correctly.”
“Two years?” he asks, still trying to absorb the reality of what has happened to him. His hand is holding mine as if he will slip away if he lets go. His bright blue eyes stare into mine begging for answers.
I pray what I’m about to tell him won’t send his body spiraling into a state of shock. “Mitch, there’s more.”
He senses my hesitation and must realize that what I’m going to tell him is even worse than the two-year memory loss he is experiencing. He says, “You can tell me. I’m a combat medic. I’m trained to handle stressful situations. I won’t freak out on you. I’m fine. Just tell me, Mikayla.”
Why is it that I love the way he calls me Mikayla? The way my name rolls over his tongue is sensual and sends a twinge of . . . something running through me. I close my eyes briefly and then I tell him. “It happened about a year ago, on March 31st to be exact, Easter Sunday. As best we can tell, there was a solar flare, one so large that it caused an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse, that took out anything with a semiconductor or microchip, which was virtually everything electronic.”
He looks around the clinic and realizes what he missed before. There are no overhead fluorescent lights on, no humming of medical machines or beeping of monitors. He looks down at his IV insertion site and then glances up at the IV bag that is infusing on a gravity drip. He notices that the room is devoid of technology, resembling what you might see in an early nineteenth century clinic, not the advanced medical clinic he was expecting.
“Oh, my God,” he says with a pale face as he realizes the truth of the words I’ve just spoken.
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