Exposed

by Jasinda Wilder

  I think back. When I woke up, I was unresponsive. Awake, but not all there. It took time before I could even focus my eyes. Longer still before I could understand questions, or respond. I couldn't speak. Whether it was a cognitive problem or physical, doctors weren't sure. But as Caleb spent more time with me, I started to speak. Mimicking words, showing comprehension. I have no memory, however, of being told how long I was in a coma for. All of this that I know, I only know because Caleb told me. My actual memories of the time immediately after I woke up are extremely hazy.

  I shake my head. "I--I don't know, no. I--Caleb never told me. I never thought to ask."

  He just nods. "None of the coma patients I found out about fit your description, even physically speaking, symptoms or whatever else aside." A sip of coffee. "So I went back farther. Year by year, searching for coma patients who were admitted with no identification. A 'Jane Doe,' they call them. I spoke to hundreds of doctors and nurses, and no one knew anything."

  "You did all this? The searching?"

  He shrugs. "I told you I'd find proof. I'm still working on it, but it takes time. Maybe I should sell my businesses and become a private investigator, you know? I've got a knack for it, I think." A wave of his hand. "Point is, yes. I've spent every waking moment, and most of the hours I should have been sleeping, looking for information on you. I went back three years before I found anything."

  He pauses, I don't know why. I am frustrated, curious, fearful. "And? What did you discover?"

  "In 2006, there was a car accident. Three passengers. Mom, dad, a teenaged girl."

  "A car accident?" It is hard to swallow. "In 2006? Nine years ago?"

  He nods. His voice is tender, hesitant. "Details are sketchy. The mother and father were killed instantly. The young girl was in the backseat; somehow she survived. She was brought to the hospital, but again, the details on how she got there are murky at best. I spoke to a nurse who was working the ER that night, and she remembers only that the call came in, a sixteen-year-old girl with severe cranial injury, unconscious. That's all she knew. She worked on the girl. They were able to save the girl's life, but she didn't wake up, and was transferred to a different floor of the hospital. The nurse lost track after that, because shit, ER nurses in Manhattan . . . they see dozens, hundreds of patients every day. Can't keep track of 'em, you know?"

  "A car accident?" I'm dizzy. "Not a mugging?"

  "The nurse described you exactly, just younger. Dark skin, black hair. Beautiful. Latin, Mexican or Spanish or something. She described your injuries. Where you've got your scars." He touches his hip, where I have a scar. His head, where I have another, beneath my hair. "And that person, if it's you, was in a car accident. No question about that part."

  "So . . . if the hospital couldn't identify me, how could you?"

  "The city, the hospital, the police, they're swamped, you know? Like, they've got thousands of cases, thousands of missing persons and mistaken identities and unsolved deaths and Jane or John Does. So, I'm not excusing the fact that they gave up the search, just putting some perspective on it. They put some effort into it, but without a good reason they just can't keep spending the manpower on something forever. It wasn't a crime that landed you in the coma, just a car accident. Not an unsolved murder, or something like that. So they gave up. You were in a coma. Things get glossed over, forgotten about." He lifts a shoulder. "Whereas I have the resources, the time. And I have the motive to keep looking. So I did."

  "You found me."

  He nods. "I found you. Or rather, first, I was able to track down the car. Every car has a unique number--a vehicle identification number, what they call a VIN--and when the police show up on the scene, they record that number, and when the wreckers take a trashed vehicle to a yard, they record that number, and the salvage yard where the car ends up reports that number . . . everyone involved with disposing of a wrecked vehicle has that VIN. That car is kept track of scrupulously. It's kind of weird, actually, considering how easily people can be lost. But anyway, I was able to get access to that police record, find the VIN. This is basic shit, okay? There's no reason they couldn't have done this, but they didn't. What I found out is the car was a rental. That was part of the problem, what makes it tricky, because not all rental companies keep the best records. Like, the big-box rental places like Avis or Budget or whatever, they keep extensive records, but smaller places don't, necessarily." He waves a hand. "So I traced the car to the rental service, and convinced them to help me find the original paperwork. Took some convincing, because this rental service was kind of sketchy. They didn't take a lot of information, didn't ask a lot of questions, right? Just took a big cash deposit, and a name and driver's license. Even then, I don't think they'd object too hard if someone only had, say, a Spanish license but not an American one, you know?" The waitress comes by, refills Logan's coffee. He sips, continues. "So I offered the guy running the rental service enough cash that he was willing to dig up his old paperwork. The car was rented to Luis de la Vega. Cash deposit, rented for a week. No other info. Just the name, and a photocopy of a Spanish passport. Luis Garcia de la Vega Reyes. With that name, that passport picture, I had more to go on. Such as INS records."

  "INS?"

  "Immigration and Naturalization Service. They keep track of people immigrating to the States," Logan explains. "Luis de la Vega, Camila de la Vega, and Isabel de la Vega immigrated to the United States of America from Spain in April 2004."

  "Isabel de la Vega." I repeat the name, hoping some kind of epiphany will strike me. "Wouldn't it be Isabel Reyes, if my father's name was Luis Reyes?"

  He shakes his head. "I did a brief search on Spanish naming customs, not sure why. One of those Google search rabbit trails, I guess. But apparently in Spain, you're given a Christian name, sometimes a middle one but not always, and then you have two surnames, your father's surname first and your mother's second, but when you introduce yourself in casual, informal settings, you use your Christian name and your father's surname, the first one. So your full name, Isabel Maria de la Vega Navarro, that comes from your father being Luis Garcia de la Vega Reyes and your mother being Camila Maria de la Vega Navarro. So according to that custom, you'd be Isabel de la Vega."

  I try to formulate a relevant thought, a coherent question. "Did you find anything about my parents or me before the accident?"

  "Your father was a skilled metalsmith, specializing in fine gold jewelry. He brought you guys over here because of an opportunity to work for a custom jewelry shop here in the city. He'd worked for himself up until 2004, but then somehow he got in touch with a guy here and decided to move." Logan twists the mug in circles on the Formica tabletop. "It really wasn't hard to find your father. I had his passport ID, so I was able to find him pretty easily. Talked to some people back in Barcelona where you're originally from. Your father's business was suffering, I guess, through no fault of his own. So when he got the opportunity to come here, he did. You were fourteen when you came to the States, sixteen when the accident happened."

  I try to find something more to say, something intelligent, but I am numb and reeling and shocked and unable to think or process or feel. "So you were able to discover all this just . . . by making some phone calls?"

  He shrugged. "Essentially. I mean, I guess I'm downplaying it all a bit. It was a lot of work. I must have made two or three hundred phone calls over the last few days, chased down hundreds of dead ends looking for someone with concrete information on you and your family. And even then, once you guys made it here, the trail sort of goes cold. Your father worked his ass off, seventy and eighty hours a week, and your mom was a maid in a hotel, worked similar hours. Quite a step down for you guys from the life you lived in Spain, is the impression I get. You went to a public high school, but I couldn't track down anyone who actually knew you personally. A couple teachers who taught you, but again this is New York, and the classes are huge and it's hard--if not impossible--for a teacher to recall any particular student, espec
ially one from over ten years ago. You were quiet, kept to yourself, spoke fluent but accented English. Did your work, didn't really stand out in any way. Decent grades, but not great. You were adjusting, I guess. No close friends."

  "Do I . . ." I have to pause to breathe and start over. "Do I have any family? In Spain, I mean."

  Logan shakes his head, his eyes sad. "No, I'm sorry. Your parents were both only children, and their parents died when you were young, when you guys still lived in Spain. I even tracked down where you guys lived here in the city, but the apartment building where you lived didn't keep your stuff after your parents died. I mean, no one told them, right? So they put your stuff in storage for a while in case you came back, but your folks were dead and you were in a coma, and then you woke up not knowing who you were. So eventually they sold it or trashed it."

  "So really, I'm back to where I started. No family, no real identity. No belongings of my own."

  Logan sighs. "I guess so. I guess all that information doesn't really do you any good, does it?" He sounds bitter.

  I realize I'm being incredibly ungrateful. "Logan, I'm sorry. I don't mean to make light of what you've given me. I have my name. I know my parents' names. That is a gift I shall never be able to repay." I place my hands over his, around the coffee mug.

  He shrugs, a gesture of dismissal. "No big deal."

  "It is, though, isn't it? To have my name?"

  His eyes go to mine, and their fierce indigo brilliance pins me. "It's only as meaningful as you make it. It only means something if you do something with it. Identity is what you make of it, X, Isabel, whatever you want to call yourself. And that's really it, isn't it? What you want to call yourself. Who you want to be. All of us are looking for our identity, aren't we? I mean, we grow up, we spend our lives searching for meaning, for substance. To matter. That's why people drink, or do drugs, or gamble, or get tattoos all over their bodies, or make art, or play music in a band, or write books, or sleep with a different person every night. To figure out who they are. For some people, their identity is rooted in their history. I mean, where I grew up, I knew people who'd lived their entire lives in San Diego, never left it. Their parents moved there, and they were born there, and they'll never leave. Their dad was a lawyer, so they'll be a lawyer. That's easy, for them. It may not be much, but it's who they are. Others, it's harder, isn't it? I had to make my own way. I had to decide what I wanted to do with my life. Did I want to be a gangbanger, a drug dealer, a criminal? Did I want to end up dead, or in jail? Then I was a mechanic in the army. And then I was a security contractor, a soldier. And then I was nothing. I was wounded, flat on my back in a hospital with no future and a dead-end past. I had to start over. I had to decide all over again what I wanted. Who I wanted to be. I've always loved creating, using my hands, being active. So I got into house flipping." He flattens his palms on the table, and I can't help but be drawn to his hands, to the weathered lines, the roughness of them. They are such big, strong, capable hands. Hard as rock, rough as cinder blocks. "I ripped up old floors and knocked down walls and tore out cabinets. Stripped the houses down to studs, to bare bones. And I made them new, built new walls, new cabinets, new floors. I made them beautiful, and I sold them. And I turned that into a lucrative business. That's my identity. I build things. I built houses, and now I build businesses and sell them. Kind of like what I did with houses, but for entire companies."

  "You rebuilt yourself."

  He nods. "More than once."

  "How do you do it? How do you build an identity?"

  "Takes guts and determination, I guess. Like anything else in life, really. I mean, you look at your life and your skills and you decide what you like, what feels right, and you follow that where it leads."

  I stare down at the tabletop. "I don't know if I can do that. The life I have, it's not perfect, but it's what I know. And it's all I have. It's all I've ever had. I mean, yes, you've told me I had parents, and that I went to school, but where does that take me from here? How does that help me know what to do about Caleb?"

  I hadn't meant to ask that last question, but it just came out.

  "I can't decide that for you. You have to figure it out for yourself." He won't look at me.

  "I'm sorry, Logan. I don't mean to bring him up when I'm with you. But it's the reality of my life. I know you believe he's bad, and there are parts of him and his life that I don't like. Things that, the more I learn about them, just make me uncomfortable. But he's been there for me since I woke up, Logan. He gave me an identity, what little of one I have. He was with me every single day while I was learning to walk and talk again. I started from nothing. I mean, a lot of the basics came back pretty quickly, but my muscles were atrophied, and the part of my brain that controlled speech had been damaged, so I had to relearn how to walk and talk. The first two years of my life after waking up were spent in physical therapy and speech therapy. I had trouble dressing myself, feeding myself. Caleb was there. He gave me everything I have. I can't discount that because you have a bad feeling about him."

  Logan sighs. "I'm not trying to say he's evil or anything, I just--" He cuts off, wipes his face with both hands, and starts again. "Have you ever asked yourself why he did that?"

  "He was the one who found me."

  "He says." Logan taps the table with the tip of his index finger. "But he also said there was a mugging. Isn't that what you told me? The facts say otherwise. I've seen the police reports. I've seen the photos of the car, the reports of a sixteen-year-old female, unconscious and unresponsive, with severe cranial trauma. I've seen the medical reports, saying you might never wake up."

  "Why would he lie?" I ask.

  "I don't know," Logan says. "I don't know. That's a question for him, and it's not one I can ask."

  "I don't know if I can either." I feel faint, again.

  My chest feels thick. The walls feel as if they're closing in. The back of the booth has hands, somehow, clutching at my throat. The world spins.

  Lies. Truth. Distortions. Facts.

  It all twists like smoke from an extinguished candle blown by a breath. Mixes, shifts, shapes contorting.

  I'm up, out of the booth, tripping over my feet. I'm outside, and it's morning now. Sun streams from between the canyon walls of the buildings, casting a broad path of golden light onto the street, onto the sidewalk, washing over me. I walk, trip, stumble, run.

  I can't breathe.

  I can't see. This isn't a panic attack, this is . . . something worse. My heart is crashing and frantic and I am collapsing. Am I dying? Perhaps that wouldn't be so bad.

  I catch up against a sign pole, the metal cold against my cheek.

  I realize I'm crying and chanting, "Isabel . . . Isabel . . . Isabel . . ."

  Warm strong hands pull me back against a broad chest. A voice like sunlight murmurs in my ear. "You're okay. Breathe, baby. Take a deep breath and let it out."

  That's not what he's supposed to say. It won't help. Telling me to breathe won't make me breathe. He's not saying the right words.

  "I'm Madame X," I whisper, hoping maybe if I say the words, it'll work the magic just the same, it'll force oxygen into my lungs and slow my frantic heartbeat. "I'm Madame X. You're Caleb Indigo. You saved me from a bad man. I am safe with you. It was just a dream. Just a dream."

  I repeat this several times, and it doesn't help.

  I hear a strangled breath behind me, feel lips brush my earlobe. His arms are crossed over my chest, like iron bands. "God, he's got you fucking brainwashed." The sound of Logan's voice as he says this is feral, rage-infused. Bitter.

  "It--it calms me down when I have a panic attack," I manage.

  "Well, let's try something new, okay? You're Isabel. You are strong. You are safe. You don't need anyone."

  I can't. I can't say those words. I try, though. I try. "I--I'm . . . Isabel. I am Isabel. I am Isabel." I shake my head. "I'm not. I'm not Isabel. I'm not. That's not me anymore. I can't be her, she died. I died. On the
operating table, I died. They brought me back, but I died. My heart stopped for almost a minute. I died. Isabel de la Vega died."

  "Then be someone else."

  "Who?" I cry; it is a sob. "Who else can I be? I am Madame X."

  "Is that who you want to be?"

  "I don't know!" I twist in his arms, press my cheek to his chest. "I don't know, Logan. No, I don't want to be Madame X anymore. I want to be someone new, but I don't know who. I don't know who, or how to decide."

  "You are strong. You are safe. You don't need anyone."

  "That isn't true."

  "Maybe not yet. But it can be." He touches my chin with a fingertip. "Look at me, honey. Have you ever heard the phrase 'fake it till you make it'?"

  I shake my head. "No, I haven't."

  "Sometimes it's all you can do. Pretend you're okay. Pretend you're strong. Pretend you don't need anyone. Fake it. Fake it for yourself, for those around you. When you wake up, when you go to bed, keep faking it. And eventually, one day . . . it'll be true."

  I have no answer. I'm spared from having to find one by the arrival of the Maybach. The long, low vehicle slides to a stop beside us.

  You are on the far side, behind Len, the driver.

  The window slides down, and your dark eyes fix on me. "Get in, X. Now."

  "How about you let her decide what she wants, Caleb?" Logan asks, not relinquishing his hold on me.

  "This is none of your business," you say. "And get your hands off her."

  "I will if she tells me to."

  "Would you like to go back to prison, Mr. Ryder?" you ask, your voice far too quiet. "I can arrange that, if you wish."

  Logan tenses. Clearly that threat holds weight.

  I feel like a bone being fought over by two dogs. I dislike it intensely. "Stop. Both of you. Just . . . stop." I turn to you. "How did you find me, Caleb?" I ask.

  "You are mine. I will always be able to find you."

  "She's not yours, asshole," Logan growls. "She's hers."

  And then Len is out of the car, tall, wide, eyes soulless and roiling with death. A pistol emerges from beneath Len's blazer, black and big and frightening. The barrel touches Logan's head.