His Revenge Baby: 50 Loving States, Washington

by Theodora Taylor

  It doesn’t surprise me that same guy is now the senior neuro res here. Anyone who works with doctors knows neurologists have a reputation for not being the most sensitive or socially clued in people. Truth is, he might have been right about the program’s intentions when it came to my acceptance. But it doesn’t matter why I was accepted. I chose to come here, and that’s the only thing that matters to me at the end of the day. Still, I can’t help but feel flattered by Ken’s approval. It’s nice to know at least one person at UWV/Mercy thinks I deserve to be here.

  Still, the John Doe upstairs is totally effed. We both know it.

  “The best any of us could do for that guy right now is hope he remembers who he is,” Ken tells me before I leave his office. “Because at this point, that’s the only thing’s going to keep him out of a homeless shelter.”

  Chapter Three

  So yeah, John Doe has a sad story. A really sad story. But you know, shit happens. Believe me, I know that after Chanel’s death. Just this week alone, my attending resident had to pass on two heartbreaking preliminary diagnoses to families who could barely afford to take time off of work to talk with us, much less find the money to pay for what could amount to months or years of treatments.

  I’ve had patients a lot worse off than John Doe. Ronnie Greenwell’s mother broke down crying, even as her daughter sat there and nodded, when the peds attending and palliative care counselor told them we’d run out of treatment options later that day. And this is only a small hospital in West Virginia. I can imagine the number of difficult conversations I’d be sitting in on at a larger facility.

  In fact, I won’t have to imagine it for much longer. Because two weeks ago, I received news that I’d defied the odds of my upbringing, and been matched with a Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at The Children’s Hospital of Seattle.

  Which means in two months, I’ll be out of this backwater regional hospital, and moving on to a new life in the Emerald City after a short visit with my family in California.

  So I really shouldn’t be losing much thought or sleep over an amnesia patient. I mean, yeah…it sucks. As close as my family is, just the thought of John being here in this hospital, all alone, without anyone to help or advocate for him, makes me feel pretty bad. But he’s still alive. He’s not dead or dying, which is way more than some of my past and current patients can say.

  I should be doing any number of things during my lunch hour, including searching for apartments in Seattle. Or getting my monthly call home to my family out of the way. Sandy’s always complaining about me putting it off until the last second.

  So yeah, John Doe’s case is none of my business. He is none of my business. And this morning, when he came down with Ken to watch the kids again, he settled for standing near the doorway and leaving before rehearsal was done. No more “Free Bird” requests, and absolutely no reason for me to get too wrapped up in a patient completely outside my field of residency.

  But instead of calling my dad, instead of looking at cute apartments in a cute city that I can’t wait to call home after I’m done with my three-year residency in June, I find myself outside a certain door on the eighth floor.

  Don’t knock. It’s not too late to turn back. Go! Go now! I tell myself, even as I raise a hand and knock on the partially closed door.

  “I’m doing something, but come on in if you have to,” a gruff voice on the other side calls out. He sounds more authoritative than I would have guessed. Like he’s used to being in charge.

  Maybe he was a cop, I muse as I slide inside.

  The room, not surprisingly, is the smallest one in this wing, with a view of the parking lot rather than the Appalachian foothills. There’s barely enough room for a single visitor recliner, and I highly doubt the thing could actually recline with so few inches between it and the bed. The curtains are open, but the room is still dim, thanks to the relentless West Virginia gray, which still hasn’t quite given over to spring sunshine. Even worse, his radio is turned on and a classic rock song is playing. I don’t know the band, nor can I see them, but I swear I can hear their mullets loud and clear.

  After a moment of adjustment, my eyes find John on the bed, his half a head of blond locks hanging down as he finishes writing in what looks like one of the cheap, brown kraft-paper journals the psych counselors are always issuing to our older kids. So they have someplace to put their feelings while they go through treatment.

  That would explain his rather reluctant response to my knock.

  “Sorry, I’m interrupting. I’ll come back later,” I say and start to back the very short distance toward the door.

  But when he hears my voice, he looks up. And his entire face softens when he sees me standing there.

  “Hey, Doc! You finally came to visit me,” he says, like my arrival in his room was long overdue. He closes the journal and reaches over to his cabinet night stand to switch off the radio.

  Even with the snaked head scar, he is so freaking handsome. So much so that it’s kind of hard to look at him without feeling flustered. To distract myself, I reach into my bag and pull out a recyclable sandwich container.

  “I…um, brought you a sandwich.”

  I hand it to him, and he appears delighted, but then baffled when he gets a look at the sandwich itself.

  “Where’s the meat?” he asks, like that’s a way bigger mystery than his identity.

  “There isn’t any,” I answer with a small laugh. “It’s hummus, cucumbers, and tomatoes with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses on top.”

  My explanation doesn’t put a dent in his perplexed look. “They make sandwiches without meat?”

  “Sure they do,” I answer. But then have to admit. “Well, maybe not in West Virginia. Which is why I had to make these for us at home. The hospital cafeteria doesn’t have anything but peanut butter and jelly, and I don’t love all that sodium…”

  He continues to look at the sandwich like it’s a completely alien substance from another planet. Then he asks, “You some kind of…” his whole face furrows in concentration, but he can only come up with, “…person who doesn’t eat meat?”

  “A vegetarian? Yes, I am. I’m a vegan, in fact, which means I don’t eat meat or any other animal by-product.”

  “Vegan…” he repeats. “That’s new.”

  I keep my expression neutral, but inside I’m studying him with sharp interest, trying to figure out if he doesn’t know the word because of his amnesia, or because of where he’s from. Or maybe I’m just bitter because I went from a huge city with a vegan option on every menu, to a small town where the word vegan elicits snickers or suspicion. Or both.

  Nevertheless, he takes a bite of his sandwich. Chews, then nods. “Not bad,” he tells me.

  “Thanks,” I answer.

  He takes another bite, chewing even more slowly before he swallows. “The way this sandwich tastes is new.”

  “New?”

  “I got this way of experiencing things. Some things feel old, like going to the bathroom and pancakes and ‘Free Bird’. I don’t remember ever doing or hearing any of it, but my body remembers it. And some things feel…the only way to describe it is ‘new.’ This sandwich feels new. And your hair…”

  “My hair?” I pat the simple twist out I keep my medium-length hair in now that I no longer have any weave specialists in my “Favorites” contact list—or the time to sit through multi-hour hair appointments.

  “Yeah, I ain’t never seen nothing like it. It’s pretty. Real pretty.”

  An awkward beat, in which I put considerable effort into not pushing a few of those curls behind my ear, like the nervous high school girl I never ever was. At least not until now.

  I clear my throat. “You’re probably wondering why I decided to stop by…”

  With that seriously forced change of subject, I gingerly sit in the guest chair with my sandwich. “So what kind of exercises are you doing to help regain your memory?”

  He frowns over his sandwich.
“This a friendly visit or a doctor visit?”

  “Kind of both.” I take a bite of my sandwich. More interested in covering up how his direct stare make my insides feel all squishy than alleviating my hunger.

  “Truth is, Doc, I’m over medical visits. I wasn’t looking for one from you,” he tells me. Despite his rejection of my intentions, his voice has a warm tone to it, amused and husky with a hint of melody that puts me in mind of a country singer.

  Maybe he’s a country singer? I think. And his music comment makes me remember the other thing I brought for him.

  I reach into my huge “V”irkin bag and bring out the smartphone I wiped and reactivated last night. “Does this feel old or new?”

  He glances at the phone. “Old. Definitely old. My rehab nurse let me mess around on hers a few times.”

  “Awesome,” I say, trying to sound more like a friend than a doctor as I bring out a pair of white earbuds and hand them over to him along with the smart phone. “Then you know how to access the iTunes app. I’ve already put a few songs on there for you…”

  “You did?” he asks, his whole face lighting up.

  “I did,” I answer, finding his happiness too infectious not to smile back. “And if you want more music, all you have to do is download it. I pre-loaded a gift card on there.”

  He touches the device reverently, as if it’s a bar of gold and not just the first device I randomly grabbed out of the box of old special phones under my bed.

  “Thank you,” he says. He hits me with that blue gaze again, tugging on me with that killer smile of his. “I can’t wait to listen to all the music you like.”

  My heart skips a beat, and I have to remind myself about all sorts of things. All sorts of things a medical professional shouldn’t have to remind herself about during the last weeks of her residency.

  You’re only here to help, I hiss inwardly as out loud I use my authoritative doctor voice to tell him, “If you hear anything on there that jogs your memory, make sure to let your team know.”

  “Okay,” he agrees easily enough. But then he nods his head toward the seat I abandoned in order to hand him his gift. “You going to finish the rest of that sandwich or what?”

  “Actually, no I’m not,” I answer. “I’m not that hungry.” Because there’s a whole swarm of butterflies where my empty stomach used to be. “And I have a lot of paperwork to do downstairs. Plus, I have some calls to make...”

  I shift from foot to foot and say, “So, yeah…I should get going. I’ll, um…see you at rehearsal next Monday. Maybe. I mean, if you come down. Not that you have to—I mean, you’re on Lofstrands so I don’t expect anything of you. But if you do come down to see the kids, I’ll see you then. That’s all I meant.”

  You know, I actually used to be cool. Really, really cool. Before I came to West Virginia. Before this exact moment. I’d even gotten rid of my glasses a few months before coming out here, thanks to Lasik. But I fight the urge to tell him that, and instead gather my things, dumping the rest of the uneaten sandwich into the nearest trash bin as I pull my “V”irkin bag over one arm.

  But when I turn to say one last goodbye, I find him watching me with the stillness of a predator. One who lets a beat or two pass before saying, “Cane.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The boot’s coming off and they’re giving me a cane tomorrow. No more special crutches.”

  “That’s great news!” I say, clutching and unclutching the rolled handles of my mock-croc handbag. “So I guess I’ll see you Monday.”

  “Yeah, I guess you will,” he answers.

  I start to head out, so happy my skin is on the deeper side of brown, because if I was the same color as the John Doe, I’d be visibly red all over.

  However, his voice stops me just as I’m about to open the door. “But, Doc, just so you know…”

  He pauses, obviously waiting for me to turn back around and face him like a civilized human. So I do, even though “level-headed doctor” only feels like a part I’m playing at this point.

  And his gaze once again completely and utterly catches mine as he says, “Cute as they are, it ain’t the kids I’m coming down there to see.”

  Chapter Four

  So yeah, he said that. He said that to me. The pediatric resident with a bad habit of being reduced to an incoherent babbling fool whenever he pins me with those beautiful blue eyes of his.

  I spend a lot of time…a serious lot of time…trying to pretend he didn’t say it. And by Monday, I think I’ve finally got a hold of myself.

  I ignore his presence at my rehearsal that morning. Treating him like all the other people in the hospital who come to watch the ever-changing makeshift choir of children sing.

  And yes, I go to see him again on my lunch hour that day, because I doubled up all of my lunches when I was making my weekly meals Sunday night. But that’s only because the hospital food is truly and wretchedly awful. And also because bringing him lunch gives me an excuse to casually work with him on his memory exercises.

  In any case, I decide not to think too much about how he looks happy, but not at all surprised, when I knock on his door.

  “What are you watching?” I ask when I see the black family full-out yelling at each other on his television.

  “Dunno, fell asleep watching the news and this was on when I woke up. I think it’s called Rapper’s Wives or something like that. All I know is they fight a lot and say a lot of bitchy stuff behind each other’s backs.”

  “Rap Star Wives,” I correct with a wry smile. I grab the remote connected to his bed and switch it off. “And trust me, there are way better shows for somebody with a TBI to watch. That show will rot your brain faster than fast.”

  “Shows like Devil Riders?” he asks. “Cuz a message keeps popping up at the bottom of the screen to say it’ll be on next.”

  “Shows like Jeopardy,” I answer.

  “Do they yell at each other and get into a lot of fights on that show, too?”

  I laugh and hand him a bento box with today’s lunch.

  While eating the tofu and quinoa dish, we talk a little more. He tells me the few things he knows about himself. It’s a disturbingly short list that includes “likes Lynyrd Skynyrd” and “knows how to ride a motorcycle” and he was “maybe not surprised” about “them neuro evaluation scores.”

  He tells me “the head doctor” advised him to watch TV—see what sparked his memory. But he doesn’t like it much—that feeling is old. So far he prefers radio. He switched over to the country station this weekend and found he really liked that kind of music. Especially a singer called Colin Fairgood.

  “No surprise there,” I tell him. “That guy seriously crosses over. I mean, he’s even done a song with C-Mello—that guy you were watching on Rap Star Wives.”

  “Is he on that playlist you gave me?” John asks.

  “No,” I answer. “But I do actually like his stuff. Especially his second album. Here, let me download it for you…”

  He hands me his phone and after I download C-Mello’s career making album onto it, I scroll to look at John Doe’s “recently played” list. Almost everything on the playlist I gave him is there. “Is any of this old?”

  He shakes his head. “No, it’s all pretty new.”

  Maybe not so surprising. There’s some Top 40 mixed in, but mostly it’s a wide range of pop, rap, and indie songs I’ve come to love throughout the years. Some of them well-known, some of them not so much.

  But I have to ask, “Even Eminem is new to you?”

  “That’s the ‘Lose Yourself’ guy, right?”

  I nod without adding that nine out of ten of the white boys I knew back in California loved his tracks when I was a kid.

  He frowns hard before answering again. “No, you’re right, he ain’t completely new. But it’s kind of hard to explain. I feel like maybe I heard him and didn’t like him, but now I do. Does that make sense?”

  “It does,” I answer, before taking a thoug
htful bite of my tofu and quinoa—a dish John had declared “really new” after his first fork full.

  But he must like it, because he ends up finishing every bite. Or maybe he just likes you, a small, secretly thrilled voice inside my head suggests.

  Seriously, I have got to start dating as soon as I hit Seattle this summer. In California there’d been plenty of guys, but out here in West Virginia—not so much. Partly because of my patent inability to trust any man’s attraction to me, and partly because it’s West Virginia and real hospital life is not a Shonda Rhimes show. Whatever the case, I’ve obviously been in a drought state for way too long if I’m getting all sorts of secret thrills from the prospect of being liked by someone with a TBI.

  “Okay, let’s work through a few of these cognitive exercises I brought with me before I have to go back downstairs,” I say, bringing my iPad out of my bag.

  His lazy gaze flickers from warm and engaged to disappointed. “So you ain’t really here just to visit this time either?”

  “No, I…” I stop and take the time to put together my thoughts before answering. “Look, I know this has got to be unbelievably hard for you. The accident, the head trauma, and then the amnesia on top of it. I’m not trying to be your doctor. I hope you understand as a third-year peds resident, I’m technically not even qualified to oversee your care. But if you had someone with you—like a family member—your team would suggest they do all sorts of things to keep your mind sharp and help you get to a better place.”

  I hold up the iPad. “Starting with these cognitive exercises to help you with your memory. So I guess you could say that’s what I’m trying to do here. Until you leave the hospital, I’ll be your family. At least until your real family gets here.”

  He shifts on the bed, messes with his now boot-free leg. “My family…” he repeats.

  And I get that I’m toeing a dangerous line. That I’m about a few seconds away from stepping all the way over it, but I find myself saying, “Yeah, your family. That’s what I’m trying to be for you. At least until you remember yours.”