Forsaken by Shadow (Mirus 1)
Page 4
“Burned. I don’t know how. It’s pretty bad.”
“Let’s take a look then.”
He held still as she unwrapped the gauze, bracing himself for her reaction to the mangled flesh. But when the bandages came away, his jaw dropped.
“Pretty serious first degree burns, maybe second degree in places, but nothing you won’t recover from,” pronounced the nurse. “Though you’ll probably scar.”
He stared at his palms. “I don’t understand.” The skin was no longer charred and curling. It was a smooth expanse of angry red blisters. I’m going crazy, he thought. Burns that severe don’t heal in six hours.
“Burns of any degree are painful, so people often think they’re worse than they are. We’ll get you some Silvadene and fresh bandages while we wait for the doctor.”
The nurse efficiently bandaged his hands back up and sent him out into the waiting room. He thought about walking out again. But how else would he get answers?
Eventually he was called back to an exam room. A doctor came in, his white coat waving like a flag as he walked. Unlike the seemingly unflappable nurse, this guy looked harried and tired, like he was at the end of his shift.
“Amnesia, huh?” said the doctor, looking at the chart.
Not knowing what else to do, he nodded.
The doctor shone a light in his eyes and ordered blood tests and a CT scan. He was formally admitted to the hospital. Sometime after the scan and while still waiting for the results of the blood tests, the cops showed up to interview him. He was thankful he wasn’t still in the damned hospital gown.
Neither officer seemed particularly inclined to believe him. He guessed in Vegas they saw all kinds of weird shit and people who wanted to forget who they really were. That was supposed to be the point of Vegas, wasn’t it? They asked questions. He repeated himself a lot. They got annoyed when he gave them no answers. Eventually they took his fingerprints—and weren’t they fucking lucky that those hadn’t been burned away?—and left.
He slept fitfully, off and on, exhaustion tugging him under despite the rock hard exam bed. Hours later, after the tox screen came back negative and the CT scan had verified that there was nothing physically abnormal with his brain, another woman showed up with two cups of lousy coffee in her hands. She was older, with streaks of silver shooting through her dark brown hair. A well-used leather briefcase hung over one shoulder of her black pantsuit, which hung wilted on her slightly plump frame.
“I’m Alice Graham,” she said, handing him one Styrofoam cup. “I’m with the Clark County Department of Social Services. Have you eaten?”
The irritated grumble of his stomach answered that.
“C’mon, we’ll hit the cafeteria.”
Not until they sat at a table in the mostly empty cafeteria with plates of questionable spaghetti did she pull a file out of the briefcase by her chair. She slid the plain manila folder across the table.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“According to your fingerprints, you.”
He stared down at the folder, suddenly uncertain whether he really wanted to know who he was. What if he was a criminal with a record longer than his arm? What if he was in massive debt? What if he was some deadbeat dad who’d run out on paying child support and alimony?
When he looked up at Alice again, she was gazing at him with sympathy. It occurred to him that if he was in real trouble, they’d have sent the cops back instead of a social worker. So he opened the folder.
The page on top read MISSING. The boy pictured looked out of a sober, unsmiling face. A shaggy mop of brown hair fell over blue eyes. Beneath the picture he read Cade Shepherd, Age: 8, Disappeared: August 9, 1985. He waited for the zing of recognition, the trickle of a memory. Anything that would connect him to this boy. But he felt nothing.
He looked back up at Alice.
“You’ve been missing for fifteen years, Cade.”
The name didn’t feel any more familiar as it tripped off of her tongue.
When he didn’t make any move to page further through the folder, Alice continued. “You’re from Tennessee originally. Memphis.”
That explained the accent.
“You disappeared from a hospital there right after your mother passed away.”
His mother had died in a hospital. He should feel something at that, but he didn’t. That would explain why he hated hospitals.
Cade roused himself to speak. “How did she die?”