by Tia Siren
"How long?" I asked as I leaned back in my chair with my eyes closed.
"Three minutes. Maybe four." Clint groaned as he sat up. "I got one of the interns to cover me, but I don't trust leaving him alone for too long. You know how they are."
"I'm surprised that you got four minutes," I said, seriously impressed. In this profession, any break longer than two or three minutes was worthy of admiration. "Did you think it was going to be like this, Clint?"
"Like what?" he asked.
"You know, like this? The non-stop, balls to the wall, relentless chaos of being a doctor. I always thought it might be a little different."
"A little cooler?" Clint offered as he got to his feet, stretching himself out. "Yeah, I thought there’d be a lot more banging hot nurses in storage closets. And maybe a little more money. I’ll be paying off my med school debt for the rest of my life."
I nodded. I'd been having similar thoughts lately, especially in the last few months. Being a doctor wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. I loved helping people and I loved making a difference in any way that I could, but sometimes I had to ask myself what the cost of all that was. And if that cost was worth it.
I had almost no social life. It would be totally non-existent were it not for Clint. And the lack of a romantic life really hit home and bothered me. I always thought I’d be married and settled down by now. I’d followed all the right steps: I went to college, went to med school, and got my career going as a doctor. Now, it was time for my next goal. I wanted to meet a good girl and fall in love. I thought I’d met the right woman before, but that hadn’t worked out exactly like I thought it would, either.
Worrying about this often kept me up at night when I should be getting much-needed rest. I wondered if I had made the right decision to become a doctor. I hadn't so much as been on a single date with a woman in nearly a year. And even that date wasn't a spontaneous thing. It was with my ex who I tried not to think about anymore.
I broke off these worrisome thoughts and turned my attention back to Clint. "Yeah, lately I've been thinking that maybe there is another way," I began as I got to my feet. I'd been sitting down for about three minutes and that, to me, was the equivalent of hours. "I've even thought about going into private—"
At that moment, my pager began vibrating on my hip. My pager was my lifeline to the hospital. Whenever something went wrong, or a new patient came in that needed desperate care, or an intern didn't know how to do a simple procedure, or anything happened really, my pager let me know. This page told me that I was needed in the ICU.
"To be continued," I said to Clint as I turned and rushed from the break room, toward the ICU, wondering what it was that was going to greet me there. As it was the ICU, I knew that it couldn't be anything good.
--
"OK, what have we got?" I asked the first nurse I saw as I entered the ICU. The ICU was the Intensive Care Unit, where all the most urgent medical cases were sent. These patients hovered on the razor’s edge between life and death, and it was our job to keep them from tumbling off into oblivion.
"Car crash,” she shot back. “Two victims, one male, one female. The female is stable and has already been moved to a room. The male has suffered serious head and torso injuries. Swelling of the brain, possible internal hemorrhaging."
The nurse rattled off the man’s medical issues in a dry, clinical manner. This was typical of someone who had been working at the hospital for a long time. As she filled me in, she led me toward the male patient she was referring to.
True to her description, he looked like twice run over dog shit, which was the official medical term. His face was a bruised, lumpy mess, and his limbs were twisted in unnatural ways. Luckily for this poor bastard, by the time I got to him, two other doctors already tended to him, doing all they could to keep him alive.
I would only get in the way If I tried to help the two doctors. Best I leave them be. And besides, the mood I was in it was probably better that they take it from there. That left the man’s female companion. Her condition wasn’t nearly as bad as his, but she still needed help.
"Nurse, take me to the female patient. I'll take a look at her instead.”
The nurse led me out of the ICU and down the hall to the room where the female patient waited for me. It was noticeably quieter down there, and I guessed that once the female car crash victim had been stabilized, the doctors had opted to leave her on her own so that they could attend to the more seriously injured male.
I had been a doctor for three years, so there was very little that caused me to pause. I had seen terrible things. Crazy things. Nightmare things. But as I entered room 301, I was not at all prepared for what greeted me.
"Here she is," the nurse said as we entered. She walked up to the side of the bed, completely unaware of the fact that I was still stuck in the doorway, dumbstruck.
The reason for my shock was that I knew the victim lying unconscious in the bed. I had known her for four years, although we hadn't spoken so much as a word to one another for a little over a year at this point. Her name was Kate Monroe, and she was my ex-girlfriend.
The nurse looked over her chart. "She was lucky, compared to the guy she came in with. Considerable bruising to her torso and legs, and she also suffered a very nasty blow to the head. But x-rays showed just a little bit of swelling that will almost certainly go down. Really, she should be okay.” She looked up at me, noticing I was still standing in the doorway. “Wait, are you okay, Doctor?"
"What? Oh, yes, yes I'm fine." I hurried into the room, taking the clipboard from the nurse. "Yep, it all looks fine." Really, I wasn't paying too much attention to the clipboard or the information it held. My mind was elsewhere.
Kate had been the love of my life. She still was the love of my life, as far as I was concerned. We dated for three whole years while I was in med school, and then when I was first starting out as an intern at the hospital.
Those three years that we dated were the happiest in recent memory, too. The two of us were just so perfect together. We barely ever fought, we had so much in common, and we were both deeply in love with one another. And then I made a terrible mistake.
As happy as I was with Kate, the rest of my life at the time was pretty damn miserable. I had so much work and so little time, first with med school and then when I started working at the hospital. I barely had time to sleep or eat. The weight of the world weighed down on me. I felt like I had lost control of my life, and I was spinning out of control. Because of that, I made a terrible mistake. A mistake that still haunted me.
I broke up with her.
It was all just too much for me to handle. I was always busy and never had even a moment to myself. And then, whenever I somehow managed to scrounge a few spare minutes of time for myself, Kate would make me feel guilty for not wanting to spend time with her. Even if she hadn’t tried to make me feel guilty, I felt guilty about not spending time with her. I didn’t have time to be with her, and that meant I wasn’t the man she deserved, which made me feel even more guilty and inadequate as a man.
The constant pressure weighed down on me, and I snapped. Looking back, I wasn’t in my right mind. Lack of sleep and exhaustion had me nearly insane. One day I woke up and thought for some ridiculous reason that the right thing to do was break up with Kate. I thought it would be better for both of us.
It took me all of twenty-four hours to realize I had made a mistake. I still remember running to her house in the rain, hoping that it wasn't too late. I thought a grand romantic gesture like that would be enough to win her back.
But Kate refused to forgive me. She broke up with me on the spot, or at least, she maintained that we were still broken up. I spent the next three months trying to get her to forgive me, or even talk to me. But she wouldn't. I knew that if she just heard me out and let me explain, that I could convince her to get back together with me, but she wouldn't even give me that.
That was a year ago. Of course, I still thought about
her. In the rare moments I had a chance to slow down and think, Kate would resurface in my thoughts. I knew she was part of my past, but the regret I felt was very much present. But now, here she was.
Seeing her lying there, so helpless and alone, made me realize that maybe me and her weren't as done as I had thought. Maybe this was the moment that I had been waiting for. Maybe fate had brought us back together to give me a second chance with her. Maybe I could fix the mistake I’d made a year ago.
Clint popped up behind me. "Wow, is that Kate?" he asked. “What is she doing here?"
"Jesus, you scared me,” I said, jumping. “Come here." I grabbed Clint and dragged him from the room.
Once we were out of Kate’s hospital room, I felt comfortable talking again. Kate seemed unconscious, but I didn’t want to risk the possibility that she might hear me.
"Do you mind?" I asked.
"Mind what?" he asked.
"Mind saying anything stupid while in the room and around her," I said, more than aware of how ridiculous I probably sounded.
"What? You don't think you might actually have another chance with her, do you?" A smile formed on his face as he held back laughter.
"Well, why not?" I defended.
"After what you did to her? And what she said to you when you did it? Something about never wanting to see you again? Am I right?"
"Okay, you're right," I said, getting angry.
Indeed, when she had broken up with me, Kate was venomous. She screamed, she yelled, and she cursed. She made it very clear that she never wanted anything to do with me again. Even though I couldn’t blame her, I still wanted a chance to make things right with her.
"So, what?” Clint asked. “You think that she's going to wake up, see you, and suddenly fall into your arms?"
"I don't know," I said, trying to mask my anger. "But at least this way, I will finally get a chance to talk to her. I haven’t even gotten that before. Just do me a favor? Please stay out of that room until after I speak to her, okay?"
"Okay, okay," he relented, shaking his head as he turned to head back to the ICU. "Hey, you might get lucky. She might not remember you breaking up with her for no reason. Really, that's the only way I see her forgiving you." He chuckled to himself as he disappeared around the corner and out of sight.
He was right of course. She had to wake up first, and even then, the odds of her forgiving me were slim. But that was fine. I had to try. This was a gift, after all.
There was just something about Kate that made it impossible to let her go. She was so damn perfect for me in every way. Our personalities melded like butter and sugar, and our sexual chemistry had been explosive.
Kate had always been sexually adventurous. There was little she wasn't willing to try, and I was always more than happy to try new things with her. It may have been sick, but seeing her lying on that bed brought back some ridiculous memories of the things we used to get up to. There were many reasons why I wanted to try being with her again, and our sexual chemistry was definitely one of them.
It was these thoughts that pushed me over the edge. As I looked down at Kate, I couldn't help but think about how beautiful she was. Her breathing was deep and steady. Her chest rose and fell so perfectly. The room was empty, too. It was just me and her.
I moved closer and leaned over her. I relished the feeling of her breath as it hit my face. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what it was like when those lips were on mine, when I was allowed to kiss them as I pleased.
Without even thinking about it or how it might look, I bent forward and softly planted a kiss on her lips. My heart raced inside my chest as our lips met. But best of all, it felt right. It felt like it was meant to be, and it was in that moment, I knew what I had to do.
I had to get Kate back.
The moment was short-lived, however. Her breathing increased, and the monitors strapped to her went haywire. The second I pulled my lips away, her eyelids fluttered open. She was awake.
CHAPTER 2
KATE
I couldn't remember a thing. That wasn't an exaggeration. I really couldn't remember a single thing.
I woke up, staring at a white ceiling that I didn't recognize. As I looked up at it, I had to contend with the fact that I couldn't remember any other ceiling in my mind. Not my apartment's, or the house that I grew up in, or wherever I went to school.
I was aware of the concept of a ceiling, and I was aware that I probably grew up in a house and probably went to school. But as far as my actual memories went, this might as well be the first ceiling I’d ever seen in my entire life.
That thought sent a very real panic spreading through me. I sat up in bed, feeling my heart hammering in my chest. I looked around me and realized I was in a hospital room. That much, I knew. But that was where it stopped.
The panic, that cold unsettling feeling that began in my stomach and spread over my limbs, only increased in ferocity when I tried to remember who I was and how I had gotten to the hospital. I tried to form these memories, and I was met with nothing. Everything before this moment was a blank wall of darkness. I had no idea who I was.
My panic turned to hysteria. I was losing my mind. The urge to scream overwhelmed me, but I forced myself to suppress it. I wanted to leap out of bed and run for dear life, even though I didn't know where I could have run to.
Then a nurse entered the room, and I felt a very small sense of calm. She would have some answers for me, or at least, I hoped she would.
"Oh, hello," she beamed as she hurried toward me. "Look who's awake." She made her way to my side, taking me by the hand as she began to examine my pulse and other vitals. "How are you feeling?"
"I feel... confused," I managed.
I was having a hard time talking, too. My throat hurt, I had a headache, and I really had no idea what to say. I hoped that this sudden memory loss was just a result of whatever medication I was on. I hoped that the nurse would soon confirm for me that there was nothing to worry about.
"That's to be expected. You were out for two days. It's totally normal to be feeling a little confused." She let go of my hand and picked up my chart at the end of the bed.
"And my memory?" I asked, feeling slightly relieved by her positivity. Maybe this was normal, after all.
"What about it?" she asked, not looking at me as she continued to study my chart. Her eyes roamed over it, and she seemed totally nonplussed by the worried expression I was surely wearing.
"Well, I don't remember anything. Is that normal? I mean it will come back, right? My memory?"
This caused her to stop. The way she paused made my stomach sink and my head spin. Her eyes that were scanning the chart suddenly stopped dead as I told her that I had no memory. Slowly, she looked up at me, clear concern on her face. "What do you mean? What don't you remember?"
"Anything," I said. "Nothing at all. I don't even remember my name."
It was a chilling realization. Up until that point, I hadn't even thought about it. But as I told her that I didn't remember anything, I realized that even my own name was missing from my memory.
"Ah, just hang in there. I'll be back in a minute."
The calm, comforting feeling that she had brought with her instantly evaporated. She dropped the chart and hurried from the room. I was suddenly very cold and very aware of how alone I was. I had never been so scared.
Or maybe I had? It was impossible to know.
--
Over the next few hours, I was subjected to a series of tests by several different medical professionals. What their names were, I had no idea, and what their titles were, I was also not privy to. They were men and women in white coats, all fussing over me. They poked my skin, pulled my fingers, and shined bright lights into my eyes.
After those tests were done with, they proceeded to ask me the same questions, over and over again. And each time that I told them that I couldn't remember anything, they all provided me with the same perplexed reaction.
None of t
hem knew quite what to make of my memory loss. They all concluded the same thing, that it was caused by my head injury from the crash. But none of them seemed to be able to tell me when my memory would come back, if at all.
By the end of the experience, after the fifth doctor left the room, I felt more alone and confused than I had when I had woken up. What was even more bizarre was that none of the men or women who had examined me were my actual doctor. At least that was what the nurse told me.
They were all professionals in their respective fields who wanted to get a look at me as if I were some sort of sideshow. It wasn't until late in the afternoon that my actual doctor finally made himself known.
I was sitting in bed, looking out the window, when he came in. I had been staring at the parking garage that was visible from my window, trying to concoct any sort of memory that I could but failing miserably. I was feeling frustrated and a little scared, and it was only when I first laid eyes on him that the feelings vanished, replaced with a different emotion all together.
The doctor was tall. Taller than the others that had come through. He was also very handsome, like TV doctor handsome. It was funny really. Even though I couldn't remember my own name, I knew what a TV doctor looked like, with their square jaw, dark hair, kind eyes, and a breathtaking smile. This doctor had all of that. But there was something else, too.
From the moment that I saw him, I felt oddly at peace, as if I knew him somehow. He had a comforting effect on me that I was instantly grateful for, considering how I had been treated up to that point.
"Ms. Monroe," he said in a deep voice as he swept into the room. "I'm Doctor Liam Morgan."
"You're my doctor?" I asked, sitting up a little straighter. It was stupid, but despite the situation I was in, I didn't want to look like I was slouching.
"I am." He smiled as he pulled up a seat by my side. "And I want to apologize for not coming in to see you sooner. I was going to, but as soon as your condition got out, every man and his dog wanted to examine you. I thought it best if I see you on my own. You understand?"