The Awakening

by Allen Johnson

  Then it happened: Antonio awakened. Lupita was at his side, checking his vital signs, when she heard a weak groan. She sat on the side of the bed and took her patient’s hand.

  “Are you awake now?” her voice trembling with excitement.

  Antonio opened his eyes slowly for two or three seconds without focusing and then closed them again. He briefly panted and then swallowed with effort, trying to bring moisture to his throat. Then he was asleep again.

  Lupita wanted her patient to come around, and so she gently patted Antonio’s hand. “Antonio. It is time to wake up now.”

  Again, Antonio’s eyes fluttered and then opened. For the first time, he focused on Lupita, and then beyond the doctor to the open window. A ray of sunlight streamed through the white, wispy drapes and danced on the wall.

  Antonio opened his mouth to speak, but no word was spoken. He furrowed his brow in confusion. Lupita placed her fingertips lightly across his lips.

  “Shh. ¿Habla usted español?”

  Antonio nodded.

  “You have been in an accident, and there may have been some damage to your vocal chords,” she said in Spanish.

  This news prompted Antonio to attempt to speak again, which was exactly what Lupita did not want. Again, she touched his lips. “No, you must not try to speak—not yet. Your vocal chords need time to heal. If you try to force it, you will only delay that process. Do you understand me?”

  He nodded.

  “My name is Lupita Garcia. I am a doctor. You are in my home and the home of my grandfather. His name is Diego. You will meet him later. We live in a village near Córdoba called Espejo.”

  Antonio became agitated and made an effort to get up. He was stopped cold by the shooting pain in his shoulder. Lupita moved quickly, slipping her hands behind his back and easing his body down. “Por favor, your shoulder has been seriously injured. You must give it time.”

  Antonio motioned for a pencil and paper.

  “All right,” Lupita said, placing her hand lightly on Antonio’s chest. “Do not try to move. I will be right back.”

  While Lupita was gone, Antonio looked at his surroundings. Everything—the window casing, the wall radiator, the light switch—told him that he was in Europe. If the woman were not lying (why should she lie?), he could indeed be in Spain.

  The walls of the room were sculpted white plaster. The bed headboard and seven-foot-high armoire were oak. On one wall was a painting of a white house in an olive orchard. On the opposite wall was a reprint of Goya’s The Third of May 1808 in a simple oak frame.

  For a moment, Antonio identified with Goya’s central figure, his arms uplifted, waiting for his death. He felt as if he were kneeling before a firing squad. Had someone tried to kill him? Where was he? Who were these people? His head was reeling with questions.

  Lupita returned and placed on her patient’s lap a small notepad and pencil. Diego walked in behind her, and they both sat down on chairs at the bedside.

  “This is my grandfather. He was very anxious to meet you. His name is Diego, but I call him Tito.”

  Diego, his eyes warm and shining, looked down on Antonio. He pressed the man’s hand between his own callused hands and smiled. “Buenos días, my son. Welcome to our humble home.”

  Antonio had wanted to write a thousand questions, but suddenly he was inescapably sleepy. His eyes began to close.

  “Yes, that is right, you get some sleep now. We will talk some more later. I am going to take out the catheters; you will sleep more peacefully.” Then, with Antonio already asleep, the doctor gently withdrew the needles from her patient’s arm and chest.

  Antonio slept until the next morning, but it was not a peaceful sleep. Disconnected voices and images whirled in his head, hurling from every direction without meaning: a black tattered sleeve, a hollow laugh, a lion’s head, a basin of water. It was all random, and when he awoke the following morning, he remembered none of it.

  He recognized the room from the day before, but beyond that, all remained a mystery. He heard Lupita and Diego talking in the kitchen and tried to call out and then, with a spasm of piercing pain to his throat, remembered that he was mute. Seeing a glass of water on the nightstand, he instinctively tried reaching for it with his left hand and jerked back with pain. He looked down his torso and frowned; his left arm was taped to his chest. He pressed lightly against the compress over his shoulder wound, which instantly made him feel woozy. He lay back and rested a moment, then, rolling slightly to his side, reached over his body with his right arm and pawed at the glass, which tipped over and rolled beyond his fingertips off the table, exploding on the tile floor.

  Lupita and Diego came into the room. Antonio gestured to the broken glass, expressing his apologies with his eyes.

  “It is nothing,” Lupita said.

  “I will take care of it,” Diego announced, leaving the room.

  Lupita sat down on the side of the bed and took Antonio’s pulse and blood pressure. “Your vitals are strong this morning, and your eyes look brighter. Are you feeling better?”

  Antonio nodded and smiled at the woman, registering her features for the first time. She was tall—much taller than most Spanish women—and slender at the waist. Her skin was the color of cocoa butter and her long hair, twists of jet black, was held back away from her face, cascading midway down her back. But, most of all, Antonio, like everyone who knew Lupita, was taken in by her almond-shaped eyes; they were the darkest brown, almost black, with long, thick lashes—eyes you could not escape, nor would ever want to.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Antonio’s face brightened.

  “All right, then,” Lupita said with a chuckle. “Let us see what we can find for you. I am going to suggest something very light to begin with.” Lupita turned to Diego, who had already swept up the broken glass and sopped up the water. “Tito, would you help me lift Antonio? I would like him sitting upright.”

  “Si.” Diego moved to the opposite side of the bed.

  “Place your hand below his buttocks, and we will lift together—gently and slowly. On three. Ready? One, two, three.” With Lupita’s and Diego’s hands against his bare skin, Antonio realized for the first time that he was completely naked, and he flushed with embarrassment. The move triggered a surge of pain in his legs and shoulder, but ultimately it felt good to be sitting up.

  Lupita prepared a bowl of rice with bits of parsley and mushrooms, a small dish of applesauce, and a cup of hot tea. She placed everything on a tray and returned to Antonio’s room. “Do you think you can handle it yourself or would you like me to feed you?” Lupita said.

  Antonio pointed at Lupita, not because he thought he could not manage, but because he wanted to look more deeply into the doctor’s eyes.

  “All right,” Lupita said, with a smile, “but just this once.”

  As Lupita slowly spooned the rice into her patient’s mouth, pausing between each morsel, Antonio did, indeed, explore her eyes. Without a trace of makeup, Lupita was amazingly beautiful. She had a clean and natural luminescence that immediately captivated him. He swallowed slowly, savoring each bite, extending the intimacy of the moment with the exquisite brown-skinned woman.

  When they had finished, Lupita asked Antonio if he would like to ask any questions. He nodded “yes,” and Lupita drew the notepad from the nightstand and handed it to her patient.

  He thought for a moment and then wrote in Spanish, “Where did you find me?”

  Lupita read the question. “I think that Tito should answer that.”

  She called for Diego, who came into the room and sat down next to Antonio. When Lupita showed him the question, Diego looked questioningly at Lupita. She motioned for him to respond.

  “I found you in Granada—in the Arab Quarter. Do you remember?”

  Antonio shook his head no.

  “You were badly beaten. You were dying, Antonio. I brought you home to Lupita to heal you.”

  Antonio looked at Lupita and mouthed the wo
rd, “Gracias.”

  “De nada,” Lupita said, patting her patient’s hand. “Perhaps what Tito did was more important: He gave you his blood.” She did not mention that both Diego and she had lay naked in his bed for over an hour; despite her normally detached professionalism, that piece of information seemed too intimate. Besides, there was nothing normal about this case.

  Antonio looked at the old man. His face was creased and weathered, his hair thinning and perfectly white. His eyes were sparkling—joyful, Antonio thought—and his smile was pure compassion, somehow made all the more brilliant by a frayed red bandanna tied at his neck. Antonio instantly liked the old Spaniard. He gingerly lifted his right hand to him.

  Diego reached out with both hands and kissed the back of Antonio’s hand. The simple act was so tender and loving that Antonio wondered what it meant. In some strange way, he felt that he knew the kind old man from another time and that their lives were inexplicably intermingled. Instinctively, he knew that Diego was a man he could trust.

  Motioning for the notepad, the stranger wrote, “Why do you call me ‘Antonio’?”

  Lupita read the scrawled words upside-down as Antonio composed each word, again smiling at her patient’s natural struggle to unravel the mystery. She withdrew the bloodstained slip of paper from a pocket in her skirt. “We found this note in your shirt,” she said, passing the fragment to Antonio.

  Antonio read the note, pondered a moment, and then reread:

  Anthony,

  You were unbelievable.

  Savannah

  Antonio quickly scribbled a few words. “What does it mean?” he wrote. He held the notebook in front of Lupita’s eyes.

  “We were hoping that you could tell us,” she said.

  “I like the name ‘Anthony,’” Diego said, “but I prefer ‘Antonio.’ May I call you Antonio?”

  Antonio smiled and nodded at the old man.

  Lupita was touched by her grandfather’s need to be on a first-name basis with their guest, but she knew there was a more basic question. “Is that your name: Anthony?” she asked.

  Antonio posed the pencil on the notebook, but did not write. He looked at the notebook, looked at Lupita, and then at the pad again. Then he wrote, “I do not know.”

  “Do you know where you are from?”

  Antonio pointed at the last line in the notebook.

  “Who is Savannah?”

  This time he stabbed at the line in the notebook, underlining again and again the words, “I do not know.” He shook his head vigorously and threw the pad and pencil against the wall across the room—a motion that tore at the stitches in his shoulder.

  “Calmaté, Calmaté,” Lupita said, taking Antonio by both shoulders. “Shh. I am sorry. It is my fault; I went too fast.”

  Antonio looked into Lupita eyes, his own eyes whelming with tears. Lupita felt his torment and said, simply, “Oh, oh.”

  The patient fell into Lupita’s arms and suddenly began sobbing. Lupita held him tenderly and lightly rocked him. She looked at her grandfather. Diego’s mouth was trembling, and he turned and left the room. “Easy, easy now,” Lupita whispered to Antonio. “It will be all right.”

  She held him for a long time, until Antonio’s sobbing subsided, and then she gently laid him down. Antonio could not look at Lupita.

  He began to write. “Sorry. That is not like me.”

  “How do you know what you are like?”

  “I am not like that,” he wrote, underlining the word “that.”

  “Maybe it would be better if you were.”

  Antonio looked again at Lupita and, touched by her tenderness, conceded her point by placing his hand over his heart. He wanted to talk more with the beautiful doctor, but suddenly his eyes were incredibly heavy.

  “You look like you could use some rest.”

  Antonio nodded, closed his eyes, and instantly fell asleep.

  When Antonio awoke again, it was midday. He could overhear Lupita speaking to someone in the living room outside his room. “It cannot be rushed,” she was saying.

  “How long will it take?” a man’s voice said.

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “That depends on the type of amnesia. It could be transient global amnesia or limited amnesia. In any case, I think it is safe to say that it is trauma-induced. The connection between repressed memories and the unconscious mind is very complicated. It may take a day or two or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “Or it could be much longer.”

  Antonio tapped his headboard with his knuckles. Lupita appeared at the door, Miguel standing behind her. She entered. “Antonio, I would like you to meet a good friend of the family. His name is Miguel.”

  Miguel looked at Lupita. After his clash with her, he had wondered if he would ever be called “friend” again. Was it possible that she had already forgiven him? He was touched by the simple word of kindness: “friend.” The word felt like a blessing, and his devotion to Lupita grew all the more.

  Antonio tipped his head.

  “Mucho gusto,” Miguel said, moving into the room and taking a chair.

  Lupita stood behind Miguel.

  “Miguel is not only a friend, but he is also the chief of police for Espejo. He would like to talk to you for a moment. Not because you are accused of anything, of course, but because he would like to help you find your family.”

  Antonio indicated his consent.

  “Lupita has told me that you have a form of amnesia.”

  Antonio’s eyes darted to Lupita.

  “We do not know what kind, of course,” Lupita said quickly. “It could be something very transient, which is probably most likely.”

  “You may not be able to tell me much,” Miguel continued, “but anything would help. Any scrap of information.”

  Antonio crossed two fingers across his palm: a call for the notebook. He wrote a sentence and showed it to Miguel. It read, “What kind of information?”

  “Anything. Your nationality, your profession, the name of a loved one. Anything.”

  Antonio lowered his head and massaged his temple. He then looked up and hunched his shoulders, indicating that he had nothing.

  “You cannot think of a thing?” Miguel asked. There was a chill in the police chief’s tone. Despite his affection for Lupita—or perhaps because of it—it was clear he held no fondness for the stranger.

  “No,” Antonio mouthed.

  “I think that is enough,” Lupita said, directing Miguel out of the room.

  Miguel turned around at the door and said, “We will talk more later,” which to Antonio sounded more like a threat than a friendly goodbye.

  Outside the door, Antonio could hear Miguel talking. “I do not trust him. There is something that does not smell right.”

  “There is nothing,” Lupita said. “How can you condemn him, when you know nothing about him?”

  “He is hiding something.”

  “Hasta luego, Miguel.”

  “All right. Hasta luego.”

  Lupita returned to Antonio’s room. “Do not worry about Miguel. He is sometimes just a little over-protective.”

  Antonio wrote in his notebook. “I think he loves you.”

  Lupita crinkled her brow and then broke into a smile. “Perhaps.”

  “Do you love him?” he wrote.

  “Not that it is any of your business, but no, I do not.”

  “Good.”

  In the middle of the night, Antonio had the urge to go to the bathroom. Although his left arm was still anchored to his chest, he managed, despite a jolt of pain, to swing his legs around and haltingly lift himself out of bed. He was naked, and there was no sign of a pair of pants, so he took a pillow from his bed and held it below his waist.

  He was in that state of half-sleep, half-wakefulness, when a side chair can become a mad dog or a shadow a malicious intruder. His eyes were mere slits. When he arrived at the bathroom door, his head was lowered, his c
hin nearly resting on his chest. He reached for the door handle. At that instant the door sprung open, startled him, and clipped him hard on the upper ridge of his forehead. He moaned in pain and dropped the pillow to rub his head and then found himself face-to-face with Lupita who was also half asleep, though looking comfortable in a man’s white, long-sleeve dress shirt rolled up at the cuffs.

  “Oh, I am so sorry,” she said, taking Antonio by the shoulders and lowering her head to look into his eyes to see what damage she had done.

  Suddenly, Antonio realized that he was stark naked and quickly bent over to pick up the pillow, clunking heads with Lupita in the process, who groaned even louder than Antonio.

  The pair of yelps was sufficient to rouse Diego from his sleep, who was now standing at his bedroom door watching with delight as Antonio and his granddaughter negotiated the midnight rendezvous.

  Antonio sympathized with the injured doctor. He reached up to massage her head, forgetting for the moment that he was still stark naked.

  Reviving from her half-sleep, Lupita looked into Antonio’s eyes and then glanced below his hips, not to goggle what she had already seen when she first stripped her patient and put him to bed, but to delicately indicate to Antonio his state of undress.

  Lupita’s signal slowly penetrated Antonio’s consciousness, and again he swept up the pillow that was resting at his feet and jammed it against his loins.

  “Tomorrow I will go into Córdoba and get you some clothes,” Lupita whispered, her face registering an apology.

  “Right.”

  “Goodnight, Antonio.”

  “Goodnight, Lupita,”

  Lupita rounded Antonio and then, out of sheer mischief, looked over her shoulder as he entered the bathroom to sneak a glimpse at her patient’s backside. She smiled impish smile, just as Antonio turned to close the door and caught her looking.

  She quickly undid her smile, looked away, and reached up to twirl her hair into a pile at the top of her head. The fiddling with her hair was a mindless act, because she really didn’t want her hair up at all, and even if she did, she didn’t have a hairpin to stake it, and so she let her long, black hair fall.

  Antonio saw all this and smiled.