A whiteboard across the room has the names of my care team, along with a date. “February.”
She raises a brow when I look back at her. “That’s cheating. How about you tell me where you’ve been stationed?”
“Stationed?”
She starts to look concerned, which is concerning. Because somehow I know that look.
“What’s your full name, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant?Yeah, I guess that is what she called me. What was the other name?
I stiffen. Because, what the fuck? Jesus, why can’t I remember my name?
The alarm on the patient monitor goes off even before I physically feel my heart start to race. Panic sets in when I realize I don’t know my name. I don’t know the month. I don’t know fucking anything.
“Breathe,” she says. “You’ve been sedated for a while. It can be confusing waking up after so long. Let’s give it a moment, shall we?”
The calming way she speaks, along with the gentle squeeze of her hand on mine, has my heart slowing. Right, I’ve been under sedation. That explains it.
My eyelids grow heavy as sleep pulls me under.
I’m awakened by the activity around me. It takes a minute to get my bearings. I see Dr—Simms, was it?—and the familiar walls of my hospital room. There are two other people with her.
Dr. Simms steps forward. “Feeling better?”
I take stock. My arm still hurts. It’s super stiff. When I look down, I discover why. My forearm is in a cast that ends just below the elbow. Damn, I hope it wasn’t a compound fracture that required surgery. My left side is still tender, but not as sore as last time. My legs hurt the most.
“My legs,” I say, gingerly lifting one slightly off the bed.
“You sustained partial thickness burns to your lower extremities.”
“Superficial or deep?” I ask.
She nods, looking pleased. “Superficial.”
Makes sense, those are typically the most painful as the nerve endings aren’t as damaged. “And my arm?” I hold it a few inches off the bed. “Open or closed radial fracture?”
“Closed.”
“Head?” I ask, worried about the slight throbbing.
“You sustained blunt force trauma to the skull. It’s why we had you in a medically induced coma. Your brain needed time to heal due to the swelling.”
“What’s my ICP?”
Now she’s smiling. “I’m impressed you know to ask about intracranial pressure. I suppose as part of the support team for a medevac unit, you picked up on a lot of things.”
“Support team? Medevac unit?” I ask.
Her smile fades and she looks to one of the other doctors who steps forward. “I’m Dr. Schulz, staff neurologist,” he says in a heavy German accent.
A neurologist. Good. He’ll know. “What’s my ICP, Dr. Schulz?”
“You gave us a scare when it went as high as twenty-five. But it’s been declining for days and has remained nearly steady at twelve for the past twenty-four hours, which is why we weaned you off the sedation.”
“Twelve. That’s normal.”
“Yes, it is, Lieutenant…?” He pauses, waiting for me to fill in the blank.
