If I couldn’t make them acknowledge me, I’d be destined to wander in the hopelessness for all time, and I wouldn’t be able to cope.I was a man of action, not of faith, and I’d rarely given any thought to what came after life.While I clung to the idea that death hadn’t yet seized me, I couldn’t believe the fate awaiting me once its icy grasp had caught me, was an eternity of bleak nothingness.
“Heart rate accelerating.”
“Adam!”The first voice was terser.“I know you can hear us, Adam.Wake.Up!”
My fingers slipped into the fog by my feet, my head heavy and insisting I sought somewhere to rest, and soon.
“I think we’re losing him, Doctor.”
Swallowing back the alarm surging through me, I lifted my face and gasped for fresh air.Anything but the thick, dank mist, whose tendrils snaked past my nostrils and down my throat as though its mission was to suffocate the life from me.
Beep, beep, beep.
The rhythm that had always been so regular sped up to match my panic.
In one last-ditch attempt to catapult myself from the mysterious ditch I’d been flung into, I rose higher on my knees, stretching my neck past the fog’s reach to take in a lungful of air.Forcing the remaining oxygen from my throat, I let out a loud, guttural shout, the noise bouncing back to me in the dark.
“Adam.”
I opened my eyes, the intensity of the light shining around me ensuring I immediately blinked them closed again.
“He’s back.”The woman leaning over me sounded relieved, her satisfied smile the first thing I acknowledged when my eyes fluttered free from the blackness that had held me for so long.
Staring up at her, I took in the shape of her face.Her long, dark hair reminded me of somebody I used to know, but frustratingly, the name of the woman escaped me.
“Willkommen zurück, Mr.Harper.Welcome back.”
Intending to reply, I parted my lips to ask, but there was no power in my voice.
“No, do not speak.”She wagged a stern finger at me.“You need to rest.”
Beep.
I turned my head against the mountain of pillows I was propped up on, finally able to identify the machine responsible for the noise that had guided me in the gloom.Taking in its size and shape, I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.The sounds, it seemed, were associated with a graphical representation of my heart rate.Cables streamed from the contraption, the labyrinth of their wires attached to various points on my chest.
Hospital.
Peering around the white room, my location suddenly made sense.I must have been in hospital.But why?My gaze traveled between the two women at either side of my bedside.They were deep in conversation about my condition, but I struggled to keep up with their discourse.
“Was ist passiert?”
I forced the words out, needing to know what had happened to land me in a hospital bed.The last thing I recalled was being in charge at Fortorus, but that was in Britain.How on Earth had I ended up in a German hospital bed?
The doctor’s focus fell back on me in a heartbeat, her finger pressing to her lips as she responded.“Shhh.”
My eyes blinked wider at her chastisement.Didn’t she know who I was?Even if I wasn’t on British soil, it took a bold woman to tell the commander general to be quiet.
“Your elevated hypertension caused you to lose consciousness, Adam, and we were told you recently received a blow to the back of the head.”She presented the assertions as statements, but they didn’t make sense.What hypertension?I’d always been as fit as a fiddle.
“Do you remember these things?”Her attention drilled into me.“You can simply nod or gently shake your head to let us know.”
A blow to the back of the head?
My brows knitted at the confusing concept.Who would have had the audacity to attack me?
“His expression says he does not recall.”The other woman’s voice was softer, and when I glanced her way, her face seemed more sympathetic to my plight.
“Temporary amnesia, perhaps, but his vitals seem steady now.”The doctor’s gaze shifted from the beeping machine to me.“Your memory should return, Adam, and when it does, the police will want to see you.Rest now.Elsa will bring you a drink of water.”
