“You’ve donenothingwrong,” Ollie argues. “It’s just that Billy’s momma never taught him any manners, and you being on the road all alone at night, heading toward a town as small as ours, has us wonderingwhy.” He rubs my hand with the pad of his thumb, while above the blankets, he pins Billy with a look. “There have beennocrimes committed, Detective Caster, and despite what the elders think, being a stranger in this town is not a violation of the law. I’m gonna need you to check yourself before you set my patient’s recovery back, or I might be inclined to pay you a visit at Love & War this afternoon.”
Confused, I glance from one man to the other, from the cop with dark hair, to the doctor whose locks are a shade away from true blond. They glare at one another, waves of anger and tension pulsing in the air as a million words go unsaid, and the sting of exclusion brings fresh tears to my eyes. But then Billy breaks, shaking his head and lowering the notebook. He sets his hands on the windowsill on either side of his hips and sighs. “I’m sorry, Miss Doe.”
“I don’t like being called that.” I swallow the dread balled in my throat and swing my eyes back to Ollie. “Jane Doe isn’t… it’s…” I exhale a shuddering, aching breath. “It’s not me. It feels off.”
“It’s procedure,” Billy cuts in. “Until we’ve formally identified you, we have to?—”
“Respect her wishes,” Ollie inserts. “She doesn’t want to be called Jane or Miss Doe. I’m certain we can be creative enough to muddle our way through this.” He meets my eyes and flashes a gentle smile. “Ma’amsounds a little douchey, but we’ll work with what we’ve got and figure the rest out later.”
“Ma’am.” Billy is an impatient man. Intolerant. He tilts his head back,thunkingit against the window until secondhand pain shoots through my skull and takes my breath away. He stares up at the ceiling, considering his options. Counting to a hundred, maybe. Then he brings his focus down again and pastes on a saccharine smile. “Please forgive me for my insensitivity,ma’am. Doctor Darling grew up in a home bursting with opinionatedwomen who taught him how to behave in public. I grew up eating bugs and living wild with nature, since my folks didn’t much care to be involved. I never went to finishing school, where they taught us bedside manner.” His fake smile turns sour. “I promise to try to be more considerate as we move forward.”
“He’s bitter and mean,” Ollie quips. “Some would even say he’s emotionally unavailable and an asshole who lacks healthy regulation.”
“You,” Billy grits. “You say that.” But he draws a long breath and drags his palm across his face. “Fine. Let’s rewind and figure this mess out.” He drops his hand again and exhales. “Wedon’tknow your name, your last known address, or where you were going. But wedoknow you were walking north, about three miles outside Plainview, when you were struck by a moving vehicle. Driver claims you came out of nowhere. She reckons you must’ve been walking on the shoulder, partially hidden by the trees, because she didn’t see you until you were already laid out on her hood.”
I hear the thud in the back of my brain, the moment my skull made contact with an old woman’s steel car. Or maybe I hear nothing at all but a fabrication my mind creates to fill the gaps where those memoriesshouldbe.
Trembling, my nose and lips wrinkle in response to the pain pounding in the back of my head. “Okay.”
“We’ve conducted tests—in the field, at the station, and here at the hospital—to ensure the woman who hit you was not impacted by drugs or alcohol at the time of the collision. Each of these tests returned categorical negatives, Miss D—” He stops, swallowing his words and licking his lips. Then with an exhale, he corrects course. “Ma’am. At this point, we consider the accident exactly that. An accident. We can find no malicious intent, no negligence applicable to the woman’s driving, and?—”
“I’m not looking to press charges or anything.” I wipe the cold, moist spot beneath my nose and dig my hand under the blankets once more. “She… B-Barbara… I’m not mad at her.”
“I think it’s safe to assume she’s more concerned with figuring out who she is,” Ollie inserts. “Have you recovered her purse yet? Found ID or?—”
“We’ve been at it since we left the hospital last night,” Ramone explains. “Had an entire crew scouring the roadside till we discovered a shoe matching the one you came in with. We gave it to the dog, hoping he could work with that and find more. But there’s just…” He shrugs. “There’s nothing out there.”
“How is that possible?” Ollie twists on the bed, swinging his gaze to Billy. “How far along the road did you search? Barbara hit her pretty damn hard, so the purse could’ve flown an easy fifty feet?—”
“We worked an entire half mile in both directions. We werethorough. And ignoring the fact that her belongingsshouldhave been right there where the EMTs scooped her up, we worked three miles back the way she came, since maybe—despite the snow—she got hot and peeled her sweater off. Her coat. A hat. Whatever.” Billy shakes his head, his eyes coming to mine. “There’s nothing out there, ma’am. It’s like you never existed except right there where Barbara knocked you out of your shoe.”
“No purse?” I rasp. “No wallet?” I stare down at the crisscross pattern of my top blanket. The crisp white material with an inch-thick line of baby blue stretching from one end to the other. “No phone?”
“No jewelry?” Ollie presses. “No tattoos. She’s got nothing at all?”
“We’re gonna run some prints.” Ramone reaches around and tugs a phone from his back pocket. “Try our luck. We’ve got facial recognition software these days that might ping something. If you’d let me take a photo, ma’am, I could bring that back to the station and?—”
“It’s okay.” I stare straight at the phone, determined not to blink when the flash goes off. Before he can place the device away, I clear my throat. “C-can I see?”
His brows shoot high in surprise. “Hmm?”
I release a shuddering, aching breath and bring my focus back to Ollie. “I don’t remember what I look like.” I drag my hand out from beneath the blankets and finger a length of unfamiliar, raven-black hair. “I haven’t been to the bathroom, and there are no mirrors in here. It’s unnerving to realize I know your faces now—” I look from one to the next, “—all of them. But I don’t know my own.”
“Sure.” Ramone nibbles on the inside of his cheek and extends his hand, turning the phone and showing me… a stranger. A woman with a long scrape from her chin to her temple on the left side.
Carefully, I probe the rough skin with a brush of my fingers, then I draw them around and touch the bridge of my nose, tracing the straight line I see in the picture. I feel the swell of my lips, pulling the bottom forward to reveal straight white teeth.
I have no visible moles, but a smattering of freckles high on my cheeks. My chin is round… in fact, my entire face is round.
“You’re not a smoker,” Ollie volunteers, offering a sweet, comforting smile. “Your fingertips are not discolored. Your teeth are clean.”
I slide my tongue along the front, repulsed by the furry sensation that says otherwise. “They don’t feel clean.”
“I’ll find you a toothbrush soon,” he chuckles. “I scoured your entire body last night. I had to,” he explains, like he can hear the racing reaction of my pulse, even without the machine announcing it to the room. “It’s my job. No track marks. No scarring. No overt signs of abuse, self-inflicted or otherwise. I see nothing but an ordinary, healthy existence, besides the factthat you’re grossly underfed. But even that doesn’t appear to have been a long-term thing, since your bones are still strong. Not a single fracture, despite Barbara’s best efforts. Blood type: O negative. You lost a little last night because of a nasty laceration and a romantic interlude with a sharp shard of glass, but you didn’t lose enough to warrant a transfusion. And your lab results came back pretty decent.”
Piqued, Billy shifts subtly in my periphery. “Decent?”
“Could do with a little more iron, but I’ve treated folks with lower counts. White blood cells are within range. Cholesterol, glucose, and liver function are fine. Coag is normal. C-reactive proteins show inflammation, but you have a TBI that explains that. Calcium is good. Heart is good, assuming we get your stress levels under control.” He slides his thumb along the back of my hand and up to massage my wrist. “It’s my professional medical opinion that you’ve lived a reasonably healthy lifestyle up to this point, and you suffer no chronic medical conditions. For reasons we may never know, you decided to take a stroll during a snowstorm in too few clothes, and, unlucky for you, you stepped in front of an old woman’s car.”
