His doctors said his memory would return in time. They told him not to force it. Yet after eight days his past remained a blank slate. He was sick of hearing their reassurances.
“I’d like to put them in my shoes and see if they could take their own advice,” he muttered as he put away his razor. Chances were good they’d be doing the same thing he was. Relentlessly trying to make himself remember.
Looking up, he stretched his hand toward the likeness in the mirror and forced a smile to his stiff lips. “Hello, my name is…”
Nothing.
Nothing came to mind this morning just as nothing had come to mind for the past week. The only identity he had was the one the hospital had given him. John Doe.
Staring at the mirror, he said, “Hi, I’m Andy. Hello, I’m Bill. I’m Carl. I’m David. My name is Edward.”
If he did happen on the right name would he even know it? Rage and frustration ripped through him, bringing on a crushing headache that nearly took him to his knees.
“Who am I?” he shouted. His fingers ached where they gripped the porcelain lip of the sink.
His whole life was gone. He couldn’t pull a single relevant detail out of the darkness in his mind.
He touched the bandage on the side of his scalp. According to the local law enforcement, he had been beaten, dumped in a ditch and left with no wallet or identification. Every effort to identify him was under way, but with no success thus far. His fingerprints and DNA weren’t in the system. No one was looking for a man fitting his description. Even TV reports and newspaper articles had failed to bring in one solid lead.
Somewhere he must have a mother, a father, maybe even a wife, but the man in the mirror had no faces or names for anyone he’d known before waking up in the hospital.
“Too bad I wasn’t microchipped like—”
Like who? Like what? The thought slipped away before he could fully grasp it. His head began pounding again. The pain worsened each time he tried to concentrate.
Forced to leave the past alone, he buttoned the last button on the gray flannel shirt the hospital social worker had purchased for him. The shirt was new. The one he’d been wearing couldn’t be salvaged but the jeans were the ones he’d been found in. They fit well enough, although he’d lost some weight. Eating seemed so unimportant.
A knock sounded at the door to his room. He moved to sit on the edge of his bed and winced at the pain in his bruised ribs. Someone had planted a kick on two in his side after they’d split his skull. He said, “Come in.”
The door swung open, revealing a tall, blond man in a sheriff’s uniform. John had been expecting Nick Bradley, the officer in charge of his case.
Sheriff Bradley said, “Are you ready?”
“As ready as I can be. Thanks for giving me a lift.”
John was being discharged. After a week and a day of testing and probing he’d been declared fit. Physically, he was in good shape so the hospital had no reason to keep him.
Mentally? That was a different story. Leaving this room suddenly seemed more daunting than anything he could imagine. How did he start over when he had no point to start over from?
No, that wasn’t exactly true. He had one point of reference. His life started a week ago in a ditch outside the town of Hope Springs, Ohio. That was where he had to go.
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” The sheriff clearly wasn’t in favor of John’s plan.
“I must have been in Hope Springs for a reason. Seeing the place might trigger something. Besides, it’s all I have.”
“I still think you’d be better off staying here in Millersburg, but I can see you aren’t going to change your mind.”
Reaching into his breast pocket, Sheriff Bradley withdrew a thick white envelope. He held it out. “My cousin Amber lives in Hope Springs. She’s a nurse-midwife there. She knows about your situation. She wanted me to give you this.”
“What is it?” John reached for the envelope.
“Her church took up a collection for you.”
John opened the package and found himself staring at nearly a thousand dollars. Overwhelmed by the generosity of people he didn’t know, he blinked hard. Tears stung the back of his eyes. He hadn’t cried since—
It was there, just at the back of his mind, a feeling of grief, a feeling of overwhelming sadness. But why or for whom he had no idea. The harder he tried to concentrate on the feeling the faster it slipped away.
He forced himself to focus on the present. “Please tell your cousin how grateful I am.”
“You can tell her yourself when you see Doc White to get your stitches out.”
After gathering his few belongings together, John bid the nursing staff farewell and slipped into the passenger’s seat of the squad car parked in front of the hospital. Within minutes they were outside the city and cruising along a narrow ribbon of black asphalt.
The highway rose and fell over gentle hills, past manicured farms and occasional stands of thick woodlands. Looking out the window he saw herds of dairy cattle near the fences. The cows barely glanced up at their passing. A half-dozen times they came upon black buggies pulled by briskly trotting horses. Each vehicle sported a bright orange triangle on the back warning motorists it was a slow-moving vehicle.
John waited for something, anything, to look familiar. He held tight to the hope that returning to where he had been found would jog his absent memory. As they finally rolled into the neat small town of Hope Springs he was once again doomed to disappointment. Nothing looked familiar.
Sheriff Bradley pulled up in front of a Swiss-chalet-styled inn and said, “This is the only inn in town. The place is run by an Amish woman named Emma Wadler. The rooms are clean but nothing fancy.”
Now that he was actually at his destination, John struggled to hide his growing fears. How would he go about searching for answers? Was he going to stand on the street corner and ask each person who walked by if he looked familiar? When the sheriff got out, John forced himself to follow.
A bell over the doorway sounded as the men walked into the building. The place was cozy, charming and decorated with beautifully carved wooden furniture. An intricately pieced, colorful quilt hung over the massive stone fireplace at one end of the lobby. A display of jams for sale sat near the front door.
Behind the counter stood a small woman in blue Amish garb. Her red-brown hair was neatly parted down the middle and pulled back under a white bonnet. She was talking to someone inside a room behind the desk. She glanced toward the men and said, “I will be with you in a minute, gentlemen.”
John watched her eyes closely for the slightest sign of recognition. There was none.
Turning her attention back to the person inside her office, she said, “I would gladly send overflow guests to your farm, cousin. It would be much better than telling them they must go to Millersburg or to Sugarcreek.”
A woman replied, “We have spare rooms and as long as they don’t mind living plain it will work. The extra money would be most welcome. If I can get Dat to agree to it, that is.”
There was something pleasing about the unseen woman’s voice. He enjoyed the singsong cadence. Her accent made will sound like vil and welcome sound like vellcom. It was familiar somehow.
The grandfather clock in the corner began to chime the hour. John reached into the front pocket of his jeans, but found it empty.
Confused, he looked down. Something belonged there. Something was missing.
“What can I do for you, Sheriff?”
John turned around as the inn owner began a conversation with Nick. The hidden woman