Chapter Text
I don't need a husband, don't need no wife
And don't need the day, I don't need the night
And I don't need the birds let them fly away
And I don't want the clouds, they never seem to stay
-Florence and the Machine, Leave My Body
Snow.
She could hear it crunch around her and she thought about keeping very still as she lay, registering that her fingers were numbing as they curled around the cold snow, soft but yet still digging under her fingernails and sending shivers through her entire body. No color, but she figured it made sense because her eyes were closed. When she listened, she could make out the sound of voices, distant and muffled. As though her ears were plugged up with cotton balls.
“I’m glad you were able to make it to her bedside. Very impressive,” she was able to focus on someone speaking near her. Male. Soft-spoken but authoritative. Her brain started categorizing and parsing, collecting any information given without even knowing who was speaking. Observe, she repeated to herself as she listened. Even though she couldn’t quite put her finger on the meaning behind his words, she felt relieved to at least hear them, because it meant that she was alive and that she wasn’t alone.
“Is she okay? Is she going to wake up?”
And then there was a second voice, one that hit her consciousness suddenly, as though it had combed through thick branches to reach her. This one is familiar. A steady baritone that warmed her up, as much as sounds can do that sort of thing.
Oh good. He’s here, I can go back to sleep, she felt herself relax into her thoughts. Because she was tired. And curiously sore, her muscles heavy and groaning as if she’d just fought her way through hell. There was a muddy and dull pressure in the back of her head and it hurt to breathe, but it was something she decided she could worry about later because he was there.
“Oh yes, definitely. Must have hit her head on something before you two came in but she’s just as lucky as you are, Señor Roberts…”
At the mention of his name, her brain snagged, like someone stepping on an icy twig to interrupt her rest. It was annoying, didn’t feel right and her fingers twitched just at the sound. The throbbing behind her eyes intensified and she knew she should probably try to get up, except that the snow was so soothing and she really didn’t want to move…
“Señora…” the original voice called out gently, “Señora Roberts, good morning…”
“Should I…”
“Yes, of course you can touch her.”
And then the ice around her hand felt warmer. As much as she had felt comfort in the snow, the warmth did feel better. Enough that she wondered if maybe she could get more of it, if maybe she could be convinced to move out of the cold after all…
“What do I call her…”
“Of course. Natalie Roberts, according to identification but I don’t know if you have any other names. A nickname. If you can recall…”
“Right. Natalie…” the voice repeated slowly as though it was new information.
She curled her fingers because in fact, she found she wanted more of the heat on her hand. She was tired and cold and her skull pulsated but she liked the heat, the way it felt soft instead of sharp and cutting. It made her want to move.
She hadn’t figured it out until a steady beep poked through the cloudiness of her mind, because that that didn’t fit with her original information, that she was laying somewhere in a snowy wilderness, the pain peaceful enough that she thought she could rest there forever. The beep merged with the warmth of her hand and then she could feel her toes again, could feel a new consciousness creep through her. Like a curtain being lifted, slowly and deliberately.
She wasn’t in the snow. It didn’t fit, not with the beeping and the context of the voices and the heat.
“Nat…Natalie…” the baritone called out, in tune with the feel of something tickling the back of her hand. And then an insistent stroke on her hairline. Nurturing. She wanted to lean into all of it, the sounds and the touch, even as heavy as she felt.
“Your wife is just taking a little nap, Señor Roberts. I’m sure she’ll wake up shortly. I’m sure I don’t understand just how you both made it out without more…”
They couldn’t be talking about her. Made it out of where? Without more of what? She willed her body to move or kick or something because the word wife didn’t make sense at all. Something was not right or logical and the only way to set things straight would be to say something.
Even if the labels didn’t make sense, it was enough to orient her because then she knew she wasn’t actually in snow.
Not snow.
Not snow at all.
A bed. A stiff mattress and a scratchy cotton blanket.
She let her mind go back to categorizing the information she had. Not snow. Men. She didn’t want to open her eyes, didn’t want to leave the comfort of the quiet but it was not snow and someone had to say something. Whether she liked it or not, because they were talking about her and she had missing pieces of information because they were obviously mistaken.
When she peeked her eyes open, slowly at first, she tried not to focus on the fact that all of the pain had centralized into her eyelids, or how bright things felt. What was important was getting her bearings. Recognizing that she was in her body, that she was connected to an IV and a heart monitor (hence the beeping), and that she’d been covered with a thick flannel blanket that didn’t feel thick enough.
“Hola, Señora.”
She looked up to see the owner of at least one of the men who had been murmuring about her as though she hadn’t been there as listening the entire time. Her first thought when her eyes focused on the short man with pale skin and dark hair, was that he looked younger than his voice. Her second was that he looked like a banker, even though he was wearing a crisp white jacket and medicina neatly embroidered onto his lapel.
“Doctor Velasco, a sus ordenes. I’m surprised you are awake, Mrs. Roberts,” he patted her hand gently, emphasizing the “missus” with pride and even excitement at showing off his English.
“That’s not my name,” she croaked, her voice scratching against her throat.
“Here,” he reached over to the nightstand at her side for a glass of water. “Try not to worry too much about that for the moment.”
She took a sip, wincing as the cool liquid hit her windpipes. “My head…”
And then her train of thought was interrupted by a clear cough, a reminder that there had been two voices, and that the doctor with the baby face wasn’t the baritone.
“Hi,” he said, his forehead creased as if in apology. As if he wasn’t sure what she’d expected but that he knew she’d expected something different.
She didn’t say anything, just studied him as though her silence gave her the advantage.
His voice matched his face much better than the dark-haired doctor’s had. When her baritone met her eyes, unflinching under her inspection, she noted the goosebumps on her forearms. She didn’t know or didn’t remember a lot of things. Her name. Where she was. Who he was, even though the conversation that had woken her up had promised he was important. She wasn’t really even sure of the color of her own hair. But when she looked into his eyes, marred only by a deep purple bruise on one cheek and a busted lip, it was like the first time that she’d heard his voice. Something about the blue-grey made sense, like a piece of the puzzle that actually fit.
She knew him. She opened her mouth to say his name but nothing came out, her tongue trapped because she’d had a name, or at least what felt like a name, and her body had almost remembered to say something. A missed synapse or something more terrifying, and all she could do was close her mouth and watch him nod.
“Your husband is experiencing a bit of memory loss, Señora. We think he must have had some kind of head injury before you arrived last night, though with how fast you both are recovering, it’s fascinating how there is any trauma at all…”
She watched as her baritone pursed his lips while looking at her, as if studying her too. He kept his eyes focused, as though in silent interrogation, though she was tempted to tell him he was wasting his time if he thought she knew anything. She envied him that he’d been awake longer, as though he had been given access to more information than her. He hadn’t said anything, was just observing as the doctor filled her in on what he thought she needed to know. They’d arrived the night before, her unconscious and him just barely, and they’d both looked like they’d been to a warzone, but no one really knew much more except for the details of identification on their person.
“Truth be told, the scene of you carrying your wife into our hospital has several of our nurses swooning,” the doctor said with amusement. “They say it was very romantic…”
“No ya ne zhenat…” she whispered, though she hadn’t meant to interrupt and didn’t understand at first why the doctor was looking at her so curiously.
“Señora, I apologize. I assumed you were American, based on your identification. Your husband seems to speak only English, I just thought… perhaps if you could translate?”
Another piece of information, another clue that she could only file away for later. Because the words-Russian?- had tumbled out before she’d been able to think about them.
“But I’m not married,” she made eye contact again with the man they said was her husband, hoping to get more clues out of his reaction by repeating what she'd said in English.
“I didn’t think I was either,” he said quietly before reaching out to touch her, drawing her attention to her hand. To the simple gold band on his ring finger and the matching one she hadn’t realized she was wearing.
***
When he woke up, he’d had a sense of déjà vu. He couldn't say why, but it was as though it wasn't the first time he'd woken up not sure of where he was or how much time has passed. It wasn't the first time that he'd woken up with an overwhelming sense of this isn't right, I shouldn't be alive.
Except for the extra layer of not knowing what would be right. Not just where, why, how, and when but also who. As in who is my doctor, and why am I suspicious, but also quite plainly, who am I?
The nurse that arrived when he was awake only gave a small gasp, as though surprised his eyes had opened at all. She left quickly, turning on her heels before he could ask her anything, and then he was left alone to stare at the wall. He’d been hooked up to a monitor and when he pulled the cuff off his finger, the machine next to him had beeped angrily.
He hadn’t meant to rush, except that something in his bones had told him to move. That déjà vu that said he was missing something, that the only way to figure it all out would be to get out of there (where?) as soon as possible.
“Buenos dias, Señor Roberts,” he’d heard someone say as he was on the floor looking for shoes or something to cover his bare feet. “Hablais el castellano?”
“Shoes,” he’d answered, looking over his shoulder to see a short man in a white labcoat standing in front of him with his hand out as if either to shake or to help him up. He’d had an idea an idea of what the man was saying, but the end goal really was to leave, wasn’t it? “Where are my shoes?”
“Ah, mira! El habla inglés!” the man had turned his head to speak to the nurse standing beside him. “Florencia,ya has comprobado sus signos vitales?”
The woman, the same one who he’d seen earlier, moved from her defensive position behind the man in the white labcoat and pulled at the stethoscope hanging around her neck. He stepped back as she approached, earning a laugh from the other man.
“Señor Roberts, this is our nurse, Florencia. And my name is Doctor Velasco. I’m in charge of both you and your wife…”
He’d been on his hands and knees with his head under the bed when he’d heard the tail-end of the doctor’s explanation.
Wife.
When the doctor said it, it was almost as if he’d been talking about another case. His first instinct was to shake his head at the obvious misunderstanding, but when he looked down and his eyes focused on the ring around his finger…
“Where…” he closed his eyes and sat back on his heels, taking the moment to recognize that he was only wearing a simple blue hospital gown, that it wasn’t as though he could logically flee even with shoes. So the question of “where” fit everything, even his clothes.
“Where is your wife?” the doctor motioned for him to sit down on the bed. “In recovery but stable. Just down the hall, if you’d like to visit later… we hadn’t expected you to wake up so soon. I’m afraid you frightened Señorita Florencia a little.”
He considered the value in continuing the circular volley of questions. The doctor didn’t seem threatening or intentional in his withholding of questions but it was still maddening how much he didn’t know. How lost he was. Deciding to comply for the moment, he sat on the bed and focused on the band hugging his finger.
“Where am I?” he asked, putting as much authority into his voice as he could. He knew on instinct that it wouldn’t be difficult to immobilize the doctor or his nurse, that he really could use minimal force, but he also knew that if the doctor was as benign as he appeared, the right look would effectively communicate authority.
The doctor accepted the stethoscope from Florencia and began his own analysis, checking heart, pulse, breathing, offering little hums as he pushed the cold metal on bare skin. “Do you remember what happened?”
And with that question came the clear awareness. A one-word answer that was as frightening as it was paralyzing.
He really had no idea.
The doctor squinted at the answer, scratching notes in a spiral-bound pad of paper kept in his pocket. “You and your wife arrived last night. You carried her in and collapsed at the door. Unresponsive, both of you.”
He tried to make meaning out of the doctor’s report, to remember coming in. To remember anything. It was as though his mind had been wiped, like a chalkboard, with only traces of whatever had been written down there lingering and only if he squinted. Flashes of old radio music and twinkling stars, silver cut-outs that reflected and spun and made no sense. And the cold. He could remember the cold, feeling his veins so cold he could swear his veins had icicles inside.
He could not remember getting to the hospital. It was the top of a neverending list of things he didn’t know. As the list grew, so did the panic that dug its heels into his chest.
The doctor hummed and asked questions. Easy questions like the date and if he could tell his right from his left. Harder questions like his own date of birth and where he was from.
And then silence.
“I will have a nurse bring your things,” the doctor said cautiously. “It could assist in the recollection…If you will allow me to confer with some colleagues before I offer any other concrete information, Señor Roberts.”
That’s not my name…
***
Two yellow plastic bags. Clues that he felt like he should savor, each article offering another puzzle piece. At first, he’d considered waiting until the other woman woke up or at least until they said that he could see her. There was a chance she’d be able to set everything straight, or at least to fill in the gaps. It was reasonable to expect that she’d be able to give him what the doctor couldn’t. All of the “w’s” that the doctor provided with a shrug of his shoulder and small measures of caution. Who. What. Where. When.
It boiled down to trust, and whether or not he trusted anyone to tell him anything that he couldn’t touch and see with his own hands. He knew that the truth in its contents could have been manipulated, were only as real as he would let it be but it was worth a shot.
It was that déjà vu that made him suspicious. Things aren’t always what they appear to be. Truth isn’t always what people want you to see.
Clothes. A blue sweatshirt and jeans that he was grateful for because then at least he could wear something that felt human. They didn’t feel any more or less his than the man down the hall’s, but they felt normal. Thick tube socks that felt just right and he supposed he at least remembered how to put a pair of pants on. At least he wasn’t an invalid. The cotton and denim was comforting. Not a significant clue to anything but at least he wasn’t bound by the hospital gown anymore.
In his own clothes, wearing the tennis shoes that he knew were his and not the woman’s, he felt capable of looking through the bag with more intention and focus. The obvious first choice was the brown leather wallet and he admittedly held his breath when he opened it. The contents weren’t surprising but weren’t especially helpful either. Multi-colored bills in shades of purples, reds, blues, yellows, and greens with lots of zeros and the words Banco Central de Chile. Enough cash to go far, he hoped, and at least an idea that he was in South America. The real clue was the picture that stared up at him, underneath big blue letters that spelled out what he supposed was his home state of Indiana.
There he was, looking stone-faced into the camera. It was him, he knew it was, and he could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The thick plastic of identification told him that he- or at least the man staring back at him- was indeed who the doctor had said he was.
“Stefan Roberts,” he read it out loud, hoping that if he read his name slowly it would click. “What a dumb name.”
There it was. Stefan Roberts. Born on April 10, 1986. Lives in Indianapolis. Organ donor who doesn’t smile at the camera, like a schmuck.
He flipped the card over a few times before sliding it back into the wallet so that he could check the rest of the contents in the bag. What he got was that the other pair of jeans belonged to someone significantly smaller. And then he was pulling out socks and a grey sweater that he let himself inhale because it smelled like flowers. A lacy black bra that he examined, though he wasn’t sure why, until he reminded himself that he wasn’t going to get anywhere by staring at underwear no matter how hypnotic. Her identification in a thin billfold that he was surprised held anything at all.
Natalie Roberts. January 13, 1988.
Blonde waves and not quite a smile.
She looked happy. At least the woman who they said he was married to looked happy when she took a driver’s license photo.
He slid his index finger along the pocket that held her own supply of money and pulled out a neatly folded white piece of paper. Again he wondered if he should feel guilty about going through her things while she slept. He decided that he couldn’t feel guilty for invading the privacy of someone he didn’t know, at least not consciously. Unfolding it carefully, he read the pen-scratched lines with desperation.
Nat,
“Scars are just another kind of memory.”
― M.L. Stedman
Steve R.
Resisting the urge to crumble it up and throw it across the room, he did his best to put her wallet back together before placing it neatly into one of her black tennis shoes. All that he had learned was that his wife was small, smiling, and maybe sentimental. He hoped he was Steve.