“Hey! What’s the matter? You hurt?”
Footsteps… This was real.
I opened my eyes. I forced myself up once again.
“Corey! My God! It’s you!”
I forced a grin, cut my nod short of a topple.
“It’s me, Bill. How’ve you been?”
“What happened?”
“I’m hurt,” I said. “Maybe bad. Need a doctor.”
“Can you walk if I help? Or should I carry you?”
“Let’s try walking,” I said.
He got me to my feet and I leaned on him. We started for his car. I only remember the first few steps.
When that low-swinging sweet chariot turned sour and swung high once more, I tried to raise my arm, realized that it was restrained, settled for a consideration of the tube affixed thereto, and decided that I was going to live. I had sniffed hospital smells and consulted my internal clock. Having made it this far, I felt that I owed it to myself to continue. And I was warm, and as comfortable as recent history allowed. That settled, I closed my eyes, lowered my head, and went back to sleep.
Later, when I came around again, felt more fit and was spotted by a nurse, she told me that it was seven hours since I had been brought in and that a doctor would be by to talk with me shortly. She also got me a glass of water and told me that it had stopped snowing. She was curious as to what had happened to me.
I decided that it was time to start plotting my story. The simpler the better. All right. I was coming home after an extended stay abroad. I had hitchhiked out, gone on in, and been attacked by some vandal or drifter I had surprised inside. I crawled back out and sought help. Finis.
When I told it to the doctor I could not tell at first whether he believed me. He was a heavy man whose face had sagged and set long ago. His name was Bailey, Morris Bailey, and he nodded as I spoke and then asked me, “Did you get a look at the fellow?”
I shook my head.
“It was dark,” I said.
“Did he rob you too?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you carrying a wallet?”
I decided I had better say yes to that one.
“Well, you didn’t have it when you came in here, so he must have taken it.”
“Must have,” I agreed.
“Do you remember me at all?”
“Can’t say that I do. Should I?”
“You seemed vaguely familiar to me when they brought you in. That was all, at first…”
“And…?” I asked.
“What sort of garments were you wearing? They seemed something like a uniform.”
“Latest thing. Over There, these days. You were saying that I looked familiar?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Where is Over There, anyway? Where did you come from? Where have you been?”
“I travel a lot,” I said. “You were going to tell me something a moment ago.”
“Yes,” he said. “We are a small clinic, and some time ago a fast-talking salesman persuaded the directors to invest in a computerized medical-records system. If the area had developed more and we had expanded a lot, it might have been worthwhile. Neither of these things happened, though, and it is an expensive item. It even encouraged a certain laziness among the clerical help. Old files just don’t get purged the way they used to, even for the emergency room. Space there for a lot of useless backlog. So, when Mr. Roth gave me your name and I ran a routine check on you, I found something and I realized why you looked familiar. I had been working the emergency room that night too, around seven years ago, when you had your auto accident. I remembered working on you then — and how I thought you weren’t going to make it. You surprised me, though, and you still do. I can’t even find the scars that should be there. You did a nice job of healing up.”
“Thanks. A tribute to the physician, I’d say.”
“May I have your age, for the record?”
“Thirty — six,” I said. That’s always safe.
He jotted it somewhere in the folder he held across his knees.
“You know, I would have sworn — once I got to checking you over and remembering — that that’s about what you looked the last time I saw you.”
“Clean living.”
“Do you know about your blood type?”
“It’s an exotic. But you can treat it as an AB positive for all practical purposes. I can take anything, but don’t give mine to anybody else.”
He nodded.
“The nature of your mishap is going to require a police report, you know.”
“I had guessed that.”
“Just thought you might want to be thinking about it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “So you were on duty that night, and you patched me up? Interesting. What else do you recall about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“The circumstances under which I was brought in that time. My own memory is a blank from right before the accident until some time after I had been transferred up to the other place — Greenwood. Do you recall how I arrived?”
He frowned, just when I had decided he had one face for all occasions.
“We sent an ambulance,” he said.
“In response to what? Who reported the accident? How?”
“I see what you mean,” he said. “It was the State Patrol that called for the ambulance. As I recollect, someone had seen the accident and phoned their headquarters. They then radioed a car in the vicinity. It went to the lake, verified the report, gave you first aid, and called for the ambulance. And that was it.”
“Any record of who called in the report in the first place?”
He shrugged.
“That’s not the sort of thing we keep track of,” he said. “Didn’t your insurance company investigate? Wasn’t there a claim? They could probably —”
“I had to leave the country right after I recovered,” I said. “I never pursued the matter. I suppose there would have been a police report, though.”
“Surely. But I have no idea how long they keep them around.” He chuckled. “Unless, of course, that same salesman got to them, too… It is rather late to be talking about that though, isn’t it? It seems to me there is a statute of limitations on things of that sort. Your friend Roth will tell you for sure —”
“It isn’t a claim that I have in mind,” I said. “Just a desire to know what really happened. I have wondered about it on and off for a number of years now. You see, I have this touch of retrograde amnesia going.”
“Have you ever talked it over with a psychiatrist?” he said, and there was something about the way he said it that I did not like. Came one of those little flashes of insight then: Could Flora have managed to get me certified insane before my transfer to Greenwood? Was that on my record here? And was I still on escape status from that place? A lot of time had passed and I knew nothing of the legalities involved. If this was indeed the case, however, I imagined they would have no way of knowing whether I had been certified sane again in some other jurisdiction. Prudence, I guess it was, cautioned me to lean forward and glance at the doctor’s wrist. I seemed possessed of a subliminal memory that he had consulted a calendar watch when taking my pulse. Yes, he had, I squinted. All right. Day and month: November 28. I did a quick calculation with my two-and-a-half-to-one conversion and had the year. It was seven, as he had indicated.
“No, I haven’t,” I said. “I just assumed it was organic rather than functional and wrote the time off as a loss.”
“I see,” he said. “You use such phrases rather glibly. People who’ve been in therapy sometimes do that.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve read a lot about it.”
He sighed. He stood.
“Look,” he said. “I am going to call Mr. Roth and let him know you are awake. It is probably best.”