him?
But the pain, the feel of the blow, was at the back of his head. She’d been in front of him, facing him.
Had an accomplice of hers struck him?
The man sat up again, even more slowly this time, pausing as the nausea threatened to return, moving again when it subsided.
He made it to an upright position, and this time stayed there.
The nightstand was an unremarkable, hospital-issue cube with a couple of shelves. A plastic flask of water and a cup rested on top. The man leaned forward to look at the shelves, wincing as the grogginess and nausea assailed him again.
The shelves were empty.
He felt the tug of the leads at his arms and chest and for the first time became aware of the IV winding from his forearm up to a bag of something – saline, he supposed – hanging on a stand by the corner of the bed.
He was dressed in a hospital gown emblazoned with tiny emblems. He squinted at them, but they gave no clue as to the name or location of the hospital. Beneath the gown he wore nothing but a pair of boxer shorts.
Taking care not to pull off the monitoring leads attached to his arms and trunk, he eased off the side of the bed. He felt cool tiles beneath his bare feet.
On the wall beside the nightstand was a small mirror. Leaning over, he was just able to stare into it.
The face that looked back was immediately familiar, and the sense of relief that flooded through him almost abolished the pain in his head. It was the face of a man of around forty, with thick dark hair and a jaw blue with five-o’clock shadow. The eyes were a clearer blue, though bloodshot.
Yes, he recognized that face.
He tried to think of the name attached to it.
And realized he couldn’t.
*
He searched the room as quickly as he could.
It wasn’t all that quickly. The man was hampered by the pain in his head and neck, and by the giddiness which assaulted him every time he stooped or changed position too abruptly. And he had to take care all the time to move the trolley with the cardiac monitor around with him. If the leads became detached from his body, he assumed an alarm would be triggered, and somebody would come to investigate.
And he wanted to find out a little more about himself and the situation he was in, before encountering another human being. For some reason he felt unsafe. Under threat. Even here, in the supposed sanctuary of a hospital ward.
He established that the single closet in the corner held nothing but extra sheets and blankets and pillows, and that the freshly laundered shirt and chinos and sports jacket on one of the chairs contained nothing in any of the pockets. No wallet, no ID of any kind.
At the door, he turned the knob to tilt the blinds in the window and peered through.
The ward beyond was brightly lit, more so than the side room he was in. He saw white-coated people moving about, and others in pale blue uniforms. Doctors and nurses.
He made out a clock on the wall at the far end of the ward. Seven twenty-five.
Sooner or later, somebody was going to come in to check on him.
He sat back on the bed and wondered why that felt threatening. He couldn’t work it out.
Was his sense of dread a natural reaction to his inability to remember his own name, his address, his age? When you lacked an identity of your own, the identities of those around you immediately became suspicious.
Wait. He did recall his age.
His date of birth was January sixteenth, 1975. He was fairly certain that this was May, 2015, though he didn’t know the exact date. So he was forty years old.
Partial amnesia, then, he understood. Caused by trauma to the head. His memories were likely to come back to him, given time.
Except he didn’t know if he had time.
Something within him – nothing as clichéd or concrete as a voice, more a silent series of synaptic firings within his primitive brain – warned him to arm himself.
The man slid off the bed, again taking care not to dislodge the monitoring leads or the IV line, and faced the mirror on the wall. It was held in place with four small screws at the corners, each with a Philips head notch.
He snapped the end off the handle of the plastic water jug on the nightstand. Using the sliver of