Chapter Twenty-Two
Christian
A Week Earlier
“Kara, baby girl, come on, we gotta go,” I call out from the kitchen as I lock the lid on the cooler. Today is the kick off of the Charlotte Fire Department Baseball Tournament, and we can’t be fucking late. All the houses around the city will be competing over the next two days. I’m ready to play some ball and spend time with my girl. My time with Kara has been limited the past couple weeks. Between her working extra shifts at the diner, and me pulling doubles at the firehouse, we barely have time to kiss each other as we’re heading out the door.
Kara saunters into the kitchen in her cut off shorts and one of my flannel shirts with the top two buttons left open. Her long chestnut hair is pulled back in a ponytail and no makeup on her face. I love it when she is like this, natural and perfect. She looks like an angel. My angel.
Kara was the first friend I made when I returned from Afghanistan. I was still recovering from the injuries I sustained when our convoy was bombed. At the time, I had no memory of who I was. It was like someone had gone into my head and hit the restart button. I couldn’t remember my name or where I was from. All that I had to go on was what the doctors had in my record. My name was Christian Ryan, and I was a Sergeant in the Marine Corps Reconnaissance Battalion. I was a child of the Charlotte foster care system. No friends or family to speak of. I found myself alone and in a really dark place when I returned home to Charlotte. I didn’t know this place; the streets and the people were all foreign to me. I had no one. Alone and trying to remember who I was on top of dealing with the aftermath of the bombing was more than I could take. One late night, I was wandering the streets of Charlotte, drunk, and contemplating ending it all, when I stumbled into the diner Kara was working in. She saw the sadness and the desperation in my eyes. She offered me a cup of coffee and a listening ear. We talked, well I mostly talked, and she listened, and before I knew it, the sun was coming up and my urge to take my own life was gone. That night she saved my life.
Her friendship helped me heal and find some semblance of myself. She helped me get through the fire training academy. Being a fire fighter seemed like a natural choice for me, and she encouraged me to follow that path. Kara has seen me at my worst, held me when the nightmares of the bombing kept me from closing my eyes, and she was in the front row when I graduated from the academy. She’s been there through it all. And that is why, after the game tonight, I am going to ask her to marry me. I bought a ring, and have it planned to ask her in the place we first met. The booth where we sat the night I was going to end it all. It was the place my life started over, and I want to spend every moment from here to eternity with Kara.
Kara slings her arms around my neck and looks up at me with those big dark brown eyes. “What’s your hurry big guy, we have plenty of time.” She rises up on her toes and kisses the tip of my nose. She examines my face further and pouts when she sees the bags under my eyes. “Still not sleeping well?” she asks.
The past couple of weeks I’ve been having these strange dreams. They’re not like the dreams I had after coming home. I find myself in a house with a baby in my arms, and I am rocking her to sleep. I look up and a woman walks in. She has a warm, familiar smile on her face as she walks toward me. I feel like I know her, and this is our baby, and this is our house. When I wake up there are tears streaked down my face and massive void in my chest. I’m haunted by an overwhelming sense of loss. Every time I close my eyes I see her and that baby.
“I’m still having those dreams,” I admit.
“The ones with the baby and the woman?” I can see the worry in her eyes. PTSD dreams she can handle, but dreams about another woman are hard for her to swallow.
“I can’t shake the feeling that I know them.”
“Maybe she was one of the kids you met in foster care, and maybe before you were deployed you visited her to see her new baby.” Her reasoning seems far-fetched considering when I came home I didn’t have any friends welcoming me with open arms.
“Let’s not worry about my weird dreams, and focus on us…and the fact that we have a full forty-eight hours together.” I shift the conversation to ease both our minds.
“Do you think we could skip the tournament and just spend the next two days in bed instead?” She wiggles her eyebrows at me and gives me a sly grin.
“Tempting, but you know the boys can’t win this thing without me.”
“Okay.” She fakes a pout. “But you owe me big time.”
I think what I have in store for her tonight will more than make up for it.
****
It’s the bottom of the ninth, we are two runs down, and the bases are loaded. I swear Ladder 12 hired ringers for this tournament. I have never, in the eight years I’ve been playing in this tournament, seen them play this damn good. But if I get this hit, we win this game. It all rests on me. The pitcher stares down at the catcher, he nods his approval then rears back and launches the ball in my direction. I start to swing, but the ball goes too far left, and the next thing I know the world goes black.
****
The bright lights blind me as my eyelids begin to crack open. My eyes focus on the florescent lights above me. There is an intense pain radiating through my head, it feels like I’ve been hit by a freight train. Images of my wife, Lucy, flood through my mind like a movie on fast forward. “Lucy,” I mumble, glancing around the room and realizing I’m in the hospital. How did I get here? I call out for Lucy again but only get silence and the sound of beeping machines in return.
“Mr. Ryan, it’s good to see you awake.” A nurse in blue scrubs appears at my bedside and starts to examine me.
“Where is my wife? I need to see Lucy.”
The nurse looks down at me with a confused expression. “Mr. Ryan, I think you must be confused. Do you want me to go fetch your girlfriend Kara?” she asks.
The nurse is the one that is fucking confused. “Maybe you are in the wrong room. I’m Colton Bishop and my wife is Lucy Bishop. She’s a short brunette with big blue eyes.” The confusion on the nurse’s face turns to shock. Probably because she just realized she’s in the wrong patient’s room.
“I’m going to go get the doctor, Mr. Ryan.” She calls me by that name again. What the fuck is the matter with her.
“Will you please stop calling me that. My name is Colton Bishop,’ I snarl with frustration.
She takes a few steps back then hurries out the door. I can hear a frantic call for a doctor, then I hear another woman’s worried voice asking what is going on. Through the doorway, the nurse is struggling to keep a young woman from entering my room, but she fails, and the woman comes stumbling through the door. “Miss, please, I need you to wait in the hallway until the doctor completes his examination.” The nurse protests, but it does nothing, the woman fights her off again then walks over to the side of my bed. I feel like I know this woman, but I can’t think of from where. My head is spinning with so many images fast forwarding through my mind, it’s making the pain feel worse.
“Christian, are you okay?” she asks, sliding a chair next to my bed. She sits down and takes my hand, but I quickly pull it away.
“Who are you?” I ask still confused by what is going on. Two people now keep calling me by a different name.
“Christian, it’s me Kara, your girlfriend.” The concern in her eyes deepens.
“My name is Colton. How many times do I have to keep telling you people my name is Colton Bishop before you finally get it.” The frustration bubbles up in my chest. Why won’t these people listen to a word I’m saying?
Panic spreads across Kara’s face. The chair screeches against the linoleum floor as she gets up. “I’m going to go see where the hell the doctor is.” From over her shoulder I can see the doctor walking in. She rushes over to him in a panic. “Doctor Lewis, he thinks he’s someone else. Do you think his amnesia could have been triggered with this head injury?” Her voice is frantic. Head injury, amnesia, what the hell is going on?
The doctor calms Kara down and tells her she needs to go wait in the hall with the nurse, so he can perform his examination. The nurse escorts Kara out of the room. A part of me feels sorry for her when I see the tears streaming down her face. I still can’t shake the feeling that I know her. Once they are gone, the doctor turns his attention to me.
“First off, I am Dr. Lewis. I’m the attending neurologist here at St. Luke’s. Let’s start with a basic question. What is your name?”