Fear: Chapter 2: 507 Marshall Ln (Part One)

I hadn't been expecting the subtle rush that came from seeing the last few disappear.

Wrinkles.

The banes of existence for some, the marking of existence for others. It was oddly exhilarating to watch the creases mold back and soften into the exterior of the skin, settling into a place that they hadn't been for years.

I leaned back and rested my hands on the bathroom counter. The face that stared back at me in the mirror still felt like a foreigner. Face, too thin. Nose, too big. I had suddenly transformed into a puppy with too large of paws for his own good .

It had been seven years since I had woken up. The day was still pasted clearly in the front of my head. The flashing, throbbing moment of being thrust back into a world that I thought I knew. It began with finding myself strapped into a hospital bed with tubes threaded into me. I could hardly move my hand to reach for the tubes, but I managed to grasp them enough to tear them out. The monitor that connected my body to five other nurses beeped erratically the more I freed myself, making it hard to concentrate.

Bodies rushed into the room. By the expressions on their faces and the jolting pause that each took as they entered told me that they weren't expecting to see their patient struggling to escape from her bed. Rather slowly, each snapped from their revere and hastened to usher me to sink back into bed.

"Let me go! There is nothing wrong with me!" I cried, slapping at the nurses' hands as best as I could. Their hands never withdrew, but instead multiplied as more of them gathered on top of me to help in the fight. They cooed for me to calm down and rest and gritted their teeth when I fought harder in response.

"C'mon Cora, settle down." The voice was new, gruff in texture, and oddly familiar in the back of my mind. An older man appeared at the side of the bed, glasses resting on the end of his nose, and salt and pepper hair falling over his forehead. He barely mustered a glance toward me as his fingers combed through a ring of colored papers attached to the rail of my bed. "More lively today, it seems. You've given our nurses a great surprise."

I thrusted my arm away from a woman who carried a needle. "I'm not hurt. Let me go."

He chuckled. "No, no, no. That would end quite badly, Isabelle." he gestured for the woman to step aside. "Miss Stevens, you've been in quite the car wreck."

My eyes passed over each of the remaining bodies in the room, sending a long and stinging glare each of their way. The woman - Isabelle - had retreated to the doorway, holding the needle at her side. Her fingers remained rested on the injector, eyes studying me. I placed most of my concentration on her, not allowing her a step forward without my noting.

"I'm Dr. Kyle. You may call me David though. All of my patients regard me by my first name," he paused, throwing me a reassuring smile before continuing. "I've been overseeing your stay. You've been here for about a week now. By chance, could you tell me what you last remember doing?"

I stayed quiet for a brief moment, taking the time to absorb him. He wasn't threatening, though my nerves remained rattled at the presence of nurses. They seemed intent on regarding me, making sure that nothing I did would go unnoticed. Dr. Kyle - David - waited patiently for my answer, taking on the same watch as the residing observers.

"I believe I have this handled," David proposed after a minute of silence. He gestured for the masses to continue on with their work. "Go on."

There were murmurs of disgruntled objections and even a few hesitations from some of the staff, but they all managed to desert the room after another urge from David. He was gentle with his staff - firm at times - but never with the intention to impose anger on them. He was not the demanding spirit that encompassed most men of his position, but a kind man that didn't mind life's challenges.

"Now, where were we?" he began again after scanning through the ring of paper a final time. He had grabbed a swivel chair that rested in the far corner of the room and pulled it alongside my bed. Maintaining his distance, David rested his set of worn hands on his lap.

"I don't remember anything," I recounted with a sigh. Even though it was my tongue's truth, a pang of guilt rested in the base of my throat. I knew exactly what happened - I remembered it all. Every searing and frightful second I could spit out in pristine detail.

His expression was vague and anything but accepting, but he swallowed my answer with a nod of his head. "Do you know where you are? How you got here?"

"A hospital. Car accident - you told me so." I answered almost as soon as he asked the question.

"Yes, but do you know where you are? What happened in the accident? Any of those details?" His tone was gentle but held an underlying note of urgency. His interest was beginning to acclimate.

I shrugged. "Washington."

He nodded his head, suddenly pleased. "Very good, Cora. See, you do remember."

There was a wave of uneasiness that started to illuminate my nerves. Every strand in my body began to tingle as the familiarity in my bones began to rush forward. I knew that Washington was not my home, yet every fiber was screaming otherwise. There was no discomfort in being called Cora as though there should have been. So many feelings of familiarity were associating themselves with these vacant pieces of information that it made my head seem detached - a home within a stranger.

"What happened to me?" It was the only logical question that I could think of.

A glimmer of sadness crept into the creases near his eyes. He rubbed his hands over the coarse, sparse hair covering his chin and took a moment before answering me. "There was a car accident - "

"Well, no shit." I interrupted, followed by David pursing his lips.

"You were in a car accident on November fourth," he continued with vague reluctance. "Bremerton police responded to the call - a highway accident. There was a bout of black ice that took a line of five cars," He paused again, teetering on the idea of stopping the story. I rested quietly against the bed, hoping to entail that I was waiting for him to continue. "Your vehicle was side swept by one of the five," He finally resumed after a few seconds. "You were put into an induced coma to reduce the swelling in your head."

"Did anybody die?" I turned my head, focusing my sight out the window. It was rimmed with a layer of snow, seemingly fresh, and continuing to sprinkle from the sky as I watched. 

David cleared his throat before answering. "Yes, a young woman. She was about twenty-two."

There was no pang of remorse in my chest like I was expecting. Everything had dwindled into numbness, and I was left feeding off the vacancy that remained in its place. My fingers ran across the rough cotton sheets, restricted by the reattached tubes. I remained in silence, staring out the window at the snowy night. 

"Your father has been in to visit you a few times. He's been very worried about you, Cora." David went on, trying to fill the void. He studied me very intently, looking for my reaction. 

I shook my head. "I don't have a father."

"Yes," he disagreed. "Yes you do. His name is John. When he heard about the accident, he flew in from Oregon - "

"Please stop." I interrupted, whipping around in anguish. "I would know if I had one, and I don't, so stop telling me lies. I'm confused enough already."

Although the look on his face was against the idea, David followed my orders and refrained from saying anything more. He picked up the files from the end of my bed and drew out a small square of paper, crumpled and water damaged. He looked at it for a couple moments before placing it on my lap. It was a small photograph of a stranger - tan, deep grey hair and eyes, male. His smile was toothy and large and his face a bit rough, though his arms and chest muscles were anything but. He was suited in a plaid shirt, haphazardly tucked into his blue jeans. He was wearing boots, leaning up against a tree in the middle of a forest, an ax laying at his feet. A thumbs up reflected the brightness in his smile. 

I knew what David was trying to do. Instead, I tossed the photograph on the floor and turned my head, wishing that I could roll over instead of being trapped in restraints. 

"You may not want to lay like that," David began his final words, standing up with a protesting squeal coming from the chair. "Muscle strain from the accident will cause your neck to go sore if you do that for too long."

And with that, he left me be. 

The quiet was almost overwhelming at first, but the beeping of machinery around me dimmed out the bubbling uneasiness in my chest. There was something disturbing about the white walls; they were brick. Hard. It seemed to fit the solitude that was a characteristic of the hospital. I stared and stared at the divets in the paint, slowly chipping away with age. The hospital didn't seem that old, but my judgement was shot upon arrival. 

Arriving half dead does that kinda thing. 

Time passed as I drifted in and out of sleep in the paper cotton sheets. I wasn't sure how long it took for a nurse to reenter my room after what had happened this morning, but in a blip of consciousness, they looked vaguely hesitant to approach. She injected a clear liquid into my IV, making the already blurred edges of my vision become even more blurry. It helped with the passing of the time, but not much else.

I jolted awake at a gouging sensation in my forearm. My eyes snapped to the side, spotting a man which I immediately identified as David from his frame. He was picking at my skin with a pair of tweezers, the medical grade type that doctors in tv shows always used. Bandages were unfolded from my arm, resting underneath as he worked. His brow was furrowed, eyes concentrating on the exposed tissue. From as much as I could see, it was particularly mangled, as if someone took a tenderizer and went to town on it. There were places that were starting to heal, scabbing over and waiting for its scar to form. But even so, some of those places were being opened back up by David. 

"Ouch," I grimaced, watching him pull out a piece of glass and hold it up to the light. He tilted his head in acknowledgment and placed the chunk into a metal dish with a sigh. 

Plink.

"You're awake, I see." he mused, concentrating on his work. "You'd think these nurses would know how to clean a wound properly."

Plink.

"They were probably too scared to stay so close to me for so long." I said with a hint of dry humor, my eyes following his hands as they moved back and forth. 

"Yes," he noted in agreement. "You are quite the frightening specimen." 

I looked over to the window. It was still dark out, barely snowing. "What time is it?"

"Oh, no more than three." 

"And you're still here because?" 

He chuckled softly under his breath. "Well, someone has to tend to you."

I nodded. "Right."

Plink. 

It was silent for a few moments. 

"Have you remembered anything else?" David began cautiously, keeping his eyes low on my arm. 

"No." 

"Not even a single thing?"

Plink. 

"Like I said, no." I repeated, annoyance flooding into my tone. I pulled on the restraints strapped to my mobile arm, but that ended with an eye roll and an exasperated return to my vegetable state. "Can I get these things off of me?"

Again with a chuckle, David glanced up. "Maybe in the morning. I'm sure the nurses would be happy for one final night of peace."

"I'm not crazy." I stated, not bothering to look at him.

"I never said you were." he replied. 

Huffing, I went silent.

"You have a brother too - a twin actually. His name's Grant. He goes to school down in Colorado for engineering - smart guy he is. You have a mother too. She lives in New York with her partner, Bill. Your father, he keeps to himself up in Oregon. Both were surprised when our nurses called and told them you were here. Apparently, they haven't heard from you in some time."

"I'm sure it's for a good reason." I mused with tight lips. 

David placed the tweezers into the dish and rolled back in his chair. Ignoring my comment, he stood and went to wash his hands in the sink in the corner of the room. "Your father informed me that your brother is flying in from Colorado this morning to come see you. I assume you would like to meet them?"

"No." I lashed, staring wide-eyed at him. 

"Cora, your memories will come back, you know. We're very hopeful, so why not try to use them as a trigger. Maybe you'll start to remember them." he leaned against the counter, hands being dried off with brown paper towel, and eyed me carefully, hoping for a change in answer. 

"No," I repeated, shifting uncomfortably in the restraints. 

David shook his head with a disappointed frown tugging at the edges of his lips. He moved forward and discarded the old bandages underneath my arm before wrapping it back up in new ones. Next, he picked up the metal dish from the bedside table and headed for the door. All of this was performed in a chilling silence. Pausing at the door, he turned to face me one last time. His old eyes pierced my skin, more painful than the tweezers and the glass. 

"They're your family, Cora. Whether you believe it or not."

And that, folks, was the beginning of this glorious life.