They were talking about using a sedative to calm me down. That meant drugs. Just the thought of them putting drugs in my system immediately set off every instinct in my brain, as though some ravenous beast was about to close its jaws around my throat. Like a terrified rabbit fighting for its life, I started pushing against the hands that were holding me down.
An image flashed behind my eyes. A dream or a memory, I wasn’t sure.
People had used drugs before to hurt me. I’d even used them on myself. It had been meant as a way to end pain, provide a place to hide during the bad things, but had really only givenbad people a way to control me. Not once had the appearance of drugs in my life ever brought anything good.
Although I fought with everything I had, in the end it was all in vain. A sudden drowsiness overcame me, and I knew the nurses had won. They’d administered their sedative, and I had no choice but to fall into its embrace.
I could only hope it would be kinder this time.
CHAPTER 15
Auggie
I clickedmy pen nervously against my desk as I stared at the arrest file I was supposed to be filling out. The file had been sitting on my desk for nearly half an hour but was still just as blank as when I first opened it. Every time I tried to put pen to paper, I ended up getting distracted and my thoughts wandered off to memories from the previous night.
Of all the things I thought would happen when I brought Melody to the hospital, the worst I imagined was that the other kids wouldn’t appreciate her reading or that she would get freaked out by all the medical equipment. I never expected that the John Doe, who I’d been visiting for weeks, would suddenly wake up.
No, not a John Doe any longer. We finally had a name for the man. His name wasMia.
Giving up on my paperwork, I pushed it aside with a sigh and pulled up the missing person’s database on my computer. I still didn’t know the newly awakened man’s surname, but Mia was a unique name for a man. There couldn’t be more than a handfulof men with this name, at most. Maybe not even that many. It was entirely possible that the man in the hospital was the only man named Mia in the country. Even without a surname, that should make him easy to track down.
I sighed and sat back in my chair, my new hope of finding a report on the man rapidly deflated. There were no missing person reports for men named Mia. Surprisingly, across the whole country, there were very few women named Mia reported missing as well. The name Mia seemed to be extremely lucky at the moment.
Either that or people with the name were so unlucky that they didn’t even have anyone to report them missing.
So, missing person reports were doing me no good. Whoever Mia was, he hadn’t been reported missing by anyone. Still, Mia was a unique name for a man. It shouldn’t have been that hard to track down his identity. Even if he was a resident of a different state, I should have been able to find something.
Yet, there was nothing. Even awake and with a name, Mia remained as much of a mystery as when he’d been in a coma.
As I sat there staring at the infuriatingly unhelpful computer screen, the sound of humming caught my attention. Just a desk away, Roland was tapping his pen and staring off into space with a smile on his face, clearly not getting any work done. Near his elbow sat a series of Tupperware containers filled with a fancy homemade lunch.
For as long as I’d known him, Roland had always been the type to either get takeout for lunch or bring a simple sandwich. The man could burn water and seemed to think the fire alarm was the same as a cooking timer. That lunch had clearly not beenmade by his own hands. Between that and the dreamy smile on his face, I could guess why he was so distracted, but I couldn’t help calling him out.
“What’s got you so happy today? You’re glowing like the northern lights.” Smirking, I leaned over to whisper. “Tell me the truth. Are you pregnant?”
Sputtering in shock, Roland dropped his pen, which rolled under the desk to be forgotten until cleaning day.
“Shut up,” he grumbled as he shoved my face away. “Ain’t a man allowed to be happy?”
“Of course,” I shrugged as I let the wheels of my chair drift farther away from my desk than necessary after his shrug. “But you seem a little more than just happy. I’m guessing something good happened this weekend.”
My smile and the tone of my voice made it clear. I already knew. And Roland knew that I knew. There was no use denying it unless he wanted me to keep teasing him.
“Fine, you gossipy hen,” he said as he tossed another pen at me. “Tyler visited this weekend.”
I raised an eyebrow, letting my disbelief show on my face. There was no way Roland would be this happy if Tyler had already left, and that lunch looked too fresh to be leftovers.
“Just the weekend?”
Another pen came sailing toward my head with enough accuracy that I had to duck.
“It’s spring break, and he manage to get his assignments turned in early so he could take some extra time off. He’s going to be here for two weeks. Happy now?”
I knew from previous conversations, that after a rough start in life because of a learning disability, when Roland and Tyler got together, Tyler had gotten a great job at a pub but had finally decided to go back to school now that his disability had been identified and there were so many programs where he could get help getting an education.
For a moment, I considered teasing Roland more. It was great stress relief after my own chaotic weekend. However, I didn’t want to risk upsetting him and damaging a relatively new friendship. So, I changed the subject to something more series.
“That’s right. I forgot your partner’s a university student. What’s he studying again?”