Alice Sharpe - Cowboy Incognito

Zane. The name was growing on him, settling into the creases of his very empty brain.

Kinsey Frost’s face flashed in his mind and he suspected there was a silly grin on his face as he reconstructed her. She was so darn pretty. There was something else about her, too, something kind of sweet and innocent. Or maybe his response had more to do with the fact hers was the only face he could conjure that wasn’t related to people employed to take care of him. She’d come to help out of kindness and perhaps curiosity, which was totally understandable, considering they were strangers.

But, brother, she’d looked hot in that dress with her ruby lips and wavy hair....

Was she attached to someone else? For that matter, was he? On one hand, if he had a wife, hopefully she’d expect him to return to her and come looking for him when he didn’t. The flip side was this pull toward Kinsey. If he had his phone he could do an online search of her name and find out more about her. Frustrated and bored, he went the old-fashioned route and found a phone book in the drawer by the bed. He just wanted to see her name, just to reassure himself he hadn’t made her up. There was a map in the front of the book and he found her street, Hummingbird Drive, curious as to how far away she was. Not more than two or three miles, he discovered, and for some reason, that created a warmth in his heart where it had only been cold before.

Hummingbird Drive. That’s where a woman like her should live, he decided. Someplace that sounded as small and lovely and vibrant as she was.

Feeling way too restless to stay in bed, he’d pushed his IV stand around the looping corridors right after Kinsey left and then again after dinner when the sedative they gave him had little effect. He was supposed to spend a week here? The idea made him crazy. But if things didn’t change, where exactly did he go next?

He finally decided to give sleep another chance and settled back into the bed, but the oblivion he’d so looked forward to continued to elude him. Eventually, the hospital began quieting down. A nurse gave him another pill, and it was with relief when he felt his eyelids grow heavy. He stirred sometime later, awoken by the telltale swishing of the door that alerted him someone had entered his room.

He lay there for a second, expecting a cheery voice to announce it was time to check his blood pressure or take his temperature, but the room was eerily silent and the shadows too deep to make out a human shape.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

The silence remained and Zane realized he must have woken up as someone left his room. Maybe a nurse had come in to take his vitals and found him sleeping soundly. Either that, or his drugged brain had created the noise.

Settling back against his pillow, he soon fell asleep again. This time he actually had a dream with substance. A wolf chased him through tall, golden grass. He panted from the effort to escape merciless fangs. And then suddenly, he was hanging from a tree, a noose around his neck. The tree was big and black with sprawling branches that scratched at the underbelly of the clouds. Its roots spread below him like an old man’s hands clinging to the cracked earth. His neck hurt. He reached up to yank the rope away. He couldn’t breathe.

His eyes finally opened but the nightmare didn’t stop. A man stood over his bed, two big hands around Zane’s neck. The pressure increased as the man pressed down harder and harder, grunting with the effort to strangle Zane who, between blankets and tubes, couldn’t move. And he couldn’t budge those merciless hands from their deadly grip, thumbs pressing into his windpipe.

The light suddenly went on. “Hey! What’s going on?” a female voice yelled.

The hands instantly released Zane, who grabbed at his throat and gasped for air. He caught a glimpse of a man with shaggy white hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a bushy white mustache. The guy instantly turned toward the woman and pushed her hard. She went down amid a clatter of trays and equipment and the man disappeared out of the room.

Zane finally untangled himself and got out of bed. The nurse who had been knocked down struggled to sit up. He bent to help her just as an orderly arrived. “What are you doing to her?” the orderly demanded, trying to loosen Zane’s grip on the nurse’s arm.

“Tom, don’t be silly, he’s trying to help me,” the nurse said as she finally got to her feet. She was a solidly built middle-aged woman with a no-nonsense approach. Her forehead was bleeding, but she paid it no attention. Fury raged in her eyes, but her expression changed to one of horror as she looked at Zane’s throat. “Oh my gosh,” she said. “That man was trying to choke you.” She directed her next comment to the orderly. “Don’t just stand there, Tom. Alert Security. Have them call the police.”

The orderly took off back down the hall.

“The man who attacked you looked like Mark Twain,” the nurse said as she blotted her forehead with a cloth. Her gaze dipped to Zane’s neck again. You’d better get back into bed.”

Zane shook his head and wished he hadn’t when the room spun. “I think I’ll sit for a while. I’m not anxious to lie down again.”

“The stitches on your face look red. I’m calling the doctor right now.”

“Please, I’m fine.”

She pushed the intercom button that hung around her neck, speaking into the unit, asking for the doctor who showed up quickly and checked Zane over. He seemed to be about Zane’s age, with fine blond hair and a boyish smile. He was the same doctor who’d checked on him earlier.

“Y’all are having yourself a heck of a day,” the doctor said in a rich Southern drawl.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“I’ll stick a bandage on those stitches, just for the night. I don’t think it needs to be redone. Open your mouth now, let’s take a peek at your throat.”

Zane did as ordered. He’d noticed his voice was deeper than it had been and his throat felt raw. “I’ll prescribe some soothing spray,” the doctor said. “Not much else we can do unless you want us to up the pain medication for a while.”

“No,” Zane said. “Thanks, anyway.”

The doctor chuckled. “I took a look at all your X-rays. You have a fair number of healed breaks. Seems like you might lead quite an active life in some capacity. But you apparently mend well, so I suppose a little bitty concussion and a torn ligament or two won’t be much of an obstacle to you.”

The doctor left soon after. The nurse had yet to go tend to her own cut and hovered close by, obviously distressed that something like this had happened on her watch.

“I’ll get your meds,” she said at last.

“No, thanks. I don’t want any more medicine.”

“Did you know the man who tried to choke you?” she asked.

He gave her a look and she shook her head. “Sorry. I’m kind of rattled. For a second I forgot about the amnesia.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Detective Woods himself showed up a little later. He listened with narrowed eyes as Zane and the nurse related what they’d seen.

“Was he apprehended?” Zane asked at last.

“No one saw anyone who even vaguely resembled the man you two have described,” Woods said. “We’ll take a look at hospital video...” His voice trailed off as a security guard entered the room. He carried what looked like a white mop head in his hands.

“We found this on the second floor, stuffed in a trash can,” he said, and Zane realized they were staring at a wig. “We also found one of them novelty masks, you know, the kind with the bushy eyebrows and glasses and a mustache. I put it in a paper bag for you.” He now raised the bag proudly.

Woods snatched the bag away. “Next time just leave things where you find them and let us take care of it,” he said. “I’ll get someone to go check out that can, meanwhile, please make sure no one else touches it. And put the wig in another sack. I’ll need to print you.”