Jacqueline Diamond - Surprise, Doc! You're A Daddy!

For a long stretch after he left the tightly packed developments of the coastal zone, he saw only a few isolated shacks and passed a mere handful of cars. Urban sprawl hadn’t reached this part of San Diego County.

In September, the height of the dry season, a scattering of dusty trees drooped in a rocky canyon filled with dry grasses and flowers. The area didn’t look familiar. Had he truly lived here for a year and a half?

As he descended from a slope, a sign alerted Hugh that he was entering the town of Mercy Canyon. He didn’t see anything until he rounded a rock outcropping and suddenly, below him, spread the community where he might have spent his lost months. Wanting time to collect his impressions, he stopped the car on the shoulder.

From this rise, he made out clusters of stores, an elementary school, a church, a couple of modest-size light-industrial buildings and numerous houses. There was a trailer park at the far end of town.

Hoping the scents would jog his memory, Hugh rolled down the window. Hot air blasted into his airconditioned cocoon.

As he’d expected, it carried the smells of eucalyptus and desert plants. For a split second, he remembered coming out of a cool building into the same heated air.

He was emerging from a church with a woman at his side. People lined the walkway, blowing soap bubbles. Could it be his own wedding?

Although Hugh had come here in search of the past, this possibility disturbed him. It was alarming to think that he might really have been a different person and lived a different life for so many months.

He knew of course that he’d been somewhere during his absence. Yet couldn’t the time have passed, as his family wanted to believe, in a succession of meaningless days of panhandling and sleeping in shelters?

On the other hand, before he was released from the hospital, Hugh’s doctor had remarked on what good shape he was in, aside from the head injury. He hadn’t been starving on the streets.

Maybe Meg’s story was true. He might be a husband and father. Hugh’s breath caught in his throat. So much for the rationalization that he could drive by Mercy Canyon and leave without seeing the Averys.

He’d brought Meg’s address. He could see the park distantly from here, neat rows of mobile homes glinting in the sunlight.

At the prospect of visiting what might be his old home, a twinge of fear ran through Hugh. What was he afraid of, that he would stumble into an unpleasant trap of his own making? Or that he would discover he’d once lived in paradise and couldn’t go back again?

There was no sense in delaying the inevitable. After rolling up the window, he turned on the ignition and started forward.

Halfway through the town of Mercy Canyon, Hugh got a prickly sensation down his back. He knew this place as if from a dream.

The strip mall to one side of the road looked like a thousand others in Southern California. Yet he felt a twinge of recognition as he parked in front of a coffee shop called the Back Door Cafe.

Handwritten specials and flyers for local school fundraisers plastered the window, while the interior was hidden behind a lopsided Venetian blind. A thought came to him: The slats always pull crookedly. You’d think they’d have fixed them by now.

To one side sat a bowling alley. On the other, a bilingual video store featured posters of newly released films in Spanish and English.

At the end of the mall lay a salon called Rosa’s Beauty Spot. Oddly, he knew that Rosa was married to the owner of the video store.

He had been here before.

Hugh sat in his car, staring at the cafe. He’d had flashes of memory before, but none had ever been tied to a particular place. The clatter of dishes in a restaurant, the cry of a baby, the scent of old-fashioned perfume would snatch him momentarily from his reality, and then drop him right back into it.

His heart raced with an emotion akin to fear. There was no reason for alarm, yet it disturbed him to realize that he might be about to confront an unknown part of himself.

Most likely, he’d psyched himself to believe he’d once worked here because of what Meg had said, Hugh thought sternly. Annoyed at himself for indulging in useless worry, he got out, crossed the walkway and pushed open the cafe door.

The smell of coffee and frying hamburgers greeted him, familiar as a friend’s face. Still, who hadn’t smelled coffee and hamburgers before?

To his left stretched a counter where a grizzled man in a cowboy hat sat drinking coffee. To his right lay a row of booths, one of which held a family of four. In the back, past an open archway, sunlight from side windows streamed into a large room filled with tables and booths.

“Can I help you?” A young Hispanic man behind the counter regarded Hugh with impersonal friendliness that rapidly changed to confusion. “Say, man, you look familiar.”

“Have you worked here long?”

“About a year.” The fellow was no older than twenty, Hugh guessed. “I’m the assistant manager, Miguel Mendez.” He extended his hand.

Hugh shook it. “I’m Dr. Hugh Menton.” He hadn’t meant to throw in his title, but it slipped out.

“You’re a doctor?”

“Pediatrician.” Hugh decided to risk another question. “Does Meg Avery work here?”

“Sure.”

A tall, blond waitress came out of the kitchen hefting a tray of burgers, fries and drinks. When she saw Hugh, she stopped dead.

“Doggone you, Joe Avery!” she said. “What do you mean disappearing and then turning up like this? Does Meg know you’re here?”

“I thought you looked familiar,” Miguel said. “What’s this doctor business, man?”

Hugh wondered if he’d fallen asleep. This felt like one of those dreams in which he found himself on stage, expected to enact a role he hadn’t learned. Or in an operating room, about to perform surgery on an organ he’d never heard of.

“You think I look like Joe Avery?” he asked.

“Do I think you look like him?” The woman uttered an unladylike snort. “Come on, Joe, I worked with you for a year and a half.”

“You served me coffee every morning,” confirmed the grizzled man at the counter. “So you became a doctor? That’s pretty smart.”

“You can’t become a doctor in two years,” said Miguel. “I don’t think so, anyway.”

“Sam!” yelled the waitress. “Get out here right now!”

Through the swinging door barreled a large, beefy man wearing a white apron and holding a fire extinguisher. “What’s going on?”

“You can put that away. There’s no fire, just a prodigal son,” said his wife.

His wife. Her name’s Julie…no, Judy. Hugh stared at them both. He knew these people, or half knew them.

“Do you recognize me?” he asked.

“Joe Avery! I’ll be doggoned!” Sam frowned as he studied Hugh. “You got a new scar on your forehead. Where’d that come from?”

“I hit my head on the side of a building, so the police tell me,” he said.

“Get this. Joe told Miguel he’s a doctor,” Judy said.

“According to Meg, he is a doctor, remember?” Sam said. “You saw the clipping.”

“Doctors don’t serve coffee in restaurants,” said the grizzled man. “Although one time when you spilled some on my hand, you bandaged it real nice. I’m Vinnie Vesputo. Remember me?”

“I wish I did,” Hugh said.

The mother in the booth waved her hand. “Could we have our food, please?”

“Sorry!” Judy carried the tray to them.

“Would you mind showing us some ID?” Sam asked Hugh. “It might make things a little clearer.”

“Yeah. I’m kind of confused,” Miguel said.

“You’re not the only one.” Hugh took out his wallet and showed them the driver’s license. Judy came over and scrutinized it, finally shrugging as she absorbed the fact that he was indeed Hugh Menton, M.D. “I’ve got a year and a half missing from my past. To walk in here and meet people who know me feels strange.”