GINA WILKINS - The Stranger in Room 205

Seeing the doctor, Serena smiled and stepped back. “I’ll get out of the way now and let Dr. Frank take care of you. You’re in good hands here, Sam.”

Sam. The name sounded strange…but maybe just a little familiar? Was it possible that it really was his own? “You’re leaving?”

Again, he found himself reluctant to see her go, perhaps because she was, for now, the first thing he remembered.

“Maybe we’ll see each other again before you leave,” she said lightly.

“I hope so,” he murmured, and realized that he meant it. At the moment, she felt very much like his only friend.

The hospital was quiet, all the school bus passengers treated and released to the care of their relieved families. At the end of the hallway, Dan Meadows stood talking to an attractive young woman who was scribbling in a battered notebook. Serena could tell from the police chief’s posture that he was rapidly growing impatient answering the reporter’s questions. She moved to rescue him.

“As I said,” she heard Dan saying in a flat, clipped voice, “no charges will be filed against the bus driver or anyone else until a full investigation of the accident has been conducted. Now I really don’t know what else you want me to say, but—”

“What have I told you about hassling the local authorities, Lindsey?” Serena asked with a faint smile.

Her employee grinned with the irreverence Serena had come to expect from the youngest member of the Evening Star staff. “You wouldn’t deny me one of my favorite pastimes, would you?”

“For the sake of the newspaper’s future dealings with the police department, I’m afraid I’m going to have to. Is there anything else you need for your article?”

“I’ve got everything I need about the bus accident,” Lindsey answered. “But I hear we have another interesting story in Room Two Oh Five. Who’s the mysterious stranger, Serena?”

“I’m waiting to hear that, myself,” Dan said, giving Lindsey a repressive look. “Until we have all the facts, there’s really nothing for you to write about him.”

“Dan’s right, Lindsey. All we know now is that he was found on Bullock Lake Road, suffering injuries from what appears to be a severe beating. I think you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for further details. He’s not strong enough to deal with the police and the press this evening.”

“Is he awake yet?” Dan asked.

She nodded. “I talked to him for a few minutes. He said his name is Sam Wallace. I’m afraid that’s pretty much the extent of what I learned about him. Dr. Frank’s with him now.”

“He refused to talk about what happened?” Dan frowned, as if that confirmed his suspicion that Sam Wallace had been involved in something shady.

Serena shook her head. “He didn’t refuse. He’s groggy, in pain. It seemed difficult for him to concentrate. He was quite pleasant, actually, just a bit confused. I’m not sure he even remembers what happened.”

“He’s claiming amnesia?” Dan’s lip curled in open disbelief.

“No.” Honestly, sometimes Dan took his official skepticism a bit too far. One would almost accuse him of being paranoid—if anyone had the nerve to do so to his face. “He’s simply disoriented, Dan. I would imagine that’s a fairly common reaction to a concussion.”

He nodded reluctantly. “I’ll try to talk to him when the doc’s through with him. If he can identify his attackers, we’ll have a better chance of finding them if we don’t wait too long.”

“He’s in a lot of pain.”

He gave her one of his rare smiles, though it didn’t quite reach his glittering dark eyes. “Don’t worry, Serena. I won’t browbeat your stray. Just want to ask him some questions.”

“So do I,” Lindsey agreed.

Serena gave her a look. “Go file the school bus story. Everyone in town’s going to want the details of that tomorrow.”

Lindsey’s expression implied that a mysterious wounded stranger was of as much interest to her as the mercifully minor school bus accident, but she had the discretion not to say so. She nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Serena. You, too, Chief. I’ll be wanting details of your investigation into this guy’s story, of course.”

Dan glared after Lindsey as she sauntered into an elevator. “Have I ever mentioned that I really don’t much like being questioned by your reporters all the time?”

“You’ve alluded to it a time or two,” Serena replied. She knew Dan didn’t mean anything personal against Lindsey, whom he’d known since she was a toddler. There were times she even suspected Dan was rather fond of Lindsey in his own gruff way—but he did not like reporters in general.

Dan had already turned his attention to the hospital room at the other end of the hall. “Okay, Sam Wallace,” he murmured as if to himself. “Time to find out just who you are—an innocent crime victim, or someone we don’t want in our town.”

Serena had been wondering that herself. For some reason, she was having trouble picturing Sam Wallace—wounded or otherwise—as an innocent victim.

T wo hours later, Sam—the name he was still using for lack of a better one—was lying on his back in the hospital bed staring at the ten o’clock evening news on the TV mounted high on the wall across from his bed, hoping something would trigger the memories that had so far eluded him. He’d been straining to come up with even the foggiest detail, but the only result thus far was a pounding headache and a mounting frustration tinged with panic.

It was beginning to seem inevitable that he was going to have to admit the truth to someone—probably the cop who’d been in earlier, asking questions that Sam had deliberately answered as vaguely as possible. The chief had left with a promise that he would be back—or had it been a warning?

Sam wasn’t at all sure Meadows had bought his story that he’d been passing through this area in search of work and had been mugged by a couple of guys who’d given him a lift. Claiming pain, fatigue and confusion, he hadn’t given any details that would get anyone arrested, and Chief Meadows was not pleased with the sketchiness of the tale. Hell, for all Sam knew, it could be true. He just didn’t remember any of it.

He cringed at the thought of saying aloud that he had lost his memory, that his mind was a blank, that he was utterly at the mercy of the staff of this tiny, apparently rural hospital. So far the characters he had encountered—with the exception of the cop—had been friendly, cheerful, laid-back and unpretentious. He had obviously landed in Smallville, U.S.A.—but from where?

He knew somehow he wasn’t from around here; his speech patterns sounded different even to his own ears. Besides, he just didn’t feel…Arkansan. Whatever the hell that meant.

But why was he here? Why had no one come forward to identify him? To ask about him? Was he really so alone that no one knew where he was? Was he as nameless and mysterious to everyone else as he was to himself at the moment?

He didn’t like the idea that there was no one who cared whether he lived or died. Nor did he like lying in this bed wearing nothing but a backless hospital gown, a sheet so thin he could probably read a book through it, with a couple of bags of liquid dripping through a needle taped to his arm. Maybe if he could just see whatever he had been wearing when he’d been found, it would trigger his memory.

“What happened to my clothes?” he demanded of a thin, pale-skinned male who came in carrying a tray of vials and needles.

The man looked startled. He blinked almost lashless blue eyes. “Er, what clothes?”

“The ones I was wearing when I was brought in.”

“I don’t know, sir. I’ll ask someone as soon as I get a blood sample.”