Uh, Who Am I?

Before he sensed anything else, he heard the voice.

“Hey. Hey you!”

His eyes snapped open. Someone was standing close. Way too close. He tried to lean his head away but the pillow resisted the movement.

“Oh! Thank goodness! You’re okay! I mean, of course you’re okay. I’m just really relieved that you’re okay. You have no idea how relieved I am!”

He blinked a few times. The face remained there, still way too close.

“Oh, right. Personal space. My bad.”

The face pulled back and sharpened into a teenage boy with styled blond hair, a square jawline, and purple eyes. Below that, the figure wore something resembling a superhero outfit: blue, fitted, a yellow lightning bolt on the chest, and likely incredibly uncomfortable. It stretched all the way down to two bare feet.

The giddy teenager’s expression faltered. “Something’s wrong. What’s wrong? You uncomfortable? Something hurt? You need to pee?” The figure began to lean closer again.

His hand rose from the bed. “No. Just… space? Please?”

“Right, right. Sorry.” He pulled back again and rubbed the back of his neck.

His gaze swept the room. A window with gray light outside. Across the far wall, a painted mural of a kid riding a bicycle. A TV playing some news station. A door to a tiny bathroom at the foot of his bed. And a blond, ecstatic teenager wearing what he could only describe as some kind of superhero costume.

“Where am I?” he asked. “And… who am I?”

“Uh, those… are good questions. Very good questions. You have good question skills. Check. Glad those still work.”

Then the fast clip of shoes on tile spun him around. “That’ll be your nurse. I’ll be right back. You’re a trooper! Rockstar! Rock… trooper…”

The odd person moved quickly through the open door and disappeared into the hallway.

He moved his head against the pillow again. Lumpy. Figures. He reached behind to adjust it and a tether of cords and tubes trailed his hand.

A solidly built woman with a sprig of blonde hair and reading glasses walked into the room. She glanced at him, then back away, then her eyes went wide and snapped to his face.

“Oh.” Her voice blurted out the word like a cough. “You’re awake.”

“Apparently, I’m full of surprises today.”

“You were comatose. Five minutes ago.” She moved. One hand found his wrist, the other reached past his head for something. “Can you hear me okay?”

“Yeah. Crystal clear.” His eyes traveled the room again. “Where am I?”

“Mercy General, honey. Downtown.” She drew his eyelid up with her thumb, looked, let it go. “You’ve been with us three days now.” She moved to the other eye. “You came in with nothing on you, though. No wallet, no ID.” A smile came into her voice. “I’m Pat, by the way.”

“Pat. Nice to meet you. I don’t know my name.”

She chewed the edge of her lip for a moment. “Hm. Okay. That’s fine. Do you like the sound of PJ?”

His eyes closed a fraction. “Uh, not really.”

Her shoulders bobbed. “It’s what we’ve been calling you. You know. Since you came in wearing nothing but burnt PJs.” She tucked the blanket along his side. Her hands went still. “But it’s okay you don’t know. Trauma sometimes manifests like that. You’ll get it back. Try to rest.”

“Thank you, Pat.” He brought his hands up off the blanket again and looked at them. The skin wasn’t right. New skin, pink and smooth, sat in patches over the backs of his fingers, laid across older skin gone red and tight.

“What happened to me?” he asked.

The corner of her mouth pulled back. “Miracle, hon.”

“Miracle,” he said, turning over his hand.

Pat laid her hand on his arm and pulled off her glasses. “Three nights back, half a block off Fifth went up. Gas line, they’re saying. Two buildings destroyed. You were the only one who survived. Honestly, none of us thought you’d make it.” She smiled. “But here you are. Asking me questions. Ergo, miracle.”

He pulled the gown away from his chest and looked down. The new skin ran all the way down. Pink and smooth.

“An explosion?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Couple investigators been camped in my hallway for the past three days, itching to have a word with you. Until now, I’ve held them off with my eyebrows and charming personality. But they are going to want to speak with you sooner or later.” She straightened the blanket. “Now, you don’t have to talk to anybody you don’t want to.”

He pushed himself upright. “I’ll talk to them. Maybe they know who I am.”

A small huff. “Okay, dear. I’ll let them know, but if they get mouthy, you just give me the nod.”

“The nod?”

“Yeah. The nod.” She dropped her chin, slow and deliberate, and looked dead at him. “Like that. You give me that, they’re gone.”

He smiled. “Thanks, Pat.”

“No worries, PJ.” She patted the blanket and went to get them.

He brought his hands up close and turned them over. The new skin was smooth and tight, a size too small for him. He pressed it with his thumb. It should have hurt. It didn’t. His eyes went fuzzy, so he rubbed them on instinct. The left one felt fine, but the right one stung.

Pat entered, followed by two strangers in suits. The first was small, calm, somewhere in her late thirties with neck-length blonde hair tucked behind one ear. Her eyes went over him slow, and whatever she’d walked in expecting, this wasn’t it. He saw a look cross her face. Beside her stood a man, broad through the shoulders, yellow-blond hair cropped close, sunglasses glued to his nose.

“Hello. I’m Sarah Colby. And this is my partner Luke Vickers.”

The man raised a single finger, then lowered it.

A procedural smile lit her face. “We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

PJ nodded, blinking. “Okay. I know that’s a thing. I’m just not sure what.”

Pat stayed by the door, arms folded.

Colby hadn’t taken her eyes off him. “Can you tell us what happened to you?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

She glanced at Vickers. He gave a small shrug. She glanced back. “You don’t remember? Like, anything? Think. It’s important.”

“I… uh…” His cheeks took on a deeper shade of red.

Colby didn’t blink. “Nothing about that night? The building? How you got out? Why you were there?”

“I um… don’t know anything. At all. Not even my name.”

“Right.” She crossed her arms. The heat from her gaze began to burn his face.

His eyes found Pat’s by the door and he dropped his chin. Slow. Deliberate.

Pat came off the doorframe. “All right. That’s plenty for today.”

Colby’s eyes didn’t waver. Pat didn’t care. The large woman bumped into the small one and physics ordered her to move. “Wait! You can’t just—”

“Darlin’, he’s got a head injury, he can’t remember a thing. And you just wore out your welcome. Out.”

Colby pushed against Pat as the nurse bulldozed her from the room.

“He’s a witness in a federal investigation. We’ll need a statement.”

“You’ll get your statement. When he’s able.” Pat had them through the door. “Right now, he needs rest. Out you go.”

With one final bump, Colby and Vickers disappeared into the hallway.

He blew out a deep breath and rubbed his head. “What was that?”

Eventually, Pat brought him his dinner. She left it beside him on the tray along with another warm smile and a cup of cold water. But the more he thought, the more it bothered him that everything beyond twenty minutes ago was a void.

PJ closed his eyes and reached back for something: a name, a face, a street, the smell of a kitchen, anything that was his. Nothing. He opened his eyes. Beside his bed sat the shiny metal dinner tray. He moved the scant contents to the side, then pulled the tray up and looked into it.

In the reflective surface, a teenager with small, soft features looked back at him. Black, matted hair. Dark brown eyes. He raised his hand to his face and touched it. In the reflection, the boy touched his face.

“Helloooo!”

He jumped. The tray flew from his hand and crashed on the floor with a bang. “GAH!”

The young, blond, purple-eyed figure stood at his bedside again.

“Hi,” PJ creaked out.

“I have to say, you’re looking so much better. And you’re upright. Upright is better than downright. Is downwrong a thing? For a while there, you most definitely were downwrong. But I worked really hard and now? You’re back upright!” He leaned close. “How ya feelin’?”

“Uh… okay, I guess? My hands hurt.” He looked at the new pink skin across his knuckles. “And I can’t remember anything.”

“That’s totally okay. It’s fine. It happens. The brain? It’s so sensitive. A little smoke inhalation. A little flame damage and it just poofs, you know? But it’ll come. It comes back. It’s gotta come back.”

He looked the guy up and down again. “Why are you dressed like a superhero?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Because… I’m a super… doctor.” He gave a nod. “Superdoc. That’s me.”

“And why aren’t you wearing shoes?”

He shrugged. “Forgot to?”

Footsteps came down the hall, heavy and quick. The young man straightened and glanced at the door.

“Oop,” he chuffed. “Superdoc gotta go. You need rest.” He stepped back. “I’ll be back. Okay? Rest.” He slipped out just as the nurse came in.

“Everything alright in here? I heard a bang.” Her eyes found the dinner tray on the floor. She scooped it up and set it aside. “How we doing, honey?”

He shrugged, still reeling from Superdoc. “Still nothing.”

She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm and pumped it, watching the dial. The TV on the wall flashed to a reporter in front of a line of police tape. Behind them: total carnage. Two buildings, one with a missing roof and a gaping, burned hole in the end. The other, an older brick apartment complex, half-collapsed. FIFTH & VINE ran across the bottom.

Pat looked up at the screen as she ripped the cuff loose. “Oh, look.” She nodded at the rubble. “That’s where you came from, sweetheart. They pulled you out of that.”

He watched the footage, hoping for it to mean something. It didn’t.

“I still don’t remember,” he said. “Complete void.”

“Give it time.” She pressed two fingers to his wrist and counted.

“That’s what that young doctor said.”

She kept counting. Then she looked at him over the glasses. “What young doctor?”

He stared at her over the rail. “The young guy,” he said. “He was right there a minute ago. Didn’t he pass you in the hall? Blond. Purple eyes. Dressed like… in this superhero thing. Tights and all.”

Pat’s pen stopped. “A super… doctor?”

“That’s what he said, yeah.”

She rested her hand atop his. “Hon, there’s no doctor like that on this floor. Asghar’s got the ward tonight, and he’s eighty.”

He tilted his head. The kid had been right there. Way too close. Wearing a… superhero outfit?

Hadn’t he?