White lies

Amnesia was a curious thing. When he examined it unemotionally, he was interested in its oddities. He had lost all conscious knowledge of whatever had happened to him before he’d come out of the coma, but a lot of unconscious knowledge evidently hadn’t been affected. He could remember different World Series and Super Bowls, and how Niagara Falls looked. That wasn’t important. Interesting, but not important.

Equally interesting, and far more important, were the things he knew about both obscure Third World nations and major powers without remembering how he came by the knowledge. He couldn’t bring his own face to mind, but somehow that didn’t negate what he knew was fact. He knew the desert, the hot, dry heat and blood-sizzling sun. He also knew the jungle, the stifling heat and humidity, the insects and reptiles, the leeches, the shrieking birds, the stench of rotting vegetation.

Taking those bits and pieces of himself that he could recognize, he was able to piece together part of the puzzle. The jungle part was easy. Jay had told him that he was thirty-seven; he was just the right age to have been in Vietnam during the height of the war in the late sixties. The rest of it, all added together, could have only one logical explanation: he was far more involved in the situation than Jay had been told.

He had wondered if scopolamine or Pentothal would be successful on an amnesia victim, or if the amnesia effectively sealed off his memories even from the powerful drugs available today. If what he might know was important enough for him to warrant this kind of red-carpet treatment, then it would have been worth Frank Payne’s effort to at least have tried the drugs. They hadn’t tried, and that told him something else: Payne knew Steve had been indoctrinated to resist any chemical prying into his brain. Therefore he must be a trained field operative.

Jay didn’t know. She really thought he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She had said that when they had been married, he had constantly been taking off on one "adventure" after another, so he must have kept her in the dark and just let her think that he was footloose, rather than worrying her with the knowledge of just how dangerous his work was, and that the odds were even he wouldn’t return from any given trip.

He had fitted that many pieces of the puzzle together, but there were still a lot of little things that didn’t make sense to him. He had noticed, as soon as the bandages were taken off his hands, that his fingertips were oddly smooth. It wasn’t the smoothness of scar tissue; his hands were so sensitive, with their new, healing skin, that he could tell the difference between the burned areas and his fingertips. He was positive his fingertips hadn’t been burned; rather, his fingerprints had been altered or removed altogether, probably the latter. Recently, too, most likely here in this hospital. The question was: Why? Who were they hiding his identity from? They knew who he was, and he was evidently on good terms with them, or they wouldn’t have gone to such extraordinary lengths to save his life. Jay knew who he was. Was someone out there hunting for him? And, if so, was Jay in danger simply because she was with him?

Too many questions, and he didn’t know the answers to any of them. He could ask Payne, but he wasn’t certain he’d get a straight answer from the man. Payne was hiding something. Steve didn’t know what it was, but he could hear a fault note of guilt in the man’s voice, especially when he spoke to Jay. What had they gotten Jay involved in?

He heard the door to his room open and he lay motionless, wanting to know the identity of his visitor without them knowing he was awake. He had noticed that cautiousness in himself before; it fit in with what he had deduced.

"Is he awake yet?"

It was Frank Payne’s quiet voice, and that special note was there again, the guilt and the… affection. Yeah, that’s what it was. Payne liked Jay and worried about her, but he was still using her. It made Steve feel even less inclined to cooperate. It made him mad, to think they could be putting Jay in any danger.

"He went to sleep as soon as they got him in bed, and he hasn’t stirred since. Have you talked to the doctor?"

"No, not yet. How did it go?"

"Wonderfully. The doctor doesn’t think there’s any permanent damage. He has to lie as quietly as possible for a few days, and his eyes may be sensitive to bright light after the bandages come off, but he probably won’t even need glasses."

"That’s good. He should be leaving here in another couple of weeks, if everything goes all right."

"It’s hard to think of not coming here every day," Jay mused. "It won’t seem normal. What happens when he’s released?"

"I need to talk to him about that," Payne answered. "It can wait a few days, until he’s more active."

Steve could hear the worry in Jay’s voice and wondered at it. Did she know something, after all? Why else would she worry about what happened to him when he left the hospital? He had news for her, though; wherever she went, that was where he intended to go, and Frank Payne could take those ideas of his and become real friendly with them.

Two more weeks of biding his time. He didn’t know if he could do it. It was hard to force himself to exercise the patience he needed to allow his body to heal, and there were still weeks of rehabilitation ahead before he regained his full strength. He’d have to push himself harder than the therapists would, but he could sense his own limits, and he knew they were more elastic than the therapists could guess. It was just one more piece of the puzzle.

He decided to let himself "wake up" and began shifting restlessly. The IV needle tugged at his hand. "Jay?" he called in a groggy tone, then cleared his throat and tried again. "Jay?" He never quite got used to hearing his own voice the way it was now, so harsh and strained, gravelly in texture. Another little oddity. He couldn’t remember his own voice, but he knew this one wasn’t right.