Chapter Eleven
He was sitting up in bed with the hospital blue robe wrapped around him. The oxygen tubes were gone, but the wires of heart monitors were still sticking out of the collar of his gown. There was still a bandage on his forehead that looked like it was attempting to swallow his head whole.
“Hi,” I said, barely able to force my voice to audible.
“Hi,” he replied and smiled cautiously.
It was Max’s voice, Max’s smile, but I heard an underlying current of nervousness.
I walked a few steps into the room. “How are you feeling?”
“Um, Okay. My head hurts a little.” He then unconsciously rubbed the cast around his arm.
I moved all the way over to his bed and smiled. “I’m not surprised.”
Max looked at the cast on his arm, then pulled his gaze to me and outright stared into my eyes with an expression I couldn’t read.
I was trying to think of something to say when he suddenly blurted out, “Are you my wife?”
The words went through my ears, but didn’t connect with my brain. “What?”
“My wife? Are you my wife?”
They connected that time and I physically shook. “What?” I gasped. “No, I’m not your wife.” Something inside of me ached, but the confusion overwhelmed it.
Max shook his head and bit his lip. “My girlfriend then?”
My jaw bobbed up and down. “No.” I couldn’t think of something else to say. I really couldn’t understand what was going on. It almost seemed like Max couldn’t remember who I was.
His head cocked hard to the right. “I-I don’t understand. Aren’t you the girl who sits by my bedside, crying and calling my name and holding onto my hand?”
That shook me again. “Y-you could hear me? I thought you were drugged.”
“The stuff they gave me…” He shuddered. “I don’t know. I could hear things. Sometimes feel things. But, I couldn’t will myself to move.” His eyes met with mine again. “I’m sorry. I did try to talk to you, but my body just wouldn’t work with me.”
“That’s okay. I had…” My hands went to my hips and my shoulders tightened up. “What on earth is going on, Max? Why are you asking me if I’m your wife?” That probably wasn’t the best approach, but at the moment I was lost.
Max pulled back a bit. His eyes moved side to side then back to me. “I-if you could just tell me who you are, I think that would make things a lot clearer.”
My knees went so weak I had to grab onto the end of the bed to stay up. Max blurred a bit as I tried to blink rapidly. “What?” My voice was finally that soft, gentle tone I always wanted it to be.
Max started to blink hard as well. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how you are.” He actually sounded devastated. “I’m guessing you are someone I should know.”
I had to clutch my chest, just in case I needed to stop my heart form beating right out of my body. “Max, it’s me, Maddy.”
“Maddy?” he repeated as if it was a foreign word.
I pulled close to him, hoping it was just the glasses that were failing him. “Yes, Maddy. You know me.” I was begging him to agree.
He shook his head.
“Max, I’ve been your secretary for ten years.”
That seemed to strike him funny. “My secretary? Since when do secretaries cry over me? Are you sure you’re not more.” He bit his lip, looking as if he was trying to think hard. “I’m not aware of any other relatives.” His gaze shot up. “Both my parents are dead, correct?”
“Yes,” I replied, hoping he just needed a little prompting.
“My father died when I was fourteen, right?”
“Yes.”
“And my mother died of cancer last year.”
I had to grab hold of the bed again. “Max, your mother died over fifteen years ago. I think you were twenty-one at the time.”
His eyes flashed wider than I’d ever seen before. “What?” He grabbed his throat. “What do you mean, fifteen years ago?”
A thread of understanding started to run through my mind. “Max, what is the last thing you remember?”
My fingers started to curl into his sheets. I wanted to hear, “I was hit by a car just outside of your apartment,” so desperately.
He looked like he was thinking the question over, then finally said, “My first year of law school. Well, the first few months. I am…was twenty-two.” His eyes widened again. “How old am I?”
I had to force the air into my lungs and just pray oxygen made it to my brain. “Max…” I whispered. “You don’t remember anything later than when you were twenty-two years old?”
He shook head. “How old am I?”
“You turned thirty-seven last month.”
We both needed a long moment of silence after that. Well, I didn’t say anything, but my brain sure was running fast. The ramifications of the type of memory loss we were talking about couldn’t process properly. Fifteen years? A good crack on the skull and he lost fifteen years? It seemed impossible.
“Maybe it’s temporary,” I said quickly.
“Do you think so?” His voice bounded with hope.
“Let’s hope so.” I nodded.
“Maybe you could tell me some things,” Max said, a small smiling crossing his face. “Maybe you just need to tell me a few facts and then it will all start coming back.”
“That’s good!” I might have jumped up and down with excitement just a little.
Then we stared at each other for a moment.
“Well…” He was trying to prompt me, but my mind went blank.
“What do you want to know?” I said.
He looked blank for a moment. “Um…why don’t we start near the beginning? What about Chuck?”
I had to think for a moment before I could place the name. “Your stepdad?”
“Yes. He was heading out on the cross the country tour he and Mom always planned on taking. Is he still traveling? I know after he saw the country he wanted to see the world.”
“Um, as far as I know, Chuck has long since settled in Florida. At least that’s where I send the Christmas card.”
Max’s nose wrinkled. “The Christmas card? Don’t I have any more contact with him than that?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
He sat back in the bed hard. “But why?”
“I-I don’t know. You just don’t.”
“I don’t understand.” He held up his hands. “Chuck and I got along all right. He was pretty broken up about Mom so we were keeping in touch on a relatively regular basis. And you’re saying we never do more than Christmas cards now?”
All I could do was shake my head. “Max, I really don’t know. I started working for you ten years ago. By then you never did more than occasionally talk about him. I just send out the Christmas cards to everyone in your address book. Mostly clients—”
One of his hands jumped up in front of my face to keep me from going on. “Wait, wait. You send out all my Christmas cards?”
“Yes, well, I thought it would be a nice gesture.” I gave him a weak shrug.
He took in a ragged breath and then began looking around the room. “Where’s my wife?”
“Max, why do you keep assuming you have a wife?” My voice sounded a little rougher than it should have.
“Why wouldn’t I?” His return voice was very rough. “For heaven sakes, I’m thirty -seven.”
“So?”
“So, I should have a wife and family by now.”
I had to pull a chair over at that point and sit down. It was more efficient than grabbing the edge of the bed every time he came up with something to bowl me over with.
“I don’t have a wife and family, do I?” he asked slowly.
I shook my head.
“Have I ever had a wife and family?”
“No.” I was
so thrown off kilter I went ahead and said, “I got the impression you never wanted either.”
Max looked both shocked and hurt. “Why not?”
I held up my hands. “Max, you are really freaking me out right now. I don’t know what’s gotten into you or out of you, but you’ve never once talked about wanting a family and when it came to matrimony I got the impression you were…less inclined.” I covered my eyes for a moment. “And this is frankly really uncomfortable.” Thankfully I didn’t add, “Because it hurts to say things like ‘wife and family.’”
“Tell me more,” he said. His voice and expression teetered between hope and devastation.
I hesitated, but nodded. “What else do you want to know?”
“Is there anything valuable about my life?”
“You’re a very good lawyer,” I answered unequivocally.
The corners of his mouth pulled down. “Don’t I have any type of personal life?”
My hands clenched around the arms of the chair. Since when did Max care about having a personal life? All I could say was, “I don’t know what you mean?”
He laughed, but it was a shaky, uncomfortable laugh. “A personal life. A life beyond the office.”
I stared blankly at him.
When I didn’t responded he said, “Well, at least tell me I have a house somewhere so I don’t stay in the city all week long.”
Again, I stared blankly at him.
“Where do I live?” he said darkly.
“Upper East Side. You’ve got a nice condo in a thirty story there.”
He clutched his throat again. “That’s it?”
“It’s very nice.” My voice sounded weak, almost as if I was pleading with him to agree.
“Tell me at the very least I have a dog.”
It was my turn to clutch my throat. “You wanted at dog?” I was officially not using my “inside voice.”
“Who doesn’t want a dog?” he cried.
“Peter Maxwell doesn’t want a dog!”
“A cat then?” He was begging me.
“No.”
He even raised his broken arm to his throat that time. “I’m so void of emotional responsibility I can’t even own a cat? A cat practically requires nothing and I can’t even take care of that?”
I got out of the chair, leaned over, and took hold of the collar of his robe. Trying to be gentle, I pulled him close. “Max, calm down. Obviously you’ve had a very big head injury and things don’t seem the way they should. I’m sure—”
“Don’t seem the way they should?” he repeated. “I just woke up to realizing my life is absolutely vacant. Apparently, all I do is work. The only one who even cares if I live or die is my secretary. Does that sort of life seem right?”
I really didn’t like the way he said secretary. He made it sound so meaningless. For all the gentleness I was trying to display, that made me give him a little shove back into his bed.
“You’re a good lawyer,” I said forcefully, unaware of how that made anything better.
“I work about eighty hours a week, don’t I?” he returned.
“Sometimes.” I crossed my arms and tried to keep the words, “Most of the time,” inside.
Rubbing his temple with his good hand, Max slid down in the bed and sighed. “What firm do I work for?”
“You don’t work for a firm,” I replied and held my chin up.
He sat bolt upright. “Don’t tell me that.”
“Why not?”
There was a wild look in his eyes all of a sudden. “Don’t tell me I work all on my own.”
“But you do.”
And that time he had to grab his chest. “I’m a control freak,” he cried and started to borderline hyperventilate.
“No, you’re not.” I drew closer to his bed again, trying to think of something to say that would make him calm down.
“Yes, yes, I’m a control freak.” He grabbed my sweatshirt and pulled me so close we were practically touching noses. Gasping for air, he said, “You don’t understand. I probably never told you. I probably never told anybody anything. My dad did this! He had his own firm. Just him. Why? Because he was a control freak.” I could feel him shaking. “And he had to work endless hours because he had to be the one to handle everything. Control freak! And apparently I couldn’t even get as far as he did in his personal life.” The wild-eyed look came back. “Why don’t I just lie down and have a heart attack now?”
He let go of me and fell back in his bed, gasping for breath and repeating, “Oh, my God,” as if he actually meant it.
“What is going on?” a voice said from behind me. “Your blood pleasure is going through the roof!”
I turned to find two nurses standing in the doorway. One advanced on Max, while the one I usually spoke with took me by the arm and dragged me out into the hallway.
“Listen,” she said sternly. “You can’t get him excited. I—”
“You don’t understand,” I said. My voice seemed to have an echo. Either that or I was suddenly hollow again. “He’s not just confused about what happened. He’s totally lost all memory of the last fifteen years.”
The stern look melted into surprise. “You’re kidding. Completely lost?”
“Yes.” I grabbed hold of her shoulders. “Is this permanent? I mean, will he get it back?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “This doesn’t happen very often.” After looking back into the room a second, she grabbed me by the arm again and pulled me to the nurses’ station. “Come on. I’m going to have you talk to the doctor.”
The doctor was very concerned. I told him everything I could remember. Almost word by word. Apparently, I was too shocked to be uncomfortable anymore. He just shook his head.
By that point they’d had to sedate Max again and I’d lost all hope of getting to see him for the rest of the day. More tests were ordered.
After the doctor walked away, having given me no answers, I just stared at that nurse.
“There’s not much you can do right now,” she said.
I nodded. “Can I come back and see him tomorrow?”
“Call first, okay. I’ll try to make sure he’s up.” Apparently she felt sorry for me.
For a while I stood outside the hospital just trying to decide what to do. The numb feeling started to come back, but my mind kept racing through the options. One option was running back into Max’s room and shaking him until his brain started working, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to go over very well.
The office no longer sounded palatable and my apartment seemed like the worse idea in the world. For one thing, I’d have to walk past the spot “it” happened.
By the time I took my next breath my sneakers were pounding the pavement in the direction of the subway. I assumed my well honed New York skills and plowed through the people like I was the only one on the sidewalk and they returned the gesture.