A Miserable Pile of Secrets Ch. 03

And more pain!!

Arthur spat out a coherent thing. "No!! My ribs! I think my ribs are broken!!" He didn't know how many. He just knew at least one was messed up.

"Shit, shit!! Okay!" He moved his hand. "Come on, I'll get you to a hospital. Don't worry, Buddy. I got you."

And that was when Arthur blinked once.

Or he thought he blinked.

But when he next opened his eyes, he was in a completely new place.

***

Daylight?

The walls were a light beige with darker wood accents. He felt a mattress beneath himself. On his right, a black woman smiled down at him and said, "Hello there, Mr. Glass. How are you feeling?"

Kind of ...

Bland?

But also confused.

His eyes went down a little and focused on her stethoscope draped over her neck and shoulders and her white coat. "How did I get here? I'm not in the house, am I? I can't be."

The woman frowned.

"Mr. Glass? Can you tell me your first name?"

"Arthur. What's going on?"

"Where do you live?"

Arthur tried to sit up. "Why are you asking me that?" He figured out he was on a cozy bed. There were cutesy green pillows and a blanket with faux patchwork patterns. On his left, there was a happy looking couch and a large window showing off bushes and trees. Why was there daylight? Shouldn't it be nighttime?

Wait. The bed's headboard and footboard looked different from a typical bed. Thinner, colder, less homey.

"So ... you don't remember where you are?" the woman asked. She was holding a clipboard.

"No!" Arthur looked up at the wall ahead and found a pretty big, fairly new looking television, but it was silent and dark.

The woman sighed. "I suppose it's not ... the strangest thing I've ever heard of." She gently reached over and lightly patted his hand. "I'm Doctor Hopper. You're at the Pomegranate Valley Medical Center. We call it PVMC or Pom for short."

"A hospital?" Arthur looked at himself a bit more carefully. He should've paid more attention, really. He wasn't wearing his normal clothes. He had on a hospital gown, gray with medium-sized white polka dots. "What town are we in?"

"Mr. Glass," the doctor said with her gentle tone, "do you know what today's date is?"

He shrugged as his thoughts were redirected. "No. I guess not." She told him what the date was. Then he said, "I must have been out for more than a day."

"Not exactly," Dr. Hopper said with a sad wince in her eyes and a shake of the head. "You were awake for a long time after you arrived. I let you have a few naps, but you were always woken up to be checked out. You know, to make sure you were still okay."

Arthur frowned at her. "But how come I don't remember any of that?"

With an eerily calm shrug, the doctor said, "Your memory loss could have been caused by your head trauma, but the psychological trauma could have done it too." She blinked a few times as her lips pursed. Then she asked, "Do you remember what happened to you?"

Arthur took a breath and said very easily, "Yeah, I got beaten up." He didn't want to say who beat him up, because he was afraid of getting the police involved. When a third party once called the cops on Jake, Arthur had watched him plot and execute some of the most sickening revenge possible. He wasn't about to put himself in that kind of danger.

And, really ... now that he was really thinking about it, some of the details of the attack were blurred or even gone. It was like reading a book with burned holes in the pages.

"Do you remember how that happened?" the doctor asked.

A nod. "Yeah. I do. My friend saved me? I think?" He rubbed one of his arms. He noticed a few bruised spots where there had likely been injections, but those weren't the only bruises. "I don't know how he found me."

"Do you remember your friend's name?"

Another nod. Arthur said, "Vince Jeffery. Do you know where he is?"

Dr. Hopper's neck bent a little so she could point her head at the door. "He should be in the cafeteria. He said he'd get breakfast for you. I think he also said something about the gift shop. Now," here, the doctor started looking through some drawers nearby, "I need to do a basic checkup, check your heart, ears, and whatnot."

That boring task reminded Arthur of when he was a kid and he actually got to visit a doctor quite regularly. As an adult, doctor's visits were much more expensive. He almost savored the experience. At one moment, the doctor mentioned that he had some painkillers in his system, but a prescription for pills had already been filled out. Vince kept those with him for now because, as he'd apparently said, "People steal this shit all the time."

Just when Doctor Hopper had told Arthur everything was fine, there was a knock on the door and Vince's voice. "Hello?! Is everyone decent?"

"I'm not naked or anything," Arthur said.

Dr. Hopper giggled as she tugged gloves away from her hands. "Yeah, I think you can come in."

When Vince stepped into the room, he had a fresh looking backpack, a plastic container that probably had food inside, and a plastic cup with a lid and a straw. He looked oddly comfortable and clean, and super happy. He was smiling like he was about to go to an amusement park. "Hey there! How are you feeling?"

"I don't know." Arthur folded his arms and watched Vince put the cup and container on the nightstand. "I lost some time? It's scary, really scary." He sighed and tried to fold his legs, planning to put his arms on his knees.

The doctor outstretched an arm and urgently said, "Woah, be careful. Stretch your legs back out."

Arthur obeyed, but he also groaned. Vince went to the bed and adjusted it. The bed didn't look like it could have part of it folded up, but it certainly could. Arthur was sitting up very comfortably within a quick moment. Vince told him, "Your organs could be punctured if your rib gets anymore fucked."

Arthur hissed out, "Language! This is a hospital!"

But the doctor rolled her eyes. "As long as he's not harassing anyone, I don't care what he says." Then she scribbled out something on her clipboard. "We need to have your brain scanned again. If nothing else is wrong with you, at least not physically, then I'll have to let you go."

"What about the memory loss?" Arthur asked as Vince opened the food container. A warm, savory aroma rose into the almost barren air.

"That's why I want to look at your head again," Doctor Hopper said, "but I can't wave a magic wand and put your memories back." She reached into a pocket in her coat and pulled out a business card. "This is the number for the closest mental health clinic."

Vince took the card, odd enough, even though Arthur did reach for it. "Thanks," Vince said. "We'll check it out if there are any more problems."

"Oh?" the doctor said as she turned to Vince, "are you going to keep an eye on him? He does need to be monitored at home."

One of Arthur's eyebrows rose. "I'm sure I'll be fine."

Putting the business card into his wallet, Vince said, "What if you wake up tomorrow and can't remember anything past the attack?"

"Pretty sure that's just something from a movie," the doctor added, "but something similar could happen. I don't specialize in that, so take it with a grain of salt." She made a few more notes on her clipboard. "Alright, an hour after you eat up, we'll prepare you for the scan."

The doctor remained for little bit more, answering some questions. Then she left Arthur alone with Vincent. That was when Arthur asked, "Are you going to take me back to your place or something?"

Vince shrugged and tugged his backpack off his back. "Well, you can't be left alone. You need to recover. You can't do anything stressful. So work is a big no-no." He pulled out an adorable, snuggly, fuzzy brown teddy bear. Then he tossed it onto Arthur's lap. "No driving, no working out." He put his hand back in his backpack. "No reading."

"No reading?!" Arthur snorted. "Really? That sounds dumb."

Unconcerned with the interruption, Vince went on. "No TV, no music, no texting, no video games."

"Okay, what the hell!" Arthur's hands flew up to the air. He was really, really pissed. "How am I supposed to go on without games?!"

Taking up a folded T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a sweater, putting them on the bed at Arthur's sock covered feet, Vince said, "You have a special diet too. No caffeine. As little sugar as possible, except for natural sugars in fruits and honey. Salmon's good. Cheese and eggs too. And lots of nuts. There's some baked fish and steamed veggies in your lunch." He kept looking in his bag. "Your medicine's in here, but I got some vitamins too." He smiled. "Here we go!!"

Vince tugged up another stuffed animal. A smaller, pale blue monkey with long arms and an innocent face. He gave it to Arthur. "Don't worry about anything, okay? I got you."

"I should at least call my manager," Arthur said as he looked around, instinctively hugging his bear and monkey. "Where's my phone? And my wallet?"

"In my bag," Vince said. "Your brain needs to rest. I wanted to make sure you didn't get any temptation. And I kept your wallet because I was afraid of a nurse stealing it." He took these two things out of his bag and held them up. Then he opened up the wallet and showed Arthur his ID, his cash, and everything else. "Don't worry. I won't let anything happen to your stuff."

"Am I allowed to make phone calls?"

"Not sure, but I already called your manager for you."

With a slow set of blinks and a tilt of the head, Arthur said, "How? I have a lock on my phone."

"I asked you to tell me the password," Vince explained very easily. "Then you told me your manager's name, and I searched your contacts. Then I called her for you." He frowned, his gray eyes looking like coarse pebbles. "She's kind of a bitch. She said she'll fire you if you're not back in a week, but that's just not going to happen. Your rib alone will take, what, three weeks at least, maybe even six weeks."

Sighing and holding his teddy bear's soft crown to his chin, Arthur said, "That sounds like her. She once wrote me up because I was literally one minute late when clocking back in from lunch."

"Well, screw that cunt," Vince said with as he pointed at the food on the nightstand. "And screw that stupid job. Just eat your food and focus on getting better."

Focus on getting better ...

But ...

Arthur rubbed at his eye.

What was going to happen after he got better?

"Hey, Vince?" He was leaning into the nightstand and picking up a plastic fork. "What happened to Jake?"

"Oh don't even think about that stupid little bitch."

Arthur took a nervous sip of his drink. "Uhm ... did you call the cops? I think I remember some people showing up, but I don't have any other details."

"He whined like a baby when his hands were cuffed behind his back." Vince laughed. "But stop fussing, alright? Just rest and don't think too hard. It's literally unhealthy for you to think too hard."

Okay.

Whatever.

Jake wouldn't assume Arthur had called the cops, since the timing wouldn't make sense.

At least everything was sort of fine for now.

***