Mr. Nobody(56)

“Em, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he asks when I’ve finished. He’s no longer smiling. “Or have you just invited me down here for my sparkling conversation?”

    “Oh God, Joe! Okay, here it is. It’s so—well, it’s beyond weird,” I blurt out. “The patient, he knows who I am. My patient.”

“Isn’t that a good sign?” He hasn’t grasped what I just said. He’s grinning.

“No. No, it’s not, Joe. He knows my real name.” I feel a selfish relief when I see his smile freeze. Because now I know it’s not just me going through this anymore. Misery loves company. “He called me Marni. He knows what happened. He knows all about Dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly that. Yesterday morning he just started talking, out of the blue. He said he needed to talk to me and when he did he said he was sorry, Joe. About what he did, to us, to everyone. He said he was sorry I burnt my fingers.” I let that fact hang in the air between us.

Joe grimaces and empties his drink into the snow. After a moment he asks, “Who does he think he is? Dad?” He’s deadly serious now.

“I think so, yes.”

“Christ! And you do too, don’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Joe, of course I don’t. He’s about twenty years younger and he looks nothing like him. I just, I don’t know what the fuck is going on here. What the fuck is going on here?” I want to weep.

“Do you recognize him at all?”

“No.”

“He’s not one of Dad’s old work friends or something?”

“Too young.”

“You think he’s still alive, don’t you?” The bluntness of it shocks me. I pause too long. “He’s gone, Emma, remember? You saw, we all saw. We buried him. He is not somewhere out there. This isn’t him, it isn’t someone he’s sent. I don’t know what this is but it’s not that.” I break from his gaze and stare out at the sparkling forest. “It’s some kind of misunderstanding. Or it’s a trick, Em.”

    “It’s not a trick, Joe.” If there’s one thing I know for certain it’s that my patient isn’t lying. “He really can’t remember. He wouldn’t be able to fake the scans I put him through yesterday.”

“Then he must have picked these ideas up somewhere else, right? Overheard things? Someone might be putting him up to it.”

“That’s what I thought. But that still means someone at the hospital knows. That they knew I was coming even before I got there. Which is weird, Joe. My patient said my name the first time we met.”

“But you said he only started talking yesterday!”

“Officially yes. I didn’t mention it to anyone at the time, but he said my name on my first day. I heard him. He whispered it.”

“He what?” Joe frowns. “Whispered it? Are you sure?”

“He mumbled it. It wasn’t threatening or anything.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you say anything?” He stares at me, incredulous.

I look away, down at the hot chocolate in my hand. My fingers are freezing. “You know why, Joe. And…because I thought maybe…maybe I’d imagined it.”

“Bloody hell, Em! You really shouldn’t be back here, should you?”

“I know, Joe, I know. Please, just help me out. I need you to help me out here.”

“Okay. Okay. So.” He shakes his head with disbelief and refocuses on the facts. “Someone at that hospital knew you were coming here before you arrived, because your patient was there days before you even agreed to treat him. And this someone knew that Emma Lewis was Marni Beaufort? How would they know that, Emma? The police are the only people who know we changed our names. And that was years ago. It’s protected information. How could anyone find out?”

I think of Chris. Chris the policeman, with his database and his searches. Shit.

    I can’t tell Joe about Chris. “But that’s not all of it. I—oh God, this is going to sound so insane—but I think he might be dangerous.”

“What, who? Your patient?”

“Yeah, I’m not supposed to talk about him, I signed an NDA, but the government seems to think he could possibly have some kind of a military background. They won’t tell me. It’s classified.”

Joe slams his empty mug down hard onto the snow-covered table. “What the hell is going on up here? You shouldn’t be being asked to do things like this. It’s—you don’t have training in that—”

Suddenly my pager buzzes to life in my pocket.

The hospital.

I throw a look to Joe as I fish it out and check the display. “Shit. One second. I need to call them.”

He eyeballs me as I rise and head deeper into the garden.

“Hi, it’s Dr. Lewis,” I answer. “Oh, okay, really? I see…I see. Um, okay, well, is there someone in particular I should be speaking to? Right, okay, right, and can I speak to DC Barker now?” I lock eyes with Joe as I say this new name; his eyebrows rise.

“Okay,” I continue into the receiver. “Wait! No! No, sorry…No. I do not give my consent to that, at all. No. I’d have to discuss…Well. I understand that, of course. Right, well, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Right. Thank you for letting me know.” I hang up and turn to Joe.