Monsters & Fairytales (41 page)

“Do you have insurance? Any relatives we should notify?”

“No and no.”

I kept my eyes closed. I knew the look on her face. I knew she was going to ask again. She would insist on the importance of it and force me to tell her I had no family.

“Okay, then we probably won’t give you the CAT scan.” She whispered.

Well, at least she was dumb. That meant she even had no idea how wealthy I actually was. However, I wasn’t sure that a CAT scan was necessarily necessary. Sure, I'd hurt my head, sure there was memory loss, but I was certain that was nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little sleep.

“That’s fine. Is there a cheaper alternative?”

My eyes were still closed. Joe reached his hand out and grabbed mine.

“Yes. We’re here.” She said. The ambulance stopped.

The back doors were opened and I was wheeled out. I didn’t think that was that necessary either. They could be using this ambulance for something much more of an emergency than my memory loss. I should’ve stayed home
.
             

I was pushed into a hallway where she dropped off the papers to someone else. A new bed was brought to my side and I was asked to switch over. The EMT pushed her empty gurney off.
             

I rested my head back and stared up at the ceiling as new nurses rolled me somewhere else. It was awfully plain. I would have thought with so many people having to stare at the ceiling that they would have put some decent effort into spicing it up. Maybe hang some pictures of rainbows and unicorns from the ceiling. Or maybe even have some televisions.
             

We stopped next to a desk. Joe reached for my hand again. I wasn’t sure how to take anything. He knew the truth. Maybe while I was at the hospital they could hook us up to some sort of a memory transferring unit and allow me to see what had happened through his eyes.

“What are you thinking about?”

He knelt down next to me. He had pretty eyes.

“Everything that I missed out on.
It’s weird to think that nearly two days have gone by, but I don’t remember anything.”

“I can’t imagine. Do you want me to walk you through everything that I remember?” He consoled.

“Now?”

I looked around the waiting room. This didn’t really seem appropriate anymore.

“It’s as good of a time as any.” He grinned.

“I suppose. Okay.”

I rolled on my side and faced him.

“Okay, well, we bumped into each other on Tuesday morning. You were such a wreck by the way, but I asked you out to lunch. You shot me down a couple times and eventually we agreed on Thursday.

"But then, on Wednesday, that’s today, I took you out cause your movers never showed up, and I took you to a coffee shop down the road. You ordered green tea with a coffee cake, and I just had the coffee-”

“Joe, I don’t want to know what we ate or drank, what’d we do? What’d we talk about?” I interrupted him.

I wanted to make sure I hadn’t done anything to embarrass myself. With him swinging into my window and approaching me the way he did, something had to have happened. He smiled, he was nervous again. Was he ashamed of something?

“We just talked about each other. You know, got to know one another. It was nice.”

He was blushing. He had a crush on me. I couldn’t believe it. This beautiful man actually had a crush on plain
ol
’ me. Oh, how adorable.
 

“Did I seem like I was enjoying myself?” I asked sitting up.

I wanted him to sit next to me. I didn’t want other people to be able to hear us. He made me forget my surroundings, and that could be bad talking about intimate feelings in the middle of an emergency room.

“I thought so.” He smiled.

He moved over and sat next to me. I was glad he could read me so well. We held hands again and leaned against the wall waiting for someone to tend to me.

“I wish I could remember.” I said fidgeting with his hand.

“Sebastian was jealous. I saw you again at the arcade, where I work. He threw a fit over you asking me out again.” Joe said.

He really didn’t like this Sebastian character. That wasn’t that important. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of me taking a random guy out to an arcade. I had to know a Sebastian. Think, Mira, think.

“This just keeps getting stranger and stranger.” I sighed, looking around.

“Yah.
I wish I would have known something was up. I’m so sorry.”

“You cannot honestly be blaming yourself because you didn’t know that my friend was a total stranger.”

I wanted to laugh. This guy really liked me.

“I like you, Mira.” He blurted out, confirming my thoughts.

His face went bloodshot red. I felt my headache worsen as the blood rushed to my face, as well. I wanted to lean over and wrap my arms around him. I should. There should be nothing keeping me from it. For all anyone else knew, he was my boyfriend. I wouldn’t mind him being my boyfriend. I looked over at him and hugged him.

“Thank you.” I whispered. He hugged me back. “I have a feeling I really like you, too.” I said when I leaned away.

He smiled at me and gently ran his hand down the side of my face.

“I want to kiss you right now, is this okay?”
He asked.

“Kay.”

I puckered my lips and closed my eyes. He laughed and then leaned forward, kissing me. It was just as sweet as I’d imagine it to be. 

“Ms. Frances?”

A nurse walked out of the tiny office in the emergency room, interrupting us. I sat up and glared at her. How dare she? She had been waiting on that.

“We’re going to need you to fill out more paperwork.” She handed me a clipboard.

How freaking typical. I’ve been sitting here waiting for twenty minutes. I could have been filling out the paperwork then. But nope, they wanted to be as lazy as possible. This was pathetic. I sighed and unclipped the pen and started filling everything out again. When I came to the part about emergency contact, I choked up.
             

I was alone. I was completely alone. My head seemed to have forgotten. How could I have forgotten, though? Maybe I did have two days of stuff crammed into my head to force the memory of my mother being gone out of there. A tear fell on the paperwork. I just didn’t know what to do.
             

Everything slammed into me all at once. Joe placed his hand on mine. He smiled and took the clipboard from me. I watched him pick up the pen and write in the part that I was struggling with. Did he know? Had I told him about my mother yet? Maybe that was why he was so sweet to me; he pitied me.

He handed it back and I smiled at him. I looked down and read over his information. I saw that he put his relationship to me as fiancé. 

“Fiancé?”
I asked, laughing through my tears.

He slid off the gurney and then got down on one knee.

“What are you doing?!” I whispered. Oh, God.

“Mirabelle Frances.”
He yelled.

Chairs squeaked, people stopped
moving,
it got silent in an emergency room. Everyone looked at us. He reached for my hand with the most innocent look on his face. I jerked it back and mouthed for him to get back up next to me. He just smiled and took my hand again.

“Mirabelle, will you marry me?” He asked, even more loudly.

The whole room sighed. I wanted to die. I couldn’t believe him. What was he thinking?

“I...I…”

I just stuttered. I couldn’t form any words. He took off a ring on his left hand and held it just before my ring finger.

“Go on.”
He urged me, playfully and yet sternly.

“Yes.”

I glared at him. How could he do that to me like that? Everyone applauded.

“You like that, huh?” He whispered, rubbing my hair. He kissed the side of my head.

“No. I hated it.
Worst proposal ever.”
I teased.

“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

He jumped back up next to me.

“What made you do that, anyways?”

People were still staring at us. I wanted to melt away. They
were adoring
us. They wished they had the love he and I had. Little did they know, we were complete
strangers.
 

“Credibility.
If I had put friend or boyfriend then my level of importance would have shot way down. I wanted to make sure they’d take me seriously.” He whispered.

“Ah, I see.” 

I was completely over the pain of my mother. I wondered if that’s what had me so attracted to him and what had created our strange connection. I was happy with him around.

“How do you like your ring?” He asked, kissing my forehead again.

I stopped writing and held up my left hand, wiggling my ring finger. It was a solid silver ring, nothing fancy about it. No diamond. It looked more like I was wearing his wedding ring.

“Not bad. Could use some jazz to it.”

I shook my hand and went back to writing.

“Hey, that’s my pinky ring! It’s something special to me. Don’t go losing it, now.” He said.

“It has meaning? Then I guess that makes it better. I promise not to lose it.” I smiled.

He put his arm around me and laughed. I finished the paperwork, finally, and went up to the desk. The lady nodded and took the sheet. As she read over the first part to make sure I didn’t leave anything out, she asked me to take my seat again. I was a little impatient and annoyed she seemed to keep forgetting about me, so I explained to her that I didn’t have a seat, I was on the gurney in the hall. She jumped up instantly. It seemed the EMT never explained the urgency. I just laughed in my head and took a step back.

“This way.”
She said rushing around from her office.

Joe stood up, and together we followed the lady. He was still holding onto my purse for me. I liked him being my significant other. I wasn’t sure that I wanted my memory back anymore. The way that I was feeling now was better than I had ever felt before. I didn’t want to change that or lose it.
             

We were walked into a room where within two seconds, a doctor walked in. He was tall, even compared to Joe, and he had red hair. His freckles covered every inch of his showing body. He seemed like a very cheery guy. I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was around a doctor that was this happy about sick people.

“How are you?” The doctor asked.

“I’m okay. I had a terrible headache, but it’s going away.” I said.

“Memory problems too, I see?”

He was flipping pages from a folder in his hands.

“Yes. Just for the past day. I can remember everything before that.” I assured him.

“And you are?” The man looked at Joe.

“I’m Joseph Sinclair, her fiancé as of today.”

He made an excited face and faint scream. He was so smug. It was cute.

“Okay...”

He stood up and walked over to the bed.

“Have a seat, please.” He asked, patting it. “Okay, Ms. Frances soon to be Mrs. Sinclair…” He mumbled.

I thought it was adorable. I looked over at Joe, but he didn’t seem so amused. Was he angry with the doctor?

The doctor pulled out a rolling stool. It made an awful squeal when he put his weight on it. It didn’t sound much better when he scooted it towards me. Maybe they kept them loud so people couldn’t sleep.

“You can call me Mirabelle.” I said.

I wasn’t honestly trying to take a stab at Joe, but if he wasn’t excited about it, then no need to carry on with it. Besides, Ms. Frances reminded me of my mother too much and I didn’t want to get sucked into that pain again.

“Sounds good.
I’m Martin.” He stuck his hand out. “I agree; the whole last name thing is too proper.” He made a funny face. I smiled.

“So walk me through what happened.” He said after he checked everything physically on me.

“Well, I woke up this evening in bed. I walked in my living room and he was knocking on my window. I let him in, and well that’s when we realized I didn’t remember the past two days.” I said.

My face went red. I almost said that I didn’t remember him. The doctor wouldn’t really believe I’d say yes to
marrying
a man after only knowing each other two days. Crap, I'd said he was knocking on the window, would he think we didn’t live together? I was thinking too much.

“Hmm. Okay.
Now what’s the last thing you remember?” He said after he made some notes.

“Tuesday morning, when I left the park with my dog.”

“And you, sir? Do you know what happened then?” He looked to Joe.

“Yes. There wasn’t much that day, just hanging around the apartment. The next day though, we went to brunch and then she came and visited me at work. I came home and she was napping, so I was sitting on the balcony when she woke up.”