I struggled to open my eyes through the waves of pain coursing through my body. Blinking through the glare of bright lights, I saw many doctors and nurses working feverishly on my battered and abused body. “What happened to me?” I croaked through cracked bloody lips. 

“You were found tossed in a dumpster, abandoned for dead, covered in blood and unconscious. Can you tell us what happened? The police are outside waiting for you to be able to talk.”

I screamed in overwhelming pain as they examined my injuries. “I don’t remember anything. Can‘t you give me anything for the pain?” At that point I passed out into a sweet oblivion, a relief from the overriding wounds.

”

Vaguely, I heard the doctor’s voices deciding whether to put me into an induced coma. “It’ll give her time to heal both her body and her mind so she can recover from her nightmare,” said someone in a sympathetic voice. Even though I was now comatose, I could hear their voices discussing me in the distance. “She doesn’t have her purse, check her jean pockets. Look, there’s a folded scrap of paper with a name and phone number on it. Call that person and see if they are a relative or loved one.”

A jolt of awareness speared my body like a bolt of lightning. “No, no,” I cried silently, “don’t call him. I didn’t know the phone number was in my pocket. Now I remember what happened!” No one could hear my voice because it had no sound. I fell into a deeper coma only to be jarred awake by the knowledge that he was now in my room. But I could not speak.

“I thought you were dead,” he snarled in his threatening voice. “No one dumps me and gets away with it.”

Through my closed eyelids, I was very aware of his presence, feeling my insides trembling so violently that I thought my bones would break into pieces. Surely, the technicians monitoring my equipment would realize I was in distress.

He reached over to the wall socket and maliciously pulled the plug. Alarms blared as I heard fading calls of “code blue, code blue.” I summoned my strength as I valiantly hung on to my life, hoping I would be saved.

He turned on his heels, ready to stomp out of the room when he tripped on my long cord, smashing his head against the wall, causing a brain hemorrhage that robbed him of his life blood.

Unfortunately, the doctors and nurses were unable to rescue me in time and I succumbed to my injuries and my loss of oxygen. He did not make it either but I no longer have to worry about his threat.

We reside in different places, now, and I am at peace, at last. I am cradled in the warmth of comforting arms while he is being roasted like a marshmallow on a stick for eternity.

Im suddenly concious, as sirens wail in the flashing light cast by the ambulance, halting and flinging wide its doors.

Paramedics scramble out, steadying my gurney, and the one rushing with my fluids trails behind tripping a tad on the "doosy" step down from the back doors.

I'm forced to watch as, in shock my numb head can't swivel at will.

CRASH!

The flapping plastic of the doors to the E.R makes contact with my roller cart, and I flash to the kitchen I used to work in at the old BBQ spot, in my teens, or I think that was me? 

Those doors would always flap longer than would seem appropriate, or possible. Is it possible it is from a movie? Everything is a blur..

FLAP!

I'm slapped like meat on the cold deli table of the surgeons. Though not actually a delicatessen, and not actually slapped or thrown, because these were professionals. It was a delicate situation, but i couldn't help but feel a little like the pig parts to be cut apart to make your kids lunchables with me and my unmentionables there, splayed out.

ZZZZZZZTTTT!

The tables light buzzes on over my face as I see the doctor bending over me. 

"Who is she?", He asks. I wish I knew. 

Past his shoulder there's a newbie intern, who looks ready to turn in, but who is sifting through the pockets of the jacket they just cuts in chunks, off of me.

They look through my wallet and turn it out completely, looking for things that identified the specimen today.

I suppose my cellphone wasn't found on the scene. It must have been thrown farther than me, or do I have one?

I see then, that poor, underpaid CNA-in-training, pull forth from the wallet a piece of paper that hadn't occurred to me in what was definitely years, but by then it could have been yesterday. I still wouldn't know why the sight of it set off anxiety in my mind.

Written on it in pen, in handwriting,  distinctively masculine, ten little numbers.

I see the look come over nurse teeny-bopper, that she thought her relief was in reach. Under the impression that she had found what she was after, she thought herself closer to possibly getting off the clock. 

"Hey, Doc? I think I have a contact number, should I go ahead and try to reach it?"

"Yes! Beverly, just clear that area, NURSE DAISY, SUTURES! !" The doctor roared in a controlled desperation, and the little intern that could, kindly cleared the way, and ran by the door to the phone.

Beverly had the white note held gently in her hands. It had been neatly flattened out from the crinkled forgotten depths of my bill-fold. I'd crinkle my forehead if i could, at the forgotten name on my tounge, and the flashes of moments briefly debriefing me on my memory in fragments. It didnt make sense.

CLACK, jingle jingle, BEEEP!

She picks up the receiver and starts dialling. 1, then 9, then the number. As she does, I'm missing the irony of that asshole being the one to get the call when I'm dying. HIM being the guy to tell people, or to do anything about it! As if it could, the situation had gotten more surreal. Yet, amnesia has it's perks, and this overlooked pang of pain for the real life oddity that was this thing, I was spared from. 

From the phone, I hear a familiar melody in outcry, out of the reciever at the nurses ear, 'Bum, Bummm, Bummmm...skrrrr..We're sorry, this number has been temporarily suspended due to non-payment."

Then the Doctors yelling, "CLEAR! ..CLEAR!",

I could have died in that moment! Maybe I did? Who knows? For as it goes; without memories, it is like I never lived. 

....."Please hang up and try your call again later. "