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Forgotten: A Novel

By Don Prichard, Stephanie Prichard

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Chapter 1

June 1982

A voice reached down and nudged her into consciousness. Sweet words—crooned, stretched out into long, soft syllables. “Beau-ti-ful laaay-dee.” Enticing words, drawing her through an ocean of darkness like a fish to a lure. Her nerves tingled, eager to respond.
She opened her eyes. White walls, white sheets, white lights overhead. Something stinging her nostrils. Disinfectant? She wrinkled her nose. None of it made sense. She closed her eyes and spiraled back into the darkness.
The voice prodded her again, poking light into the blackness, prying her eyes open. She frowned. What?
Rustling nearby. She turned her head, squinted at a smooth, cinnamon-colored face. Dark almond-shaped eyes, delicate nose, gleaming white teeth smiling at her. Attached to a white uniform. The significance hit home: a nurse.
“Beautiful lady, how are you feeling?” A slight foreign accent stretched out the nurse’s words. “Please, I need to ask you questions before your surgery.”
The word pierced her grogginess. Surgery? Alarm pinched her cheeks with heat and lifted the fog behind her eyes.
In a flash, fragments of memory snapped together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The
central piece: she’d been airlifted from a yacht to a hospital in the Philippines—today, only hours ago. Why? Adrenaline jolted her like a hot wire and she remembered—the yacht, her captors, the gunshot to her head.
More pieces locked in—a jungle island, the man she loved bound to a tree and beaten. “Jake!” she cried, heartbeat escalating. “You’ve got to save Jake!” Two more pieces: people with him—Crystal and Betty, hiding. She struggled to sit up and say their names, to grab the nurse and tell her to hurry, to send help.
“Please, can you tell me your name?” Small hands against her shoulders pressed her head back onto a pillow.
The room swirled. The puzzle pieces vanished. Her name? “Eve.” Or was it Eva? Eva Gray?
“Can you tell me what year it is?”
She gripped the bed rails, palms sweaty. Her answer came out thick, sluggish. “19 … 82.”
“Good. And, please, your age and birthdate?”
“Thirty- … four.”
The room tipped, and the black vortex swallowed her birthdate. She spun away with it.
***
Pain wrenched open her eyes. She groaned and put her hand up to touch the right side of her head. Stopped when she spied a wire clipped to her forefinger and tubing taped halfway up her arm. Dully, she followed the tubing’s path to a bag of clear fluid suspended from a metal pole. Next to the pole a monitor traced a pattern of intermittent peaks and valleys.
She jerked fully awake and looked around. She was in a bed in a hospital room. Her heartbeat quickened, locking the air in her lungs.
She snatched in a breath, put her hand down, raised the other to her head. Bandages. She explored farther. The entire top of her head was swathed in them.
Her fingertips triggered a jackhammer inside her skull. She yelped and yanked her hand away. A young Filipina nurse, almond eyes full of concern, dashed into the room.
“Are you feeling pain?”
“My head.” She clenched eyes, teeth, fists against the crushing implosion.
The nurse’s footsteps pattered off and returned. She opened her eyes to see the nurse poke a syringe into the I.V. line. Within seconds the pain melted away like candle wax. She took a shuddering breath and sank gratefully into the bed sheets.
She started over again: bandages on her head. She touched them gingerly. What had happened? Before she could ask, the nurse spoke. “Your surgery went well, but you need to lie still. Please, can you tell me your name and birthdate?”
She blinked.
Inside the bandages, her mind raced back and forth, arms outstretched, searching, searching, until finally it halted, shattered. Nothing. No memories. Only emptiness.
Her breath heaved from her chest, shot back in, catapulted out again. “I …” Her vision spun in erratic circles. “I don’t … ” She gasped out the last word. “Know.”
A sticky syrup, dark, menacing, melted over her brain. Crept to her face. Absorbed her eyes. The last thing she heard, as if from a deep subterranean well, was the echo of her nurse’s voice: “Doctor!”
***
The door creaked on its hinges, admitting yet one more person into the crowded hospital waiting room. Jake knew immediately it was Detective Lee. Looking for him.
Jake stood—not that he was hard to spot, the only white male in a room of cocoa-skinned Filipinos. It was just that the contrast between the detective’s coat and tie and Jake’s tattered shorts and shirt—a tee with orange and blue flowers the size of elephant ears he’d been given to cover his bare chest—demanded defiance. Shaggy hair and beard tangled below his shoulders didn’t help. There’d been no time to clean up.
In the chair beside his, Betty Parker stirred, her wrinkled face creasing into a frown as he rose. Crystal, her twelve-year-old grandniece, slept against Betty’s left shoulder, leaning on her from the next chair. Both were as ragged as Jake. The year of bare-bones survival on a jungle island had stripped them of civilization’s sheen. He flashed a twitch of a smile at Betty to assure her all was well.
“Colonel Jacob Chalmers?”
At the use of his military title, heat flushed Jake’s cheeks. There’d be no oo-rah from the Marine Corps at the state of his appearance. He gave a curt nod.
“Detective Lee.” Though he was a good half-foot shorter than Jake’s six-two, the detective managed to peer down his nose at Jake. He didn’t offer to shake hands. “You accompanied Eva Gray from the yacht?”
“She goes by her nickname, Eve. Yes, I flew in on the medivac with her.”
“Could we step into the hallway? I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“No.” The noise in the room hushed as ears locked onto the two men. “I’m waiting for the doctor to report on Eve’s surgery.”
Lee’s nostrils flared. “I spoke to the doctor. Ms. Gray is in recovery.”
The words landed a hard punch to Jake’s belly. “Recovery? Why didn’t anyone inform me?”
“When we’re finished, you can check with the doctor.”
“No!” Jake grabbed the detective’s arms. “I want to see her. Now.”
The biceps under Jake’s grip tensed. Lee’s eyes narrowed. “You won’t be allowed to see her.” The muscles in his cheeks tightened. “Eva Gray—Eve—is under arrest for suspicion of murder.”

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