Mercy
The gasp was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “No, I’m not.”
“You are, darling.”
Darling?
Oh, fuck him, with his little British pet name. Heat built under my ribs, anger,
frustration, and confusion melting into something far more dangerous. My eyes narrowed,
and behind Grant, the sweet, sweet nurse let out a sigh that said she regretted every
choice leading up to this moment.
Grant’s eyes never left mine, and that inscrutability he wore like a fucking mask made
my fingers itch for an entirely different reason. Then, slowly, like his arm was being lifted
by an outside force, Grant showed me his hand.
A ring.
It was simple. Made of black metal.
I scoffed. “That could be from anyone.”
“But it’s not. It’s from you.”
He said it so patiently. Like I’d blink and all of a sudden know what the fuck he was
talking about.
Any second now, based on his ineffable calm.
I had no calm. There was nothing ineffable about what was happening in my poor,
beat-up little brain. My nervous system was screaming Run!
Exc ept it wasn’t a serial killer wielding a knife—it was Grant Hastings claiming to be
my dearly beloved.
“Yours is at home. We had to take it off when the ambulance brought you in.”
My lungs struggled to pull in air, like the oxygen around me was this thick, viscous
thing that wasn’t meant to be inhaled. “No . . . no, this isn’t right. I haven’t even talked to
you in . . .”
Grant opened his mouth to answer, and the nurse cut him off with a raised hand.
“Enough for now, all right? The doctor should be in here any moment, and she needs rest.”
I ignored her. So did Grant.
“When did we get married?” I snapped. “Why did we get married?” The breath I tried
to suck in was painful as it sawed in and out of my dry throat. “You have to . . . you have to
tell me something.”
His brow pinched as he took a st ep closer to the bed. “Maybe you should—”
I flung the blanket off my legs, and even that tiny burst of action felt good. My entire
body was shaking with bottled energy that had nowhere to go. On my twenty-first
birthday, I shook a bottle of champagne and didn’t pop the cork right away, just watched
the furious, frantic build of bubbles behind the glass, curious what would happen if I never
let them release.
I did, of course, because I wasn’t a psycho, and the sticky-sweet spray of bubbles went
everywhere. A satisfying explosion that I wanted for myself.
“No, you have to tell me something.” There were so many tubes coming out of my body.
An IV was jammed into my arm, and maybe if I was extra nice, they’d put a sedative in
there and I could go back to sle ep and this would all be over when I woke up. “How did I
forget a year?” I cried, my voice choked and tight from the sharp, horrifying curl of tears
pressing at the back of my throat.
“Darling,” he said, and I hated the way he said it. I hated how familiar it sounded.
The nurse gave him a stern look, and if I’d been a bit more calm, I might have
appreciated the way that look heralded a potential ass-kicking. “Honey, I’m going to ask
the doctor for something that might calm you down a little.”
My entire body shook. Head to toe. All the parts in between.
I swung my legs off the side of the bed, ignoring the way the nurse darted forward to
try to stop me. My feet hit the gleaming floor and I stood, ignoring the wave of discomfort
that slipped up the back of my neck.
“No, no, this is all wrong,” I said, gut-wrenching anxiety curling around my stomach
and chest and legs. They could move. My legs weren’t stuck, I wasn’t locked in place, and I
took a st ep forward, willfully ignoring the way all those fucking tubes might prove
problematic. “I have to . . . I have to go.”
“Mercy,” she said sternly, “you have to get back in bed.”
She was coming around the foot of the bed, but wasn’t quite quick enough as my legs
decided, You know what? We’d like to see her ass on the floor.
My knees disintegrated, like there were no bones to hold me up, and I wobbled,
pitching forward almost immediately. I cried out, hands reaching for anything to stop me.
What they found was Grant Hastings’s chest as he caught me before I could crash to
the ground.
He was solid. Tall and warm and smelled expensive as hell. His hands held tight around
my waist, and he dipped like he was going to pick me up in his arms.
I shoved. Or kind of shoved. It was more like an ineffectual swat because my arms were
noodly toothpicks. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed.
He froze, my body half in his grip, eyes locked on mine.
This close, I could see every single striation in his cloud-colored irises. They weren’t
just gray, were they? I’d always thought they were.
Boring and cold and gloomy.
But this close up, and with my pulse dangerously high, I saw hints of blue that I never
knew were there.
“Put me down,” I said, voice firmer. “Please.”
There was a flash of something in his eyes.
Not anger. Not frustration. It was there and gone so quickly it was entirely possible
that I’d imagined it.
His expression smoothed out, and he let go when the nurse slid between us to take his
place, supporting my weight with her arm around my waist.
“No more of that,” she said gently. “Last thing you need is another bump on the head.”
When I was settled, the covers over my legs once more, I leaned back against the
pillows and closed my eyes. Exhaustion hit me like a sack of bricks to the chest. “I’m tired.
Can I . . . can I rest?” I asked.
“Of course.” She checked my IV port and pressed a couple buttons on the monitor.
“More water?”
I nodded. She brought the straw to my mouth and let me take a few more sips. Even
with my eyes closed, I could feel the weight of Grant’s stare.
I didn’t want him looking at me.
I didn’t want to be in the same room as him.
He couldn’t be telling the truth. There was no way I would’ve married him.
Marrying anyone wasn’t on my radar. I was only twenty-four.
No, that wasn’t right, was it? I was twenty-five.
Oh God.
I pressed my hands to my face and tried to steady my breathing. Had I really lost a
year?
The passing of time was relative—some days and weeks passed in a blink, deadlines
and stress and the minutiae of our lives making each day feel like only an hour. Or they
were stretched to a sluggish crawl with grief. Days that felt like months, when it was all I
could do to get out of bed. Missing my brother like someone had hacked off a limb.
When time passed quickly, it was always because something good was happening.
Because you were living moments you wanted to embed into your brain and never, ever
forget how good they felt.
But this . . . this was different.
I tried. I k ept my eyes pinched closed and tried to pull up something, anything, and
there was nothing. Blank.
Empty.
A hollow space where there should’ve been three hundred something days of
life-altering moments.
The thing crawling in my veins was so much bigger than panic. Harder to define too.
The helplessness from my nightmare returned with stunning force.
“Can I have some privacy, please?” I whispered behind my hands.
I would not cry. I would not cry.
Crying was a waste. It was stupid. It never helped. It just made my face snotty and red
and puffy.
The nurse ran a hand down my arm. “Sure thing. I’ll be back in a few minutes with the
doctor, all right?”
I nodded, unwilling to look as they left the room.
Tiredness pulled at my entire body, but the thought of sle ep left me strangely terrified.
I finally opened my eyes and looked around the room. There was a small couch in a
nondescript material, and a reclining chair next to the bed. Nightstands flanked my
hospital bed, and on the larger one to my right, there were colorful bouquets of flowers
and cards propped open so they were more visible.
I reached over and grabbed the first card.
“Rae,” I gasped, the relief at remembering my mentor and boss—the principal at the
school where I taught—the best thing I’d felt since this nightmare began. She told me she
was praying for me, and they missed me, but she was sick and would have to wait to visit
and knew I’d be back on my feet soon.
I bolted upright in my bed. My students.
An entire year of students, and I didn’t remember them.
“Oh no,” I moaned. “No, no, no.”
There was a gentle knock on the door, and a tall woman with dark skin and long braids
sw ept into a knot at the base of her neck appeared in the doorway. A tiny diamond winked
in her nose, and her smile set me at ease. “Can I come in?”
I nodded, r eplacing Rae’s card on the nightstand. “Of course.”
She stopped and used the hand sanitizer pump mounted on the wall, rubbing her hands
together as she made her way toward my bed. “Mercy, I’m Dr. Washington. How are you
feeling?”
My fingers worried the edge of the blanket. “Tired. The back of my head hurts a little.”
She nodded, then watched the monitor. “Anything else?”
“Confused,” I whispered, the word catching in the back of my throat.
Her dark eyes were kind. “So I’ve heard. Nell, the nurse who was here when you woke
up, gave me a little update on your condition. Can you talk to me about the last thing you
remember?”
I nodded, watching as she pulled a pen out of the pocket of her scrubs. She held it up
and gestured for me to follow the movement with my eyes.
“I, uh, I was at a cemetery. Visiting my brother’s grave.” I closed my eyes briefly.
“Trying to.”
She clicked a light on at the end of the pen and checked my pupils. “And that was May
of 2024, you said.”
I managed another nod. “What’s wrong with me?”
She smiled. “You hit your head quite hard in your car accident. A traumatic brain injury
like that can cause some swelling and occasionally, with it, some form of memory loss.
That’s what we’re seeing here.”
“When will it come back? Is there some, I don’t know . . . some medicine you can give
me?”
“I wish it were that easy,” she said. “There’s no rhyme or reason to why certain
amounts of time are lost, and unfortunately, I don’t have a clear answer on when—or
if—those memories will come back.”
“What? I might . . . I might never remember?” My thumb pressed against the divot
again, disbelief and fear a potent cocktail that made my head swim. “I married
someone—someone I don’t even like—and you’re saying I might not ever remember that?”
Her expression pinched, but it wasn’t worry or judgment. She was sad. For me.
“It’s hard for doctors to admit when they can’t control something, that we can’t create
a plan for how to fix something, but I find that it’s best to be honest with my patients in
situations like this.” She laid her hand over mine. “I don’t know, Mercy. Hopefully, with
plenty of rest, your brain will unlock itself, and you’ll find those memories.”
I closed my eyes again, fighting the immediate desire to reject her words. I wanted to
lash out, but not at her. Without the benefit of vision, I could hear things outside my room.
Low voices.
Nell’s was one of them. And Grant’s.
“What do I do now?” I asked.
She squeezed my hand. “You rest. You let us take care of you while you’re here. No
more jumping out of bed, okay?”
I opened my eyes and gave her a she epish smile. “Thank you.”
“It might help you to get home. Being around your family and friends. Seeing your
things. Pictures. All of that can be very beneficial.”
Home.
Where was home?
“I don’t have family,” I whispered.
Her brow furrowed slightly but smoothed out in the next breath. “You have some,” she
pointed out. “He’s been here the entire week. We could hardly get him out of here to eat
or shower.”
The calm she’d brought with her left really fucking fast. Her gaze moved to the
monitor, likely clocking the increase in my heart rate.
“Okay, I’m going to let you rest again. Are you hungry?”
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
Dr. Washington paused at the foot of my bed. “Is it all right if he comes in? I know he’ll
want to.”
My hands were shaking when I scrubbed them over my face.
I didn’t want to be alone.
But I wasn’t sure I was ready for him either.
Knowing something was true didn’t make it any easier to absorb, and right now, my
ability to absorb anything of that magnitude was absolutely fucking zero.
“Not just yet,” I said quietly. “I think I’d rather be alone.”
It was a lie. The loneliness was empty, too, and all that emptiness just made the
missing spots in my brain seem louder.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t.
Not yet.
Dr. Washington exhaled slowly, then gave me a small smile. “Of course. Get some
rest.”
When she was gone, the door closing quietly behind her, I let out a shuddering breath.
Then I closed my eyes.
A nightmare. This had to be a nightmare. Soon I’d wake, and everything would be fine.
Soon.