Page 15 of Velvet Deception

“And with time, perhaps more of your memory will return.”

It wasn’t a promising statement. It could’ve sounded like nothing more than a half-assed platitude, but she declared itso simply, so matter-of-fact, I knew Sofia was a woman who wouldn’t lie.

And that was enough to appease me for now. With nothing else to cling to with certainty, at a loss for what had happened to me and what could happen next, I sipped the water she offered and closed my eyes when another headache returned.

I woke to her checking on me again, her cool fingers so soothing and increasingly familiar as she laid them on my skin.

Over the next few days, she was all I could familiarize myself with, and I did so with a hunger to understand anything in this confusing chaos of nothingness.

She bathed me with a wet cloth and kept a close eye on my wounds, changing the bandages. She helped me sip water and began giving me small portions of food. Eggs, mashed corn, and creamy milkshakes. Ramon assisted too. When he was near, which wasn’t often because he went to school, he approached me and gave me water and food. Standing wasn’t easy. Dizziness threatened to topple me to the floor, and it was with Sofia’s help as she walked me to the bathroom that I could relieve myself.

After her explanation that she had to go to work and take Ramon to school, I relaxed with the fact I could have ample time and freedom to rest.

“Rest is best,” she repeated often. “Your body has faced a lot of turmoil, and rest is critical for all stages of recovery and healing, especially with a head wound.”

I did just that. I followed the nurse’s orders. Even if I wanted to be active, I was sleepy often.

In the moments when I woke and stared at the walls of her living room, I realized she was extending a lot of trust to me.

Letting a stranger in her home with no man present to protect her? It made no sense that she would be this generous and naïve to let me be here unattended. Then again, in my state, I wasn’t in any condition to do anything bad. I had no desire to. Sofia was my angel.

Ramon didn’t hurt either. He offered me juvenile magazines that he acquired at school. Most of them were about science facts, but it was something he could provide. “I know my mama says to let you think of things as they come to you and not force anything, but…” He set the small stack of papers on the coffee table. “I figure these are okay. They’re old but if you get bored, it’s something to look at.”

“Thank you, Ramon.”

He nodded and darted off.

As I became the lump on their couch, I fell into the routine. A week passed of her tending to my wounds, feeding me, and letting me rest. All so I could regain my strength. I noticed that she never said to regain my memories, and I respected how she didn’t emphasize that I needed to.

Each time I asked her to tell me how she found me, it was the same thing.

“I was just lying there?” I asked.

She yawned, covering her mouth as she walked me back to the couch from the bathroom. All day and night, she’d been gone at work. Ramon had been at school and then a neighbor’s house. Boredom had settled in, and with that idleness—since I’d readthrough all of Ramon’s children’s magazines six times over now—I concentrated on what had happened to me.

“Yes. I left the clinic where I work to pick up medications at the hospital. After I got the medications, I drove a different way out of the parking lot because Alboradas partiers were on the street where I normally go. When I passed through some alleys, I saw you lying there.”

“No one else was around?” I asked again. We’d been through this several times now, and with each questioning round, she was patient.

“No. I saw no one. I worried about approaching you in case someone was out there, and I hurried to drop off the medications, assuming someone from the hospital would see you. I couldn’t leave without checking. I drove back and saw you were still there, so I hurried to get you in the car so I could care for you here.”

And I’d never forget it. I literally owed her my life for her stopping me from bleeding out. If I had woken up in that alley, weak and dizzy and clueless, I likely wouldn’t have gotten far.

I trusted her, but the more that she told me this explanation of how she’d found me, I couldn’t help but think it was too practiced. Sure, the more often she gave me the same answers, the more she would recite it. But it sounded too rehearsed. As if she was careful not to deviate from a different word in her reply.

One thing stood out to me as I lowered back to the couch, groaning at the pain from bruises up my back and shoulder.

“Sofia?”

She helped me get comfortable, adjusting the pillows and offering me a chance to recline. “Hmm?”

I didn’t want to put her on the spot like this, but I was stubborn to get an answer. “Why didn’t you take me into the hospital when you found me?”

Stepping back while holding out the sheet for me to take it, she lowered her gaze. Robbed of seeing her brilliant green gaze, I waited for her to look up.

“Why didn’t you alert someone in command in the hospital?”

If I were a doctor, someone would’ve known me there. The trouble with that was how little faith I had that Iwasa doctor.

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