Page 19 of Through the Water

A flower, I mouthed, cracking a smile at my own expense. In my haste, I could have sworn I had the right thing. My mind had been playing tricks on me since the accident, leaving me unable to recall familiar words and now, apparently unable to remember what a key looked like.

“The staff is bound by HIPAA laws, as well as the NDA they signed on your arrival. You’re good,” a well-dressed man stated as he opened a door directly to the left of where I was sitting.

I held up my hand as he approached, but instead of recognizing it as a way of asking for help, he high-fived my palm and continued on down the hall.

No problem.

Expecting someone to help me without the use of my voice hadn’t been my best plan. I would just keep looking until the key turned up, though. Something dangled from a corkboard on the door the man had just exited, and I wondered how I’d missed it before. I pulled the object into my hands just as the door swung inward, and a man on crutches hobbled out.

With a triumphant grin, I waved the key before offering it to him. It should have been inherently obvious what I was asking him to do, but instead of taking it and freeing me from my prison cell on wheels, the man looked down with disgust.

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said with a bitter laugh, the rubber soles of his crutches squeaking loudly against the linoleum floor as he turned away.

It wasn’t until he disappeared from view that I realized I’d been duped once again. I wasn’t holding a key. Just a piece of paper with the words K. Reed typewritten across the top.

Oblivious to my escape attempt, the aide reappeared and pushed my chair in the opposite direction the man had gone.

I was trapped.

Maybe it wasn’t the injury. Perhaps to an animal locked inside a cage, eventually, everything began to resemble a key.

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