CHAPTER 32
Monday morning at just past eleven, a doctor walked into the waiting room of Cannon Beach Medical Clinic that looked like Foghorn Leghorn in human form. He smacked his clipboard against his hand with a sharp pop as he grinned at Micah.
“Howdy! Chart here tells me you’re Micah Taylor, friend of Sarah’s. Nice to meet you and all that stuff.”
Micah smiled. Sarah hadn’t mentioned her doctor’s robust personality. “Hi, Dr. McConnell.”
“Why don’t you ease on back to my office, Micah, and we’ll do the ol’ look-see.”
When they were both seated, the doctor asked for “the lowdown.”
“I started a run a few days ago when this dull ache in my left ankle came out of nowhere. No big deal; I gave it a few days, figured it’d get back to normal.”
“And it didn’t.” Doctor Foghorn nodded and looked at his clipboard. “When were ya born?”
“1980.”
“Almost thirty and old age is already kicking in.” The doctor laughed. “Ever felt anything like this before?”
“Never.”
“You didn’t smack your foot into anything lately, fall down, twist it, something like that?”
“No.”
“All right, partner. We’ll fire some X-rays through those bones of yours and see what turns up.” The doctor walked to the door, then spun on his heel toward Micah. “Give us about an hour, and we’ll have some fine shots of that ol’ right wheel of yours.”
“You mean my left whe—ankle.”
“You’re sharp, partner.” The doctor pointed at Micah and laughed again. “I see why she likes you.”
As he waited for the X-rays to develop, Micah walked gingerly up and down Main Street twice, stopping in two art studios, Geppetto’s Toy Shoppe, and the Cannon Beach Bakery without seeing anything inside them. He returned to the doctor’s office, and ten minutes later the doc stepped into the waiting room.
“Well, no great mystery here. But let me ask a quick question first to make sure I’ve hopscotched to the right conclusion about that ankle.”
Micah nodded.
“You been working the wheels pretty consistently, haven’t you?”
“Four or five times a week down on the beach.”
“There you go. Mystery solved, case closed. Elvis, you can now leave the building.” The doctor smiled, as if he’d been bestowed a fellowship at Scotland Yard.
“So are you going to let me in on the details of the case?”
“Good one!” The doctor slapped Micah on the back too hard and laughed. “The X-rays say you tore up your ankle pretty good a while back, broke it in two places, might’ve torn a ligament down there, too, from the looks of those two little metal screws there. See ’em right there?” The doctor tapped the X-ray with a mechanical pencil. “Can’t really tell for sure with only an X-ray. You’d need an MRI to be 100 percent sure, but if I were a betting man, I’d lean that direction.”
As the doctor pointed out where the screws were on the X-ray, heat filled Micah’s body, and he felt ready to faint.
“Whoever worked on ya did a good job, FYI. So anyway, you’re just getting a little aching from working the ol’ ankle more often than normal down here where the moist air works its way in there and stiffins ya up a bit.”
As the doctor talked, the heat continued rising into Micah’s face. He’d never had an injury to that ankle in his life—ever—let alone had surgery on it. But he stared at an X-ray clearly showing the break and the two screws in his foot. Either this wasn’t his ankle, or something extremely strange was going on.
Again.
“You’re sure that’s my ankle?”
“Pretty sure!” The doctor chuckled.
“Is there any way to find out when the surgery was? And where?”
“You okay, boy?” Dr. Foghorn’s perpetual smile vanished. “You seriously don’t remember this?”
“No.”
The doctor started to say something else but stopped. Micah watched him study his notes but knew the doctor wasn’t reading anything. The perspiration under Micah’s arms trickled down the sides of his torso, and a drop splashed onto his stomach.
The doctor sat in front of Micah, his hands crossed and his elbows on his knees. His jovial delivery disappeared. “Look, Micah, you seem like a bright, articulate kid, but to entirely forget this part of your life is pretty unusual.”
Micah blew out a long breath. “I’ve never had amnesia; I’ve never had any kind of memory loss. And I swear to you, I’ve never had surgery on this ankle, let alone any kind of injury on either foot.”
The doctor stared at Micah for ten seconds without speaking. Finally he stood and clasped his hands behind his back and returned to his buoyant disposition.
“Okay then. Now, if you want to poke around at the bottom of the well on this one, let’s jump on the Internet and pull up buckets of info.”
The doctor led Micah down a short hall into an office dominated by pictures of the doctor, his wife, and two college-age girls. He directed Micah to the leather couch along the opposite wall.
For all of the doc’s down-home country persona, it was obvious he knew his way around a computer. After asking Micah for his Social Security number and middle name, his fingers flew, and the mouse clicked like popcorn popping. Within five minutes he’d found exactly what they were looking for.
“All right, here we go. Everything you want to know about the health, wealth, and stealth of Micah Taylor, except for the wealth and stealth parts.”
The doctor’s eyes shrank into a slight squint as he studied the screen, then leaned back and let out a whistle. “Woowee, I can’t say I blame you for trying to forget this one. That break was a whopper, plus you ripped a ligament for good measure. Ouch on steroids.”
The doctor turned to Micah. “You know, the PTs would’ve been working you over every few days for at least three or four months. You still telling me you remember zilch about that?”
“Nothing.” But then a wave of nausea hit him. In that instant Micah did remember. At least a part of him did. Small streaks of memory circled the edges of his mind. He knew but he didn’t know, as if it were someone else’s life he’d heard vague, scattered details about.
“Where was the surgery?” Micah said.
A second later he knew the answer. Before the doctor could tell him, he said, “Portland, wasn’t it?”
“Starting to come back to you, eh?”
“I never lived in Portland. Why would I go there for surgery?”
“But you remember it?”
“Yes. No.” Micah held his temples. “I don’t know.”
“None of my business, partner, but I’m wondering if you need a little help with the ol’ cranium to go along with your ankle. I know some good docs in that department.”
Micah tried to smile and shook the doctor’s hand. “If I go that direction, you’ll be the first to know. Thanks for all the help on my ankle.”
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When Micah got home, he headed for the voice room. “All right, tell me, do you remember us tearing up our ankle?”
“No and yes. I remember bits and pieces just like you. Nothing more.”
“We have to figure this thing out.”
“Meaning?” the voice said.
“Meaning if we’re both getting flashbacks of something happening to our ankle, then maybe something really did happen to our ankle.”
“Well, certainly the physical evidence is there.” The voice chuckled.
Micah paced just inside the door; three steps to the right, turn, then three steps back. “But whose life is it? Not ours. Not when the operation happened in Portland and we never lived there.”
“But when we feel our ankle—?”
“—we know something tangible happened at some point in our life that produced evidence on the X-rays and caused this pain.”
“Exactly,” the voice said.
“So where is that other life coming from? If it’s just in my head, then I’m crazy and we have our answer. But the physical evidence keeps piling up.”
“Like the magazine cover.”
Micah stopped pacing, closed his eyes, and sat down, back against the wall. “I’m sitting in his office with no memories of an ankle injury. Then right before leaving, I start seeing little fragments, like half a second of physical therapy, then a flash of a pickup football game where I think it happened. But I can’t tell you where or when. Then I get an image of maple wood crutches in my hands but only for an instant. Then it’s all gone, and I can’t tell if I’m remembering real memories, or if I’ve made it up inside my head to keep myself sane. You know, we have to consider the very real possibility we’re losing it.”
“We’re not.”
“Really? Are you saying people who go insane are fully aware when it’s happening to them?”
“Trust me, Micah. We’re not going insane.”
“So what’s the solution?” Micah sighed.
“Simple, as I’ve said before. We land on the side of wisdom and make sure things are okay up in Seattle. We go up there and stay put for a while.”
“The Lord is becoming the most important thing in my entire life. I’m just supposed to leave that in a closet down here? And what about Sarah? We’re a little more than casual friends at this point.”
“Let me repeat what I’ve said too many times before. I’m not saying stop coming down entirely. I’m saying we take a break. Who cares if the board gave us this time? It’s killing us. Let’s go home, get things under control, make sure this parallel life stops sticking its head in where it doesn’t belong, and get settled.”
“And come back when?”
“When we’re ready. Maybe it’s a month, maybe two; we won’t know how long till we know.”
Micah shook his head and sneered. “It’s easier for you.”
“Really?”
“You haven’t bought into the whole heal-the-brokenhearted, set-the-captives-free thing like I have. You’re not feeling what I am. It’s easier for you to leave all this.”
“And maybe it’s easier for you to see our world in Seattle slowly disappear than it is for me,” the voice said.
“Neither place would be easy to give up at this point.”
“We don’t give up either one. We come down here every other weekend. Or every third weekend.”
Micah stared into the darkness. The voice clearly contradicted itself, and Micah didn’t know why. Maybe it was due to the bizarre fact the voice was himself, so his uncertainty was bound to make the conversation a bit schizophrenic. Whatever the reason, Micah was tired, and his ankle still ached.
“You know,” Micah called over his shoulder as he walked out the door, “sometimes the way you think pushes me to the brink of sanity.”
No answer.
Maybe he should stop listening to himself. Maybe he’d do what he wanted to. Maybe he’d stay in Cannon Beach forever.
Impossible. He couldn’t give up what he’d created in Seattle.
To stay. To go.
He needed a sign.