Page 55 of The Echo of Forever

Not even ten seconds later, the door swung open and the first man who treated me after my “job gone bad” incident stood before me.

There weren’t a lot of white people in Everwood, making them the minority.

He was mixed with something, though, and I wasn’t sure if he knew it.

“Ms. James, if your head is hurting, you should go to an urgent care.”

I drew on him, and he took steps back, hands up as I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.

“Where’s the wife and kid?”

He opened and closed his mouth.

“A-Across town at her parents,” he managed to get out, stumbling into the bottom of the stairwell once there was nowhere else to go. “Wh-Wh-What’s this about?”

I tapped my head with the gun, and he tried shrinking further away right before my eyes.

“Regardless of what’s said, I’m going to kill you, Adrian,” I told him, pressing the barrel of my pistol under his chin. “But how you die is up to you.”

His chest heaved, and his eyes went wide as I disengaged the safety.

“Tell me what I need to do.”

I hummed.

“When you examined me, were there any indicators of memory loss beyond that one night?”

He nodded and kept nodding until I spoke again.

“Is that why I have these migraines?”

More nodding that only made me angrier.

“Open your fucking mouth and speak!”

He scrambled to sit up on the steps.

“I-I don’t have the details of your accident, but can only assume you were hit in the head, which caused a concussion. I’m almost certain you have a mild traumatic brain injury, but there’s testing you’d need to determine it. I was not authorized to inform you of this.”

My body and head had been in so much pain when I woke up that day in my bed, but there was nothing to show for it but slight bruising. Like maybe I’d been down for longer than they said and healed a bit.

Fuck.

I hated that I couldn’t remember.

“Who all knows the truth?”

He shook his head.

“That’s above my pay grade. I only followed orders.”

“Whose orders? My father?”

“N-No. It came from the top to keep your possible TBI from you.”

From the top?

“Do they know? My family.”