I think back. When I woke up, I was unresponsive. Awake, but not all there. It took time before I could even focus my eyes. Longer still before I could understand questions, or respond. I couldn’t speak. Whether it was a cognitive problem or physical, doctors weren’t sure. But as Caleb spent more time with me, I started to speak. Mimicking words, showing comprehension. I have no memory, however, of being told how long I was in a coma for. All of this that I know, I only know because Caleb told me. My actual memories of the time immediately after I woke up are extremely hazy.
I shake my head. “I—I don’t know, no. I—Caleb never told me. I never thought to ask.”
He just nods. “None of the coma patients I found out about fit your description, even physically speaking, symptoms or whatever else aside.” A sip of coffee. “So I went back farther. Year by year, searching for coma patients who were admitted with no identification. A ‘Jane Doe,’ they call them. I spoke to hundreds of doctors and nurses, and no one knew anything.”
“You did all this? The searching?”
He shrugs. “I told you I’d find proof. I’m still working on it, but it takes time. Maybe I should sell my businesses and become a private investigator, you know? I’ve got a knack for it, I think.” A wave of his hand. “Point is, yes. I’ve spent every waking moment, and most of the hours I should have been sleeping, looking for information on you. I went back three years before I found anything.”
He pauses, I don’t know why. I am frustrated, curious, fearful. “And? What did you discover?”
“In 2006, there was a car accident. Three passengers. Mom, dad, a teenaged girl.”
“A car accident?” It is hard to swallow. “In 2006? Nine years ago?”
He nods. His voice is tender, hesitant. “Details are sketchy. The mother and father were killed instantly. The young girl was in the backseat; somehow she survived. She was brought to the hospital, but again, the details on how she got there are murky at best. I spoke to a nurse who was working the ER that night, and she remembers only that the call came in, a sixteen-year-old girl with severe cranial injury, unconscious. That’s all she knew. She worked on the girl. They were able to save the girl’s life, but she didn’t wake up, and was transferred to a different floor of the hospital. The nurse lost track after that, because shit, ER nurses in Manhattan . . . they see dozens, hundreds of patients every day. Can’t keep track of ’em, you know?”
“A car accident?” I’m dizzy. “Not a mugging?”
“The nurse described you exactly, just younger. Dark skin, black hair. Beautiful. Latin, Mexican or Spanish or something. She described your injuries. Where you’ve got your scars.” He touches his hip, where I have a scar. His head, where I have another, beneath my hair. “And that person, if it’s you, was in a car accident. No question about that part.”
“So . . . if the hospital couldn’t identify me, how could you?”
“The city, the hospital, the police, they’re swamped, you know? Like, they’ve got thousands of cases, thousands of missing persons and mistaken identities and unsolved deaths and Jane or John Does. So, I’m not excusing the fact that they gave up the search, just putting some perspective on it. They put some effort into it, but without a good reason they just can’t keep spending the manpower on something forever. It wasn’t a crime that landed you in the coma, just a car accident. Not an unsolved murder, or something like that. So they gave up. You were in a coma. Things get glossed over, forgotten about.” He lifts a shoulder. “Whereas I have the resources, the time. And I have the motive to keep looking. So I did.”
“You found me.”
He nods. “I found you. Or rather, first, I was able to track down the car. Every car has a unique number—a vehicle identification number, what they call a VIN—and when the police show up on the scene, they record that number, and when the wreckers take a trashed vehicle to a yard, they record that number, and the salvage yard where the car ends up reports that number . . . everyone involved with disposing of a wrecked vehicle has that VIN. That car is kept track of scrupulously. It’s kind of weird, actually, considering how easily people can be lost. But anyway, I was able to get access to that police record, find the VIN. This is basic shit, okay? There’s no reason they couldn’t have done this, but they didn’t. What I found out is the car was a rental. That was part of the problem, what makes it tricky, because not all rental companies keep the best records. Like, the big-box rental places like Avis or Budget or whatever, they keep extensive records, but smaller places don’t, necessarily.” He waves a hand. “So I traced the car to the rental service, and convinced them to help me find the original paperwork. Took some convincing, because this rental service was kind of sketchy. They didn’t take a lot of information, didn’t ask a lot of questions, right? Just took a big cash deposit, and a name and driver’s license. Even then, I don’t think they’d object too hard if someone only had, say, a Spanish license but not an American one, you know?” The waitress comes by, refills Logan’s coffee. He sips, continues. “So I offered the guy running the rental service enough cash that he was willing to dig up his old paperwork. The car was rented to Luis de la Vega. Cash deposit, rented for a week. No other info. Just the name, and a photocopy of a Spanish passport. Luis Garcia de la Vega Reyes. With that name, that passport picture, I had more to go on. Such as INS records.”