Chapter 5: What the Body Remembers
2061 Words
By four in the afternoon, Marco had developed a personal grudge against medical observation.
“I think I'm cured.”
I looked up from my book.
He was stretched across two chairs beneath the café awning opposite Santa Isla Medical, a calamansi juice in one hand and the remains of two sandwiches before him.
“You have amnesia.”
“Still?”
“Unfortunately.”
He sighed.
“Then I think I've been observed enough.”
“You've been sitting here eating.”
“Under observation.”
“I've barely looked at you.”
“I felt observed.”
Across the table, Cami snorted.
Marco pointed at her. “Thank you.”
“That wasn't support.”
“I'll take what I can get.”
From the harbor came the cough of an engine followed by someone's creative opinion of machinery.
Cami glanced toward it.
“That might actually be Nico.”
“Your brother?”
“Unfortunately.”
“You say that about him a lot,” I said.
“Because I love him.”
“That doesn't follow.”
“It does if you have siblings.”
Marco's foot stopped swinging.
Only for a moment.
Then it started again.
Cami didn't notice.
I did.
We still didn't know whether he had siblings.
Or parents.
Someone, somewhere, staring at a phone that wasn't ringing.
I looked back at my book.
I hadn't read the last paragraph.
“Does anything hurt?”
Marco groaned.
“Lucy.”
“Headache?”
“No.”
“Dizzy?”
“No.”
“Nauseous?”
“Only emotionally.”
“Do you know what year it is?”
“Yes.”
“What year?”
His expression went blank.
Cami slowly lowered her drink.
Then Marco's eyes narrowed.
“You're horrible.”
Cami burst out laughing.
I returned to my book.
“Cognitive function intact.”
“I trusted you.”
“That was your first mistake.”
---
When the bill came, I reached for my wallet.
Cami watched me count the cash.
“You know they take cards here.”
“I know.”
“You always pay cash.”
“Yes.”
Marco looked between us. “Am I missing something?”
“Lucy is secretly eighty-three.”
“I'm twenty-eight.”
“Exactly what an eighty-three-year-old hiding from the government would say.”
I put the bills beneath the clip.
Cami had noticed my preference for cash three days after meeting me and had been inventing theories ever since.
I encouraged the harmless ones by refusing to discuss them.
Marco was watching me now.
“What?”
“Is the book good?”
“Yes.”
“You've been on the same page for ten minutes.”
I looked down.
He was right.
I closed it.
His smile was insufferably pleased.
“Want to walk?”
“No.”
“Lucy.”
“You're under observation.”
“You just admitted you weren't observing me.”
Cami stood and swung her bag over one shoulder.
“I need to go.”
Marco looked betrayed. “You're abandoning me?”
“I have a life.”
“Since when?”
“Since before you washed up and made yourself everyone's problem.”
“Fair.”
She pointed at me.
“Don't let him wander into the ocean.”
“I'll try.”
Then at Marco.
“Don't let her convince you maritime law gives her ownership of the beach.”
He put a hand over his heart.
“Finally. Someone on my side.”
Cami grinned and left.
Marco waited until she disappeared.
“So.”
“No.”
“I haven't asked anything.”
“I know.”
“You can't say no preemptively.”
“I just did.”
“Three minutes.”
“Where?”
His mouth curved.
“Nowhere.”
I waited.
“Just around.”
“That is somewhere.”
Three minutes later, we were walking.
---
Marco wandered toward the market.
I should have expected that.
Fish lay on crushed ice beneath patched awnings. Mangoes and papayas rose in bright pyramids. Smoke curled above a grill where a woman turned chicken over charcoal.
Marco slowed.
“What's that?”
“Food.”
“I know it's food.”
“Progress.”
“The chicken.”
“Inasal.”
His expression changed.
“No.”
I stopped.
“I know that.”
“You remember it?”
“I don't know.”
He looked toward the grill.
“I knew what it smelled like before you said it.”
“Familiarity is something.”
“Isn't that memory?”
“Possibly.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Useful.”
The disappointment was quiet.
At another stall he recognized rambutan. Then a bottled-water brand.
The postcards meant nothing.
Memory arrived without pattern.
Pieces with no picture.
We reached the docks.
Men were unloading crates from a fishing boat while someone hauled rope across the concrete.
One of them tossed a line.
Marco's fingers opened slightly.
As if expecting to catch it.
Then someone shouted.
A crate shifted.
The rope snapped taut around a cleat and whipped sideways, catching a worker's ankle.
Marco moved.
No hesitation.
One moment beside me.
The next gone.
He caught the worker by the back of his shirt before the man went over the edge. His other hand seized the rope.
Then something stranger happened.
Marco stepped across the line, twisted his wrist, redirected the tension and wrapped it around the cleat in one clean movement.
The rope went still.
So did everyone else.
I reached him.
“Let go.”
Nothing.
“Marco.”
His fingers opened.
He stared at his hands.
“I knew how to do that.”
“Yes.”
“I didn't think.”
“I noticed.”
The worker struggled upright.
Marco immediately crouched.
“Don't stand yet.”
His fingers settled above the injured ankle.
“Can you feel this?”
“Yes.”
“This?”
“Yes.”
“Any numbness?”
The man shook his head.
“Move your toes.”
He did.
“Now your ankle. Slowly.”
The worker winced.
Marco stopped him.
“Don't force it.”
I watched.
His hands weren't uncertain anymore.
They were careful.
Precise.
Two fingers found the pulse in the man's foot without searching. He checked sensation, movement, swelling.
Someone brought ice wrapped in a towel.
Marco folded the cloth before applying it.
Then stopped.
The towel remained in his hand.
His face drained of color.
“Marco?”
He stood.
“I need a minute.”
He walked away.
I followed.
---
He stopped behind a warehouse.
His hands went to his hips. His hair. Back down.
He couldn't find somewhere to put them.
“Don't.”
I stayed several feet away.
“I wasn't doing anything.”
“I know.”
His breathing came too fast.
“Marco.”
“I said I know.”
Sharp.
His eyes closed.
“Sorry.”
I waited.
He dragged both hands down his face.
“I don't know what that was.”
“You remembered something.”
“No.”
His voice dropped.
“I still don't remember anything.”
He flexed his fingers.
“But my hands did.”
I said nothing.
“I knew where to step. What the rope was going to do. How to stop it. Then that man was hurt and I knew what to check.”
“That tells us something.”
“What?”
“You've been trained.”
His fingers curled.
“I don't remember learning any of it.”
“I know.”
“That's worse.”
“Why?”
“Because it's in there.” He tapped his temple. “Somewhere. I can use it. I just can't get to it.”
I let him be angry.
After a while, he leaned against the wall.
“What if I don't like who I was?”
I looked at him.
“What if I remember and I'm... terrible?”
“You caught a stranger before he went into the water.”
“That doesn't prove anything.”
“No.”
His head lifted.
“You knew how to help him afterward.”
“Still doesn't prove anything.”
“No.”
“You're supposed to disagree.”
“You don't know who you were. Neither do I.”
Marco looked away.
“So I'm not going to invent someone for you.”
The breeze carried salt between the buildings.
“But I know what you did five minutes ago.”
His gaze returned to mine.
“You helped someone.”
He was quiet.
“That counts.”
The fear didn't disappear.
But it loosened enough for him to breathe around it.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
---
Dr. Ortega examined him again at five.
Everything remained irritatingly normal.
Then he asked what Marco had done for the injured worker.
“Checked circulation. Sensation. Movement. Whether the rope compressed the joint.”
“What pulse?”
“Dorsalis pedis.”
The answer came immediately.
Marco blinked.
“What did I just say?”
Ortega's brows rose.
“You've had medical training.”
Marco stared.
“You're sure?”
“Doctor, nurse, paramedic, combat medic, healer—something adjacent. Your instincts are clinical.”
Marco looked down at his hands.
This time, there was something other than fear in his expression.
Wonder, perhaps.
Like he'd been handed the first piece of himself that mattered.
Ortega cleared him to return to the cottage, provided he wasn't left alone overnight.
Imaging tomorrow.
No negotiation.
“And before San Telmo,” he added, “report him to the police.”
Marco looked at me.
“You were planning to?”
“Yes.”
“You didn't mention it.”
“You've been conscious for approximately forty-eight hours. I've had a list.”
“How far down am I?”
“You are the list.”
He considered that.
“That was almost sweet.”
“It wasn't.”
“I'm keeping it.”
---
The police station was small enough to miss.
The questions weren't.
Full name?
“Marco.”
Surname?
“I don't know.”
Date of birth?
“I don't know.”
Address?
“I don't know.”
Nationality?
“I don't know.”
Were you attacked?
“I don't know.”
By the sixth question, the words had begun sounding like an apology.
I answered what I could.
Where I'd found him. When. The blood. His injuries. The absence of identification.
The officer took Marco's photograph and promised to check missing-person reports, boating incidents and nearby jurisdictions.
Then he asked for my identification.
I handed it over.
Lucy Hart.
Perfectly ordinary.
It was supposed to be.
Marco glanced at it once.
Only curious.
I put it away.
Outside, the evening sun had turned the harbor copper.
Marco walked quietly beside me.
Then—
“You think there's someone looking for me?”
No joke around it this time.
“I think it's possible.”
“A family?”
“Possible.”
“Someone who...”
He stopped.
“Someone who misses me?”
The question was quiet enough that I nearly pretended not to hear it.
Nearly.
“Yes.”
“You don't know that.”
“No.”
I looked toward the road ahead.
“But if there is, we'll find them.”
The paper bag in his hand rustled.
“We?”
I should have corrected him.
Temporary.
That was the sensible word.
Instead, I kept walking.
“Yes.”
For several steps, there was only evening traffic and his footsteps beside mine.
Then Marco held out the last chicken skewer.
I looked at it.
“You've been guarding that for twenty minutes.”
“I know.”
“And now you're offering it to me?”
“Don't make it weird.”
“I wasn't.”
“You were about to.”
I took it.
Marco smiled and shoved his empty hand into his pocket.
We continued up the hill.
Beside me walked a man who couldn't remember his family, his home, or the life that had taught his hands what to do when someone was in danger.
But his hands remembered how to heal.
For today, I decided that was enough.
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