Caged (3 page)

“Are you capable of speech?”

I stammered, “Yeah, uh yes… yes I am.”

Smooth, Ruby. Very smooth.

“Do you want to move yet?” he asked casually, as if he weren’t troubled by which way I might answer his question.

I slowly turned to face him, my nose brushing against his slim fitting, baby blue button down shirt. It covered a very lean and muscular chest. My eyes quickly scanned down his Euro cut jeans to his Diesel sneakers. Nice choice. I didn’t so much lift my head to see him as angled my gaze to his face. He was looking down at me curiously and smiling. When my eyes met his, I almost fell over. I said a quick “thank you”, turned around, and hauled ass through the bar. I heard a faint “wait” trailing off behind me, but had no interest in retreating to him. It was
him
. I was sweating by the time I got to the door. I glanced back to see that he was following me out.
SHIT
. He was only a few yards behind me. I tore through the doors and took off running full speed down the street. I got more than a few looks of concern from bar-goers and I even got a “Run Forrest” comment from an especially original frat boy.

I must have lost him somewhere in my Olympic level sprint back to the apartment because there was nobody around when I unlocked the main door to the apartment on the street. I gave a final look as I closed the door behind me and quickly locked it right after.

I leaned against the main door and slid down to the floor. I was exhausted and in shock. Wild and unwanted memories started racing through my mind.

I opened my eyes to see a man. My breathing stopped short and I stared. I wasn’t aware of the movement of my arm until I could actually see my hand touching his face in adoration. He was smiling at me. I closed my eyes and explored his face with my hands as I’d done a million times to others throughout my life. My hands could read beauty, expression, and age in a way that my eyes could now only hope to achieve. He caught my hand, shaking from the harsh winter cold and held it while he yelled for someone else to give me a coat. It was big and he wrapped it all around me. The warmth that lay in the layers of down felt amazing against my nearly frost-bitten skin. He picked me up in his arms and told me that I was going to be all right; he’d make sure of it. Suddenly we were moving quickly through the woods but it was all I could do to keep conscious. He asked me questions to try and keep me alert but it was to no avail. The last thing I heard was him yelling at me to hang on.

When I awoke a week later I was yet again alone. Alone in a room of flashing screens, bleeping monitors and so many tubes. Everything was stark white like the snow I was found in, only far warmer and safer. I looked around the room for any token from my parents to show that they had been waiting for me to wake up, and then it hit me. There would be no more tokens. Those days were gone; taken from me. As reality washed over me I wanted to cry. Instead, a fierce but soundless wail erupted from me. It eventually morphed into an uncontrollable sob that possessed my whole body, shaking it violently. I continued on like that until an intern came to check on me.

I suddenly remembered how I got to the hospital, that I was rescued from the woods. I asked to know who it was that brought me in, but there was no record of anyone. I’d been brought to the ER and checked in, but when the nurse came back to get additional information from the man who brought me, he was gone.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around what just happened, but it was exceptionally hard to focus on anything other than the racing of my heart at that moment. It had to be the running.

Though I hadn’t seen a lifetime of faces, I’d never seen anything that rivaled his and I never thought I would see it again. When I asked about him at the hospital nobody had any information to help me find him. No name, number, address
etc.
I’d never wanted to contact someone more, and the reasons were many. I still had no recollection of that night beyond the initial attack that led to the death of my parents. The doctors later told me that I had injuries consistent with assault and exposure. They weren’t sure how my leg had been broken and said that I was a medical miracle because of my acquired vision. None of them had seen or spoken to the man who brought me in. The experience left me with a whole lot of nothing aside from confirming the obvious: I was wounded and alone.

I spent a couple of months in a rehabilitation facility, needing extensive physical therapy for my leg. I couldn’t walk on my own, and I had nowhere else to go, no family to rely on to help me do the most basic of activities. With a lot of free time on my hands, I spent the greater portion of it daydreaming about those magical eyes and the face that framed them so beautifully. I wanted to know who they belonged to, where he lived, and why he left.

I was one to believe that things happened for a reason and that God, the universe or whatever you wanted to call it, had a greater plan than mere humans could begin to wrap their minds around. I also, however, liked to romanticize the most insignificant things. In combination, the two could lead to delusions of all kinds. Part of me wanted desperately to say that it was no coincidence that we were in the club that night, but luckily my inner realist was there to cut that idea swiftly off at the knees.
He probably didn’t recognize me. He just wanted to make sure I was OK. It seems to be his MO.
And with that happy and esteem-boosting bit of reality, I was off the floor and heading up to my apartment. A shower was in order to wash away the memory of the evening. If ever I had needed reinforcement to uphold my policy on not doing the social scene, that evening was it. Bar 2, Ruby -20, and counting.

3

The days passed slowly, sometimes painfully, with a constant inner dialogue that revolved around my mystery man. I woke up thinking about him, went to work thinking about him, and ate lunch thinking about him, until it was obvious that my day would be utterly wasted in an obsessive fog that rendered me useless. My original frustration with knowing nothing about him always returned. Attached to it were unwanted feelings associated with being alone in a hospital room for weeks with nothing to occupy my time but trying to remember what happened and find a way to track him down. My mental calisthenics were utterly fruitless, unless developing an ulcer was considered productive.

On day eleven I actually considered stalking the bars to see if I could hunt him down. That should more than adequately demonstrate the depths of my desperation, considering the score between the bar and me. Later that day I started to come to my senses, realizing that I was about to hit new lows. I didn’t want to get so desperate that I eventually found myself laying in a gutter, covered in questionable fluids, before I smartened up. Getting the answers I sought just wasn’t worth obsessing over.

At that point that I regained some composure and did what any self-respecting woman would do in the situation: I immediately started lying to myself to make it all more palatable. I found myself rationalizing things like: that wasn’t actually him, and that nobody could truly have their own guardian angel. It was all purely coincidence. I was amazed at the complete bullshit I could feed myself, easily swallowing it when it best suited my purpose.

By day fifteen I really had myself believing the shit I was slinging. I thought about it far less often. Unfortunately, when I did, my curious nature would override my common sense, and my mind would wander back to lingering questions I was so eager to ignore. The power of my damaged psyche knew no bounds. None at all.

On day sixteen I found myself thundering furiously around my store (my dad always told me that I sounded like a five-hundred pound man when I walked), trying desperately to find my platinum ring. I was certain I’d placed it in the back studio a couple of weeks earlier while working on a woven, metal bracelet. My mind was analogous to a steel sieve: strong but leaky. I abandoned all reason and started searching every nook and cranny in the whole place.
It has to be here. It can’t be gone…it’s all I have left.
I felt the desperation like a vise around my chest, creating a direct relationship; as one increased, so did the other. If my desperation had worsened, I would have passed out.

I was bent over in the corner of the room, wedged in between the front counter and a display case, burrowing under a cabinet, armed with a flashlight to see if the ring that I knew I didn’t take off in that room could have fallen underneath the wooden structure. Though I wasn’t shocked when I didn’t discover it hiding coyly under there, I certainly was surprised that the tinkling of the entrance bells startled me enough to whack my head with enthusiasm against the cabinet when I shot up to attend to my customer. As I turned trying to nonchalantly rub down the growing goose egg on my head, I was greeted by a familiar voice.

“I don’t think it’s safe for you to ever be left unsupervised. You seem to find danger in the most innocuous places, don’t you?”

Holy shit! Him again…

I was extremely capable of deluding myself, but even I couldn’t do it when I was faced with said delusion in the living flesh, in broad daylight, and in my very own place. It also didn’t help that he seemed all too aware of who I was. I tried my best to appear amused at his comment, though I found precious little funny about the situation. I was again rendered incapable of speech, an impediment I would one day have to focus on correcting. As I silently willed myself to speak he rescued me from myself. Again.

“You must have really hit your head good. I’ve never seen a woman at such a loss for words,” he chided with a wicked grin on his face.

“I…uh…it really hurt!” I stammered. Clearly
that
was what I’d waited all this time to say to him.

He moved across the floor quickly with a utilitarian grace that was mesmerizing, coming to stand before me. He reached up and gently removed my hand from my head. The intensity of his presence made me shiver.

“Let me see. I need to know if we’re making another trip to the hospital,” he said as he examined my frozen form. I could barely breathe.

“There’s no blood, so that makes it a less interesting story for later, but better for now. Do you feel dizzy? Faint? Nauseated?”

Apparently he was not only a hero but a trained medical professional too.
Is he going for Sainthood?
I soon found him asking me an all-too-familiar question.

“Can you speak?” he asked softly, still grinning that grin that made me think he found this whole situation entirely too entertaining for my liking.

“Yes, I can. Sometimes I just choose not to,” I said with just enough hostility for him to realize I didn’t enjoy being the butt of his joke.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just concerned that you might have a concussion; you really hit your head pretty hard on the cabinet,” he said while consciously wiping the smile from his face. It appeared to take a considerable amount of effort for him to manage the task, but I appreciated both the effort and the outcome.

“What exactly were you doing down there?” he asked innocently.

“I lost something. A ring.”

He turned his head somewhat mockingly to look around at the showroom, full of jewelry, most of which were rings.

“Not those. This one is important, personal. I can’t lose it. Ever,” I said as my voice slowly softened, becoming mournful. He smiled a different smile at me as he told me he’d help. Even after all my months of obsessing about this man, needing to know who he was, his name, and his memories, he paled in importance at that moment.

“I have to find my ring.”

4

We spent the next two hours tearing apart my store, then putting it back together. Both tasks were accomplished with nearly exclusive silence, barring the few “excuse me” and “oops, sorry” utterances. I was starting to lose hope when finally, he popped his head through the door separating the showroom from the back studio, a cheesy grin plastered across his face. He walked towards me extending a cupped hand, in which a well-worn and engraved platinum ring was delicately laid.

I screamed with relief and delight, snatching the ring from him and putting it on. Before I could think clearly, I jumped into his arms and gave him the biggest bear hug I could, legs wrapped tightly around him and all. I stayed there for about fifteen seconds before I realized that my koala impression was not only completely inappropriate, but horribly awkward. With as much grace as I could gather, I climbed down the man-whose-name-I-still-didn’t-know. I dropped my gaze to the floor wanting to crawl into a hole and die.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“You’re welcome?” he said, pausing in an effort to draw my name from me.

“Ruby. My name is Ruby.”

He chuckled before responding.

“I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but I think we’re well past that stage by now,” he said, reaching his hand towards me. “I’m Sean.”

Like a reflex that I couldn’t control, “Nice to meet you too”, flew out of my mouth, completely disregarding the point he had just made.

His face was as perfect as I’d remembered. He looked like a supermodel, but roughed up somehow. Harder. More rugged. His eyes were a green I wouldn’t have thought possible. They were so clear and bright, the color of new grass in the spring with hints of a darker, hunter green shade that shadowed the outer edges. They were by far the most amazing things I’d ever seen, and seeing them again was like the first time; I was awestruck. They were framed by beautiful eyelashes that were far too long and thick to belong to a man; it really wasn’t fair. His cheek bones were angular, almost harsh with a five o’clock shadow that likely showed up only minutes after he shaved. His nose was the perfect balance of symmetry, stateliness and size, being prominently featured, but not too large to look right. His mouth was a shade of reddish-pink that looked like he just got slapped (or brutally kissed), bringing all the blood to the surface of that delicate skin. They were more thin than full and had just the right amount of Cupid’s bow. To sum it all up, he was perfection.