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Chapter 1

It’s a chilly early morning. The sun is climbing up over the horizon, bringing light to the start of a new day, while desperately trying to burn off the morning fog that blankets the granite and marble headstones that recognize and identify those who now call this place home. It’s quiet. Peaceful, with only the faint sounds of birds chirping in the distance and the crunching of a pair of work boots walking along the cold, dew-kissed grass.

Through the rows of the departed walked a man. A brown haired, brown eyed man of twenty-eight years who had the skin of a slightly older man. A hard-working man with practical tastes. His denim jeans had seen better days, and the gray t-shirt that was covered by his long black coat was due to see the inside of a washing machine, but he was comfortable. He walked through the cemetery, stopping at different graves along the way. He would clear the overgrown weeds that covered the small headstones, and every step he took and every grave he stopped to visit was deliberate, as he had followed the same route many times before. Walking with a purpose as if he were personally connected to each of the people who were buried beneath him.

He continued on the path, finally stopping in front of a larger headstone. As he did with the others, he carefully cleared the weeds along the edges of the dark marble marker. A bench was carefully placed in front of the grave, which was the perfect vantage point to watch the sunrise and look back along the path he traveled. As he sat down, he stared at the writing chiseled into the stone but said nothing, at least not at first. He reflected on those he recently visited and recalled the words he rehearsed that explained his long absence.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” he said to the stone. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around to visit you, but I had to go away for a while.”

He spoke softly to the stone while the sun continued to rise, burning off the fog and warming the damp air. He explained that he took the trip that he always thought he would take with his friend. A friend who now lies deep in the ground.

“I’ve missed you,” he said as he fought back tears. “I hope you’ve found peace here.”

It was difficult for the young man to talk about his feelings, and he tried to continue, stuttering as he struggled to get the words out of his mouth. He would stop and take a big, deep breath and go back to his mental notes and continue the one-sided conversation.

“It’s been really hard,” he said. “I still have nightmares. Bad ones, but someone’s been helping me. I’ve been able to close my eyes without screaming. She’s helped me make sense of them. That’s the reason I came back home.”

His nightmares had been with him since he was a young boy. Each one vivid and frightening. Tormenting him throughout his short life. Persistent enough to terrify him and for all of his internal strength and abilities, he just hasn’t been able to shake them.

“I guess I don’t have anyone to blame but myself, but she suggested that coming home and talking to you about them might help me cope, and if you’ll pardon me for saying, maybe even put them to bed for good,” he explained. “I don’t know, maybe I haven’t been able to get them out of my head because I kept them to myself all these years. Maybe talking to you about them and explaining how my life turned out might help.”

He peeled off his black coat and draped it on the bench beside him. He turned back to the stone and took another deep breath and said, “I guess I should just start at the beginning.”

As he began, he stumbled over his words, but as he walked through the first vivid memories of his past, the words came out naturally, and he became calm. Calm enough to talk about every detail of his journey.

For a man of his age, most memories are often the happiest ones, and usually the most recent, but that wasn’t the case for this young man. Every memory was vivid, and very few were happy. Starting with the last thing he remembered on that fateful day, which was the day of the accident.

He was ten years old. Frightened and disoriented, all alone on a dark road while the rain fell around him. Something out of a horror movie, he just stood there on the side of the road. Looking down the long strip of pavement in both directions, then down in the steep ditch where he could see the car upside down with smoke billowing out from the engine compartment. This little boy was paralyzed. Not physically, but too terrified to move. Reacting to every sound he heard coming from the thick trees that surrounded each side of the road.

Eventually, a car pulled up, and a man got out and ran to him.

“Kid, are you okay?” he asked, reactively shouting out of concern for the young man.

The boy just stood there, still in shock as he looked back down at the car. The man quickly grabbed his phone and called 911 before heading down into the ditch.

When he returned, he asked, “Were you with your parents?”

The young man said nothing.

“What happened to the other people in the car?” he asked again, trying desperately to find out what happened.

Again, the young man remained silent.

The man then tried a different approach and dropped to a knee and asked calmly, “Can you tell me your name?”

The young man finally reacted, although it wasn’t much of a reaction. He turned his head to one side, then the other, and finally opened his mouth.

“No,” he said, causing the stranger to become incredibly worried, as sirens began to get louder.

The young man went from terrified to overwhelmed as he went into sensory overload in the emergency room. Frightened and surrounded by doctors and nurses, while trying his best to shield his eyes from the blinding lights above him.

“Please sit still, son,” the doctor said after they wheeled him into X-ray. “We need you to be still so we can take a picture of your arm.”

He did as he was told, bringing his arm back down, and once positioned, the staff walked behind a wall and turned down the lights.  The doctor counted to three, then a buzzing noise muffled in the room just before the staff returned to his side. He looked down and could see his swollen, purple forearm, and overheard the doctor reading the X-ray, confirming the diagnosis that it had been broken in two places.

Surprisingly, though, he felt no pain. He could feel the doctor and nurses touch him, but the sensation of what we know as pain that should have resulted from his serious injury was absent.

While one of the nurses stayed close, distracting him from the obvious concerns for the young boy, he could see that he was the topic of a perplexing conversation. It wasn’t hard for him to notice the hushed whispers and concerning glances from a few feet away, and they began to make the boy nervous. However, he never asked about his condition, and instead, he asked the most important question on his mind.

“Where’s my mom and dad?” he asked.

The response was silent and filled with cryptic distractions, either out of their personal concern for the boy or their professional obligations that prevented them from revealing the truth. Whatever the reason, he would get no answer that night. After his arm was set in plaster, he was taken to a private room, and a nurse stayed close, continuing to distract him as she showed him how to call the nurses’ station and how to work the remote on the television.

The rest of his injuries were superficial and required nothing more than a few bandages. He was given some pain medication, which would do nothing more than make him drowsy, but while he settled into the hospital bed, his thoughts were still on his parents.

“Did you call my mom and dad?” he asked. “Are they coming?”

As he would later come to understand, the nurses just couldn’t bring themselves to tell the young boy the devastating truth, that his parents were missing and most likely killed in the very car accident that left him injured. While he eventually closed his eyes and fell asleep, their inability to tell him created a painful and unnerving void around him.

The man was settling in as he told the story, but it still wasn’t easy for him, and he found it difficult adjusting to the subtle distractions around him. The hard concrete bench, the birds chirping louder, and even the morning traffic zipping nearby, as the city was waking up and beginning its day. He would eventually refocus and find a new comfortable spot and continue his story of that first frightening memory.

The following morning, as the young boy woke from his medically induced slumber, the reality of his new, terrifying situation began to reveal itself. A nurse stood over him, checking his arm, and would be the first smiling face that he would see.

She wheeled over a tray with his breakfast and continued to keep him distracted until reinforcements could arrive. The doctor and a social worker arrived to give the boy an examination and to sign his cast, as every nurse did during his stay.

With somber faces, they broke the news to him that his parents were gone. The news was an obvious blow to him, but he somehow expected it. The shock and devastating realization were earth-shattering but led to more questions. Questions that the social worker would try to answer before they were asked.

“So, while we find your relatives. You’ll be here for a couple more days, and then we’ll take you to child services where they’ll place you with a family who will take care of you for a while,” she said very softly while she tried to keep the boy calm.

“What if you can’t find my family?” he asked.

She was hoping that question wasn’t asked, but now that it had been. She had no choice but to reveal the difficult truth.

“If we can’t find your relatives, you’ll go into permanent foster care.”

The thought of not having his parents is one thing. Going to a place he was unfamiliar with was just as terrifying as being in the hospital, but while they tried to keep his spirits up and provide him answers, they hadn’t answered one question in particular.

“Do you know what my name is?” he asked.

The question had everyone else in the room scrambling. The doctor quickly took out his small flashlight and shined it in the young boy’s eyes. He ordered more tests while the head nurse reviewed his chart to try and figure out how his name never made it into his records. The social worker and the doctor left the room and began a search for the answer, while the nurse who befriended him did her best to give him an answer he was willing to accept.

“Sometimes with car accidents, it’s important that we take care of where you’re hurt,” she explained in words she believed he could understand. “Like you. When you came to us, your arm was hurt, so we made sure we took care of that first. Sometimes the names are not important right away.”

“So, who am I?” he asked again.

“We’re going to find out,” she replied as she placed her hand on his shoulder while her other hand gently touched his cheek. “Maybe you can help us. Do you remember your mom and dad’s names?”

He thought for a moment and tried to kick-start his brain, hoping he would remember, but he just lowered his head and shook it in failure. “It’s okay, we’ll figure it out,” the nurse said just as the orderly came in to take the boy to have his test performed.

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Want to know what happens to this injured and confused young man?

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