Declension

The police arrived within four minutes of several calls to 9-1-1 regarding a loud fight and reported gunfire. There was no answer at the apartment in question, so they broke it down. Inside, the walls were painted with splattered gore. The signs of a violent fight were all over the main room – bullet holes, broken furniture, fingernail and knife scratches, a mix of bodily fluids, strenuously broken drywall. In a tight kitchenette, two bodies were found, one was still moving. The dead one had a broken skull and a gun in his hand. The live one was curled in a corner, rocking. He didn't respond to questions or demands. They searched him and found his wallet and a metal tag marked 'schizophrenia.' His ID states he's legally blind.

The current tenant came home and freaked at the sight of the place. She said she lived there with her son and current boyfriend. She identifies the boyfriend as the dead body. She doesn't recognize the other man. He submissively stands and is led out so the coroner has some room to work. He seemed incapable of speech and gesticulated in response to questions. He would occasionally nod and shake his head, too, but when he tried to speak, only inarticulate noises came from his mouth. EMTs presumed he was disoriented. His forehead was puffy and a silvery haze, presaging a humongous bruise, covered half his face...

Morgan awoke with a cottony feeling in his mouth. He identified the soft beeping of a pulse-ox monitor and recognized the antiseptic smell of a hospital room. Hazily, he tried to reconstruct what had happened to him. His head swam. Pain medication, perhaps? He went to lift his left hand and found it cuffed to the bedrail. He vacantly wondered how long it would take Michael to find him, only to feel grey despair creep in him as he remembered that Michael would never again come looking for him. He was on his own.

Someone was speaking to him. The words didn't all make sense. The person was talking too quickly, too harshly, too flatly. So, he heard words, but no meaning. He tried to tell the person to slow down. The sounds from his own mouth slurred out like limp noodles. The speaker kept talking. Death? Fight? Attack? He started smacking his head with his hand. He just wanted the words to stop, to give him a chance to think first.

The next time he awoke, the world felt more distinct. He was drugged for pain and seizures. The restraints he wore this time were more traditional. He fought the inclination to worm around like he normally did when restrained. “Hello?” he said. It was fairly clear, but it actually hurt his face to talk. There was another string of questions but asked more slowly and softly.

“Do you know where you are?”

“No,” he answered.

“Do you remember what happened to you?”

“No.”

“Do you remember your name?”

He blinked as if it took effort to remember. “Wallace,” he answered slowly. “Morgan Andrew Charles Wallace. You may call me Mr. Wallace.”

“Okay, Mr. Wallace. Your sister-in-law would like to see you. Is that okay?”

“I have a sister-in-law?”

“Yes, you do.”

“What happened to me?”

“You suffered a concussion and a fractured skull. You were hit on the head with a baseball bat.”

“I am tied down.”

“You have been thrashing violently in your sleep.”

All of this seemed familiar and yet incongruous. “It makes no sense.”

“What doesn't make sense, Mr. Wallace?”

“I do not remember.”

Whoever was speaking to him walked away. “He's suffering from amnesia. He may need therapy before he remembers anything.”

He heard someone softly approach with the smell of violets and fresh linen. A cool hand touched his uninjured cheek. “Hello, Morgan. It's Margaret. Do you remember me?”

Morgan's weakly said, “No. I don't remember, Margaret, but I remember that Michael had children.”

“That's good. It would have been very bad if you'd forgotten him. They said you were in a fight, that you might have killed someone.”

“Where am I?”

A voice from somewhere farther away authoritatively stated, “You're in the mental ward at Bellevue in New York City.”

Morgan broke out in a cold sweat.

Margaret's voice tried to reassure him. “You were having terrible fits. I don't know how Michael held you down by himself during cataleptic seizures because it took three large men to keep you from hurting yourself.”

A police detective introduced himself. Morgan's brain didn't hold on to his name. In fact, most of what the detective said just rolled over him and he barely noticed most of the details. He was talking about where they'd found him. Something was mentioned about his condition. Suddenly, the word Greystone was mentioned. The restraints didn't work well enough. He snapped his wrist clean apart.