Read Online Trust No One by Paul Cleave - Free Book Online Page B

books. He moves to the chair by the window and looks out at the gardens and watches the sun turn shade into light one degree at a time. He can remember pieces of this morning, just small snippets. He was in Crazy Jerry Mode, which is what he sometimes calls it. He finishes getting dressed then heads out to the dining room, desperate for some lunch. Eric sees him and comes over, a big smile on his face.
    “How are you feeling?” Eric asks.
    “I feel . . .” Jerry says, then thinks of the best way to sum it up. With the truth, he decides. “I feel embarrassed.”
    “That’s the last thing you need to feel,” Eric says.
    There are people everywhere, murmuring voices, clinking cutlery. A guy with a chunk of his skull caved in is being wheeled towards a window. He thinks the wheelchair guy’s name is Glen and he used to be a prison guard until his own private destiny landed him in here with the rest of them.
    “Then why do I feel it?”
    Eric tells him he has a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, and he had forgotten—it’s the kind of thing he’d have forgotten even before he picked up his hitchhiker, a guy by the name of Dementia with a big fat capital D.
    “I’ve remembered,” Jerry says.
    Eric smiles at him, an all-knowing smile, and if Eric can read his mind then he’s forgotten all about it. “Do you remember sneaking out yesterday?”
    “What about yesterday?”
    “You wandered into town.”
    Jerry laughs. Then he stops laughing, because it’s no joke. It’s coming back to him.
    “It’s the third time over the last few months,” Eric says.
    “The third time?”
    “Yes,” Eric says.
    Jerry shakes his head. “I’m not sure about the other times, but I remember yesterday. Not all of it. Not the wandering, but I remember meeting Eva at the police station. I remember walking along the beach before being brought back here. I wanted to go home. I still want to go home.”
    “I’m sorry, Jerry, but this is your home now.”
    “Until I get better,” Jerry says.
    “Until then,” Eric says, and smiles. “Let’s get some lunch into you.”
    Jerry eats his lunch by the window, where he can look out at the trees bordering the ground. They go for miles in most directions. There are lots of roses and daffodils everywhere, and some of the folks who wander the corridors of the nursing home are pulling weeds and soaking up the spring sun. When he’s finished eating, he goes back to his room. He picks up A Christmas Murder. He knows it’s his first book, but it’s been so long since he’s read it that he can’t remember the details. He sits in the chair with his feet up on the chair opposite and starts reading, and realizes it’s not just the details he’s forgotten, but most of the entire story . He’s thirty pages in when Eric comes and gets him, telling him his doctor has arrived, then leads him to an examination room.
    He recognizes the doctor but can’t remember his name. The doctor is a good ten years older than him with teeth so perfect Jerry suspects he may actually be a dentist, then realizes it’d make more sense that the doctor trades medical services with a dentist, swapping the painkillers and the occasional backyard surgery for fillings and root canals. The doctor asks how he’s doing, and Jerry isn’t sure what the doctor is really expecting to hear, so he tells him he’s doing fine.
    “Do you remember who I am?”
    “My doctor,” Jerry says.
    “Can you remember my name?”
    “No.”
    “It’s Doctor Goodstory.”
    “Why couldn’t it be Doctor Goodnews?” Jerry asks.
    Doctor Goodstory smiles, then goes about taking Jerry’s blood pressure before running some memory tests with him, some things Jerry can answer and some things he can’t, then Goodstory asks him some logic questions, and again he can answer some and not others.
    Finally Goodstory packs his things, sits back down and crosses his legs. “I hear you had quite the adventure yesterday,” he says.
    “I