John Doe

Their John Doe was still sleeping; a great improvement from the strange coma he’d been lost in for the past few weeks. The length of that coma had the few doctors who worked regularly in this wing of the hospital nervous, if not for the fear of permanent brain damage than fear at the prospect of having a vegetable filling a hospital bed, syphoning funds from the already strapped-for-cash organization.

The young man had been found one evening after being found by an elderly couple out for a stroll, lying unconscious on the sidewalk in their tidy neighborhood. They had immediately dialed the paramedics, who had rushed the boy to the nearest hospital.

Discovering him both stable and healthy after a large battery of tests proved strange; the few possibilities left included prior brain damage rendering him in this comatose state, but even a widespread check of local and not-so local hospital and institution records turned up negative for a teenager matching his description and affliction.

So it was indeed just short of a miracle that the boy escaped the coma, green eyes owlishly blinking at the understandably startled nurse; the true miracle was that on the following day, a man came to collect their John Doe, someone who claimed to be his significant other ready to take his missing lover home.

“Mister... ah, Malloy? We need you to sign these forms, and then you can be leaving with our young Harry.” The woman who extended the clipboard filled with a small stack of papers was a slightly plump black woman in that ambiguous age between thirty and fifty. Her smile was small and gentle.

The man who accepted it with a nod was quite the opposite; imposingly tall and slim, fine blond hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. He flipped through the forms and gave them all an effortlessly neat signature. A few moments later, he returned the clipboard and papers for her inspection. Satisfied, she went to fetch the patient.

Harry, as Mister Malloy had identified him, was carted into the hall in a wheelchair, eyes owlishly large and by turns narrowed in a heavy squint. His wandering eyes eventually came to rest on the blond man, who offered a soft, tentative smile.

“Hello, Harry. I am glad to see you again; I was very worried.”

When Harry helplessly stared at the man, eyes innocent and unknowing, the tentative smile turned sad but still encouraging. When Malloy turned to offer Harry’s nurse a polite farewell, the woman appeared on the urge of sympathetic tears.

“Thank you for taking care of him. Good afternoon.”

And with that, the tall man gently led the wheelchair and its occupant down a seemingly endless amount of corridors. He stopped at exit into the parking lot, giving Harry a few entranced moments to stare at the automatic doors.

It was early fall, the sky coated heavily in clouds, offering only teasing bits of sun to the world below. The lot was empty but for a few cars at that moment as the pair moved across the barren concrete, a scrap of paper blown in and out of the wheelchair spokes causing the younger man to startle.

They stopped beside a modest but impeccably clean blue Honda; the locks coming undone with a mechanical noise and a quiet beep. Taking the hand offered to him, Harry rose from his wheelchair and allowed himself to be guided into the passenger seat and buckled in, still silent and watchful of the man who handled him with an indulgent smile.

A hospital attendant came to return the wheelchair back into the building as Malloy opened his own car door and seated himself behind the wheel. He fiddled with the rear view mirror a moment, looking back and then to Harry, who nervously took in the dark navy interior.

“It’s all right, Harry. The automobile won’t harm you.”

Harry smiled weakly after a moment’s hesitation before turning away to stare out the side window. The car was started and pulled from the parking spot, and drove away from the medical building with little fanfare.

Both men rode in silence for a time before, while stopped at a red light, a quiet voice broke in.

“L... Lucius?”

“Yes, Harry?”

“Where are we going?”

Lucius swivelled in the driver’s seat to look back at Harry, offering him a beatific smile. The blond gave him a consoling pat on his hands as they lay clenched in his lap, lingering warmly. “We’re going to visit a... friend of ours. He’s anxious to see you again.”

Harry seemed to process this answer for a few moments, blinking at the hand on his. The light had changed back to green before he looked up at Lucius, who remained turned and smiling. Hesitating, the look of trust hesitated its way into his green eyes almost as slowly as his smile came to echo the older man’s.

“Okay.”

Lucius turned back towards the windshield and the drive continued.