The Missing Heir novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Micah

The patient picks the name Micah in the hospital chapel, is judged fully competent, and plays the piano without thinking while a man in a charcoal suit watches from the door.

When I came back on shift the next afternoon, my John Doe was missing from his bed.

"He's not missing," Bev said, without looking up from her screen.

"He asked a transport aide where the quiet place was, and she sent him to the chapel."

"He has a concussion and a broken wrist."

"He also has a psychiatrist who was in here at nine."

She slid a printout across the desk.

I read it standing up.

The psychiatrist had written that the patient was alert, courteous, and fully oriented to place and time.

He could not recall anything about himself before the accident, but his judgment and reasoning were intact.

Under capacity she had written:

Yes.

"He's allowed to walk," Bev said.

"He's allowed to make his own choices.

He's also been asking for you."

"For me?"

"He asked who the doctor was who said no to the vest."

She smiled at the screen.

"I told him you'd be thrilled."

The Everhart Chapel was at the end of the old wing, past radiology and a vending alcove that had been broken since spring.

The Everhart family had paid for the whole wing forty years ago.

Their name was cut into the stone over the door.

I had walked past that door a thousand times and gone in twice.

It was a small room with six pews, a stained-glass window of a boat, and an upright piano against the wall.

He was sitting in the second pew with a Bible open across his knees.

His left arm was in a bright blue cast.

The hospital had given him gray scrubs and paper slippers.

He looked like a man dropped into the wrong life and being polite about it.

"Dr. Pallister," he said.

"You're up," I said.

"You're supposed to be on bed rest."

"I was.

For six hours.

Then I started counting the ceiling tiles and got scared of the number."

He turned the Bible so I could see the page.

"I wanted to read something that wasn't a wristband," he said.

"Somebody had marked this one with a ribbon."

It was the Book of Micah.

"He ran away from the thing he was told to do," he said.

"Then a big storm came and the sailors threw him overboard."

"That's the cheerful part," I said.

"Then he ended up somewhere he didn't expect and was needed there anyway.

I thought that was a decent story for someone with no name."

I sat down at the other end of the pew.

"So what do I call you?"

"Micah," he said.

"Provisional.

I'll trade it in the second I find a better one."

"You picked it yourself?"

"I picked it myself.

I'd like it noted that nobody has let me choose anything else all day, so I'm taking it seriously."

I laughed before I could stop myself.

He grinned, quick and crooked, and it changed his whole face.

For a second I forgot he was my patient.

Then I remembered, and cleared my throat.

"The psychiatrist says you're sharp."

"She says I'm sharp.

She also says I'll probably get most of it back.

I told her I'd like to know what 'most' means and she said she'd have to see it."

"That sounds like her."

"Dr. Pallister."

"Gwen is fine."

"Gwen," he said, as if trying the weight of it.

"Is there a reason I'm not on the county's list?"

"There's an administrator," I said.

"He needs a bed.

You're in it."

"Then I should find a way to pay for it."

"You can't pay for it, you have no wallet."

"I can wash dishes."

I looked at him.

He was entirely serious.

"I mean it," he said.

"I don't mind not knowing who I am.

I mind owing somebody I don't know."

I did not have an answer for that.

He stood and went to the piano, and I thought he meant to look at it.

Instead he lifted the lid, set his good hand on the keys, and started to play.

It was a slow, rocking nocturne, soft and rippling in the right hand, with a left hand that moved under it.

He played it without looking down, with his eyes half shut and his shoulders loose.

It was not the way a man plays who remembers he can.

It was the way a man plays who has forgotten that he is playing.

"Micah," I said quietly.

He opened his eyes.

"Do you know what that is?"

His hand stopped.

He stared at it.

"No," he said.

"I just thought it was the next thing to do."

A voice came from the corridor, and I recognized the tone of a hospital tour guide.

"The Everhart Chapel was the first gift of the family's foundation," she was saying, "and next month we open the Everhart Pavilion."

A group of donors in good coats drifted by the open door.

A man in a charcoal suit and rimless glasses was at the back of them, with a rowing-club pin on his lapel.

He glanced in as he passed.

He saw the piano, and he saw the man at it.

He stopped walking.

He stood in the doorway for three full seconds with his face perfectly blank.

Then the tour guide called his name, and he smiled and moved on.

Micah had looked up at the last second and seen the man's back.

His good hand lay flat on the keys, and when I touched it, it was ice cold.

"Gwen," he said, in a very steady voice.

"Who was that?"

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