While I'm Unconscious, He's Still Saving His Mistress novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Five Minutes Late
Carrie begs her husband not to leave for another ride with his coworker, goes out on her dusty bike in anger and is hit from behind, then wakes three days later as a Jane Doe and learns the hospital called her bike's owner on the first night and nobody called back.
The morning a truck hit me, I was standing in our kitchen begging my husband not to leave.
Dean had his helmet under one arm and his keys in his hand.
"It's a bike ride, Carrie," he said. "Brynn's already waiting at the trailhead."
"You rode with her last Saturday. And Sunday. And Wednesday after work."
"Because she rides. You don't."
He said it flat, with no heat at all.
I held the edge of the counter. "We used to do things together."
"We eat dinner together. We watch movies."
"That's not the same."
"I need to be outside, okay? I sit at a desk for ten hours a day. I can't spend my weekends on the couch."
"Then take me with you."
Dean exhaled through his nose.
"You'd hate it," he said. "Last time I took you, I stopped every mile so you could catch your breath. You complained the whole way."
My face went hot.
It was true. I had complained. I was thirty-one years old, I had not exercised in two years, and I knew it.
But I had also been the person who sat up with him through his last layoff, and the one he used to call first.
"Do you still love me?" I asked. "Be honest. Are you falling for her?"
"Oh, come on."
"That's not an answer."
"You're my wife." He sounded disgusted. "Brynn is a friend. I'm not going to defend myself against a question like that."
His phone buzzed on the counter.
We both looked at the screen.
Brynn: Rough morning. Please hurry, I don't want to wait alone.
Dean picked it up and typed something back with his thumb.
"She's like this when she's stressed," he said. "She texts me to talk her down. It's nothing."
"Why does she text you and not her own friends?"
"Because I'm the one who answers."
I let that sit in the air between us.
"And during the launch next week," Dean went on, "she'll be running my calls like she always does. She knows my passcode. When I'm heads down, she takes my phone so nothing breaks my focus. It saves me hours."
"That's a terrible idea."
"It works fine."
"Dean, a woman who isn't your wife has the password to your phone."
"A coworker who keeps my phone out of my way," he said. "You hear how that sounds when you say it your way, right?"
He crossed the kitchen and pressed his mouth to my forehead.
"I have to go. I'll take you to dinner tonight. Anywhere you want. We'll talk then."
The door closed behind him.
I heard the SUV start, back out and drive away.
I stood there with my hands shaking and my eyes burning, and I knew I could not sit in that house for six hours waiting for dinner.
So I went into the garage.
My mountain bike hung on the wall hook, covered in dust. Dean had bought it for my birthday four years ago, at a little shop in town, and I had ridden it maybe five times.
I took it down. I wiped the seat with my sleeve.
I did not take my phone. I did not take my wallet. I put on my helmet, pushed off down the driveway, and rode hard toward the county road with tears running down my face.
I remember the road. I remember the cottonwoods, and a hawk on a fence post.
Then there was a roar behind me and something hit my back wheel.
I don't remember the ground.
The first thing I felt, much later, was a hand squeezing mine.
"There you are," a woman said. "Can you hear me? Don't try to talk yet."
The light was white and too bright. My mouth tasted like metal.
"You're at Poudre Valley Hospital," she said. "You were in an accident. You've been unconscious for two days."
I tried to say my name.
It came out as a croak.
"Easy. You had no identification on you. We've been calling you Jane Doe." She was a nurse, round-faced, in blue scrubs. "Can you tell me who to call? Is there someone looking for you?"
Three days.
Three days, and nobody had come through that door and said my name.
I knew Dean's number by heart. I had known it for ten years.
My lips were already shaping his name.
I closed my mouth, swallowed, and said a different name.
"Faye," I whispered. "My sister. Faye Lamont."
I gave the nurse her number, one digit at a time.
The nurse wrote it down and nodded slowly.
"Good," she said. "I'll call her right now. And honey, I should tell you something. The police traced your bike through the shop that sold it. They called the number on the sale record the first night you came in."
My heart began to pound on the monitor, loud in the quiet room.
"Nobody ever called us back," she said.
I looked at the ceiling.
I did not need her to tell me whose name was on that receipt.
I had watched Dean sign it.
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