CHAPTER THREE: Jane

VALERIE

A week had passed since the accident, and no one knew who I was.

Not even me.

I woke up to the same soft beeping and the same white ceiling.

The nurses had stopped asking me for a name after the first couple of days. There had been nothing on me when they brought me in. My bag was destroyed in the crash. Phone, ID, everything…unreadable. They had no name, no address, no emergency contacts. Just a woman in her mid-twenties with two different colored eyes and no memory of how she got here.

They called me Jane for a while. I hated it, but I didn’t have anything better to give them.

Every morning I asked the same question.

“Has anyone come looking for me?”

And every morning the answer was the same.

No.

This morning the older nurse came in and checked the monitors like usual. She gave me a small smile that didn’t quite hide how worried she still looked.

“Miles is here,” she said. “He’s been waiting downstairs for a bit. Would you like to see him?”

I nodded.

Miles had become the only steady thing in a week that hadn’t given me anything steady at all. He’d been the one who found me, or near enough to it… first on scene after the crash, the one who’d ridden with me in the ambulance when it was clear no one else was coming. He’d been back almost every day since, and somehow, he had become the one face I actually recognized.

A few minutes later the door opened and he stepped inside.

Miles Carter.

Even after a week of seeing him almost every day, the sight of him still settled something in my chest. He was tall, around five-eleven, with a lean build and dark brown hair that always looked like he’d pushed his hands through it one too many times. His green eyes were warm but tired, He wasn’t flashy. He just had this quiet, steady presence that made the hospital room feel less cold.

“Hey,” he said, stopping a few feet from the bed. “How are you feeling today?”

“Same as yesterday,” I answered. “A little less sore, maybe.”

He gave a small smile and pulled the visitor chair closer, sitting down. “That’s progress. The nurses said you’ve been eating better.”

“They keep bringing pudding. I think they’re trying to bribe me into recovering faster.”

He let out a quiet laugh. “Could be worse. Could be hospital Jell-O.”

We talked for a while about nothing important. The bad daytime television that played in the hallway. How the night nurse always hummed under her breath. How the city looked from my window at night. It was easy with him. Easier than it should have been with someone I only met after waking up with no memory.

Then his expression shifted a little.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

I waited.

“I have to go back to Boston. I came to New York for a series of meetings with potential investors… my company’s based there. Cybersecurity. We’ve been growing faster than I expected, and I can’t keep pushing everything back.” He looked at me carefully. “I’ve already stayed longer than I planned.”

Something tight pulled in my chest.

If he left, I would be completely alone.

What kind of life had I lived that no one was looking for me? No family. No friends. No one who noticed I was missing.

The thought sat heavy and cold in my stomach.

Maybe I really had been alone this whole time. Maybe there was nothing waiting for me on the other side of this blank space in my head.

I forced a small smile.

“Oh,” I said quietly. “Thank you… really. For everything. For staying as long as you did.”

Miles shook his head.

“That’s not the only reason I came today.” He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees. “I came to tell you I have to leave… and to ask if you’d like to come with me. To Boston.”

I went still.

When he noticed I wasn’t saying anything, he added gently, “At least until you get your memory back. You don’t have to decide right now. But you wouldn’t be alone. And you’d have a place to stay while you figure things out.”

The room suddenly felt very quiet.

I stared at him, my heart beating too fast, trying to decide if this was the most reckless offer I had ever heard… or the only real option I had left.

I didn’t answer right away.

My mind kept turning over the same thoughts. I knew almost nothing about this man except that he had stayed when no one else did. He had sat through my worst days in this room without making me feel like a burden. And now he was offering me a way out of the empty stretch of days that waited for me the moment he walked out for good.

Go to Boston. With a man I’d known for exactly seven days.

Leave the only city that might, somewhere in it, hold the answer to who I actually was.

It should have been an easy no.

“Miles, I don’t even know if I’m from here,” I said slowly. “What if my whole life is in this city? What if I leave and the second I do, someone finally comes looking, and I’m not even here to be found?”

“I thought about that.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “The hospital already has this number on file for you now. Mine. If anyone comes looking, if a single missing persons report gets filed anywhere in this state, they’ll call me first. You wouldn’t be unreachable. You’d just be somewhere that isn’t this room.”

I looked around the hospital room… the same white walls, the same beeping machine, the same window that only ever showed me a city I didn’t recognize. I thought about what it would feel like tomorrow if Miles wasn’t coming back. The quiet. The pitying looks from the nurses. The long afternoons with nothing to do but stare at a past that refused to return.

I was tired of being no one in a place that felt like nowhere.

“Okay,” I said.

Miles’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Okay?”

“I’ll come with you.” My voice was steadier than I expected. “At least until I remember who I’m supposed to be.”

He didn’t make a big show of it. He just nodded once, like he understood how much the decision weighed.

“I’ll talk to the doctors today,” he said. “We’ll get you cleared for discharge and figure out the travel. You don’t have to handle any of it.”

I leaned back against the pillows and let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

For the first time since I woke up in this room, the blank space in my head felt a little less endless.

I still didn’t know my name.

I still didn’t know if anyone out there was looking for me.

But at least I wouldn’t have to keep waking up alone while I waited to find out.