A New Dawn

I woke up in pain. I didn't open my eyes or try to move, I just listened and felt. I was laying on my back on a mattress and pillow which were covered in fresh smelling linens. There were voices in the distance, and while I couldn't tell what they were saying the tone of the conversations didn't sound threatening. I figured nobody was going to come in shooting if I moved around a little. I opened my eyes and glanced around.

I was in a private room in a hospital. I had a tube in my arm from an IV bottle that was dripping something into my body and I was wired for pulse and oxygen level monitoring. I was nude but covered by a sheet. I lifted the sheet to check: no urinary catheter. I pulled the IV tube out and pressed down on the hole in my arm and pushed myself out of bed and walked to the bathroom to check myself out.

I had a bandage on my chest and another on my head. I pulled the first one off: gunshot wound. A small angry hole right next to another, older puckered little scar. I turned around and looked at my back: no exit wound, so they had dug it out. Hopefully. I moved my left arm around to see how bad it would be: it hurt, but it worked.

I pulled the bandage off my head. Something, probably another bullet, had grazed a glancing blow across the side of my forehead and left a bloody little trail a ways into my hairline. I supposed I was lucky. On the other hand most of the pain was in my head so I didn't exactly feel super about it.

I put water on a washcloth and washed the little bit of blood away, then rinsed it again and ran it over my face to try and clear out some of the cobwebs. I used the toilet and then went to the room's small closet and felt through pants pockets until I found a wallet, then took it to the bed and sat down and stared at it.

That's how the nurse found me.

"What are you doing out of bed?" she said. She was young and pretty and dressed in scrubs and looked and sounded competent and confident. "If you need to use the bathroom you need to call me. Now lay back down and let me get that IV reinserted."

"No."

"You're not going to give me any trouble, are you?"

"No, but I'm not going back to bed. I appreciate that you're just doing your job, but I'm getting dressed and getting out of here."

"You can't leave," she said. "Your doctor isn't here to release you, but I can tell you that if she were here she'd say that you need at least another day of observation."

"Then I'm leaving AMA," I said. I stood up and walked to my closet.

"You're not getting dressed."

"I am unless you want me to walk out of here naked."

She stared at me and fretted a bit, then said, "Okay. Just please wait here for a few minutes while I find one of the women who's been sitting with you. I think she went down to the cafeteria. Please get back in bed and cover yourself up and I'll bring her back here and maybe she can talk some sense into you, okay?"

I wanted to get out but I didn't have any idea where to go, and maybe these women would, so I said "Okay," and she helped me back into my bed and covered me with a sheet.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," she said, and left.

It didn't take long. My nurse walked back in towing a gorgeous young girl. On its own, some part of my mind started observing and recording facts: about 5'4", blond-haired, blue-eyed, expensive clothes and purse, designer shoes, no obvious weapons - although something could be in the purse. She ran to the bed.

"Johnny, you're awake, thank God!" She took my hand and leaned down to kiss me. That autorecord part of my mind observed that her kiss was long and lingering - a lover's kiss.

"Yes, I'm awake," I said. "Are you going to help me get out of here?"

"Dawn and I were talking about that," the nurse said. "She agrees that you should stay here at least until the doctor can look at you."

"And when would that be?"

"Well... sometime tomorrow morning, I'm afraid."

I pushed the sheet off of me and got out of bed again, headed for the closet.

"Nope," I said. "I'm leaving. I'll sign whatever you want me to sign, but I've got to get out of here right now."

"Johnny, why do you have to leave?" Dawn said. "Where do you have to go?"

I looked at her. "Honestly, Sweetie, I have no fucking clue."

She looked at me, then looked at the nurse. "I'm taking him home with me," she said. "I'll get him dressed and we'll take care of your paperwork." She looked at me again. "Johnny, are you okay with just coming home with me?"

"It depends," I said. "Who are you?"

---

The nurse left, saying that she was going to call my doctor.

When Dawn had recovered from her shock she pushed me back onto the bed. "Stay," she said. She handed me her purse, then handed me the wallet I had been looking at just a bit ago.

"What?" I said.

"Look at your driver's license, and look at mine."

There was a crapload of stuff in her purse. What is it with women, anyway? I found her wallet and opened it up and looked back and forth between the licenses.

"We live together?" I said.

She sat down next to me and put her arm around me.

"Johnny, I'm your niece. Don't you remember me?"

I stared at her face, willing the memories to come forward. Nothing. Then I realized something.

"Shit," I said, and tried to move back under the sheet. She just held onto me.

"What? Johnny, what's wrong?"

I stood up and moved away from her. "If what you say is true, 'niece' and 'naked uncle' don't really go well together."

That made her laugh. Hard.

"Johnny, there's a lot I have to tell you. But for now let's just say that it's okay if I see your body. I see it all the time, and I love it. I love you."

That's the point at which a candy striper chose to enter my room. She stopped and stared at my body and turned bright red. I stepped behind Dawn.

"Sorry," I said.

"It happens," she said. "I'll come back later." She backed out and pulled the door closed.

"Well that was awkward," I said.

"Happens all the time," Dawn said.

"What?"

"You're a nudist, Johnny. You're naked more often than you're clothed. You wind up flashing people all the time."

"That's bizarre, and no I'm not," I said. "She was just a little girl. She doesn't need to see that shit."

"She was 15 or 16," Dawn said. "I can guarantee you that she's seen it before." She looked into my eyes. "Johnny, I want you to wait for the doctor to see you. I need you to wait here for her to try and figure out what's wrong with you." She moved her fingers gently over my head wound. "What do you remember?"

I stared at her, wondering whether to trust her. She seemed honest and caring, and empathetic. But then again this could all be some sort of orchestrated setup, that little part of my mind told me. Orchestrated by who, though - and why?

I breathed deeply and told her. I didn't have any objective reason to trust her, but for some damned reason I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.

"I don't remember anything. I don't know who you are." I paused. Breathed again. "I don't know who I am."

Her tears were immediate and she hugged me. "Oh Johnny, I'm so sorry. I'll take care of you. You're going to remember. Baby, you'll be okay."

I registered her use of "Baby" and added it to the earlier lover's kiss and her easy acceptance of my nudity.

"Dawn, I need to ask you a question. Will you please answer me honestly?"

She looked at me and her expression was surprise and maybe even shock. "Of course, Johnny. I always do."

"Do we have sex?"

She stared at me. "Yes. How did you figure it out?"

"I'm a trained detective," I said. Then paused, not knowing where the hell that came from. "I'm actually not sure what that means," I said.

Dawn just laughed and hugged me again. "You're going to be okay, baby," she said. It's going to come back to you."

---

The doctor came an hour or so later. I expected her to be pissed about being called in when she wasn't scheduled to do hospital rounds, but she wasn't. She was cheerful and happy and apparently not all that worried about the fact that I had no idea who in the fuck I was.

"Retrograde amnesia," she said as she examined my head. "It will usually only mess up your memories for a little while. You'll get better, I promise."

"What caused it?" I said.

The doctor cocked her head and gazed at me. "Well, I could be wrong but my best guess is that there's a pretty good chance the bullet to the head did it," she said.

"I want to get out of here," I said.

"I can't stop you," she said. "I think you should stay here for another day or two, but honestly I don't think going home should be a problem if you have people there who can care for you."

"He does," Dawn said. "The care will be constant."

"Okay then," the doctor said. "I'm going to sign your release form, but not until you get your chest wound bandaged again. I'll send in the nurse."

Something occurred to me. "Who's paying for my care? Do I have insurance?"

The doctor put her hands on my chest, gently. "Don't worry. The City of Los Angeles is taking care of you."

"Why?"

She looked at Dawn. "He doesn't know?"

"He woke up just before you came. He doesn't remember anything."

The doctor looked at me for a long time. Then looked at Dawn.

"There's a woman in 417 that I think Mr. Rand should meet."

Dawn said, "I'd like that. If he's up to it."

I looked at them both. "What are you talking about?"

Dawn said, "Trust me."

And suddenly, I did.

---

Dawn and the doctor helped me get into a stupid hospital smock and I walked with them down the hall to room 417. The doctor went in first and made sure the woman was ready to receive visitors, then beckoned us in. There was a man in police uniform sitting next to her bed. Dawn helped me into a chair on the other side of the bed.

The woman on the bed looked pale and drawn. She burst into tears when she saw me.

The officer said, "Oh, fuck," and ran his hand across his face.

"Oh my God," I said. "Please tell me I didn't do this to her."

The woman just cried harder.

"Johnny, you saved her life," the doctor said.

"I'm so fucking sorry," the cop said. "I don't know what to do."

"What the hell happened?" I said.

The woman in bed explained it. She was a cop. She had pulled a car over on a beach road in Santa Monica and had radioed for backup. The two guys had initially been compliant. Then a want had sounded over her radio and they had heard it. When she went back to her unit they followed her and shot her.

She said that as best the LAPD could figure out the crime scene I had taken out the shooter with my car, then jumped out and beaten the shit out of his partner. According to her I'd grabbed the shooter's gun and then had attended to her, using her radio to call in "Officer down" and then had stripped off her shirt and vest.

"'There's blood'," she said. "That's what you said. That you were just trying to figure out where it's coming from. Then you pulled up my bra and found a wound in my breast. You went digging into it and it hurt, but then you said, "It's still in here. It's not deep. You're okay. I promise that you're okay."

And then the next unit showed up. I had a handgun and I was standing over a prone police officer. They did what they did.

"I screamed at them," she said. "I couldn't stop it from happening. You saved my life and we did that to you." She was sobbing. I put my arms around her and held her.

"So our first date didn't work out so well," I said. "I'm up for another try."

She laughed. "My husband might have a problem with that," she said, and motioned towards the back of the room where a man in a suit sat in a chair watching us.

"I don't have any problem with that at all," he said. He was crying, too. "I'll buy all the rounds."

The male cop got up and made to leave the room. I stopped him.

"She needs you," I said.

He stared at me. "I shot you," he said. "You saved her life and I shot you. You're a great cop, were a great cop until you retired, and you stopped on the road and fucking saved her life and I shot you."

"Don't beat yourself up," I said. "You thought I was the perp. I was in civvies. I would have done the same thing in your shoes."

He ran his hands over his face again. "How can you be so forgiving?"

"Like I said: it's what I would have done to save her."

I forced the cop's hand into mine and shook it.

"You said I was a cop?"

"Yes," he said. His face kind of scrunched up and he backed away a bit. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know who I am. I can't remember anything."

He slumped back down into the chair and rubbed his hands over his face again. "Oh, fuck me. Son of a bitch."

---

Dawn took me home to a home I didn't know. There were two other beautiful women waiting for us. My brain took them in as we pulled up. 5'7", brunette hair, fair skin, green eyes. 4'11", dark skin - Asian, and maybe African - and dark brown eyes. The taller girl was smiling, but it looked plastered on. The shorter girl was crying.

"Okay, ladies" I said as I got out of the car. "I'm fine. I'm going to heal up fine. But right now, I don't know who you are. I suppose introductions are in order. Apparently my name is John Rand."

They ran to me and hugged me, and Dawn hugged me from behind.

"Welcome home, Johnny," she said.

---

They had dinner on the table all ready for me but I had no appetite. They were all upset that I wouldn't eat and tried to encourage me to. I just drank water. I wanted to know who the other two women were but my chest was throbbing and I was too tired to start that conversation. I might have fallen asleep at the table. The next thing I remembered was the three of them helping me up the stairs and into a bedroom.

The bed was huge. I mean really large. Maybe double the size of a regular king bed. The girls all started to undress me.

"Wait," I said, backing away.

They just looked at me.

"I have to... Um... Where's the bathroom?"

"I'll take him," Dawn said. She led me to a door off the bedroom and opened it and we walked into an oversized bathroom. She led me to the toilet, as if I couldn't find it myself.

On the other hand, there was a lot I couldn't remember. Maybe she thought I wouldn't remember toilets.

I balked when she started to take off my pants.

"Thanks, but I can do this," I said.

She looked at me with a hurt expression. "Okay," she said, and walked out and shut the door.

I took care of business and flushed and washed my hands. That's when I noticed the stuff on the counter. A mix of guy stuff and girl stuff. I poked through the medicine cabinet and the drawers and it seemed that, if this was truly my house, I was sharing this bathroom with at least one woman.

"Dawn?" I said.

She opened the door.

"Yes, Johnny?"

"I really need to brush my teeth. Which one of these is mine?"

She handed me a toothbrush and I put some toothpaste on it and she watched me brush. When I was done I rinsed the toothbrush and handed it back to her and she put it away. She watched me staring at my Asian face in the mirror.

"It will come back to you," she said. "It will all come back to you."

"Sure," I said, feeling lost. "Have you noticed that your Uncle doesn't look anything at all like you?"

She laughed. "Yes. Your father was mostly Dutch. He married a Hispanic woman and they had your brother, who came out looking mostly Hispanic. Your brother married a white woman and they had me. Meanwhile your father's first wife left him and he took up with a younger Japanese girl, and..."

"And... me," I said. "So you really are my niece."

"Let's not dwell on that for now," she said, and led me back to the bed. The other two women were already in it. I backed away. Dawn sat me down on a sofa.

"Johnny, we all love you and just want to take care of you," she said. "Please let us."

I looked at her. I was dead tired and I felt reasonably certain that she wasn't planning to kill me in my sleep.

"Okay," I said.

She led me to the bed and sat me down on it. Then, as I watched, she stripped off her clothes. Her nude body was the perfect complement to her gorgeous face: she was extremely fit and perfectly tanned, with no tan lines. Her breasts were not large but were the right size for her slim body and were beautifully shaped, capped with small circles of pinkish-brown and small, hard nipples. Her little waist flared out into womanly hips which became long, toned legs that went all the way to the floor. Her mons was hairless.

"Fuck," I said. "You're beautiful."

She blushed. "Thanks," she said. "And this is weird."

"What's weird?"

"You've seen me naked a million times, but you're reacting like this is the first time."

"For me, this is the first time," I said.

She reached down and pulled off my boxer shorts and suddenly I was as naked as she was. She gently pushed me down and back into the bed and up against the little woman, who immediately wrapped her arms around me and held on tight. The feel of her nipples against my back told me that she was nude as well. I turned to face her as Dawn crawled into bed behind me. She'd left the light on.

"I'm Jay," the small woman said.

"And I'm Mary Beth," said the woman behind her. She sat up and the sheet fell to her waist. She was more voluptuous than either Dawn or Jay, with fuller, more rounded breasts. "We're going to take turns spooning with you tonight," she said.

I guess my brain was working on 'slow' tonight because it took this long to hit me.

"We're all lovers? Together? We all share this bed?"

"Yup," said Mary Beth. "We had it custom made for us."

"So I have orgy sex with three women every night, and I have incestuous sex with my niece?"

Mary Beth frowned. "No orgy sex. Orgy sex is when you fuck whatever random person happens to be under you. We all love each other and so we make love with each other, in all kinds of combinations. And yes, you also have a loving, sexual relationship with your niece. Which she initiated, by the way."

"I didn't mean to be a dick," I said. "But this all comes as something of a shock to me."

"Knock, knock," said a voice at the bedroom door. I looked up to see a tall woman who was beginning to shed her clothes.

"Hi, Cyndi!" Jay said.

I looked at Dawn, who sighed. "There's more you need to know," she said.

---

I woke up late the next morning. Only Dawn was in bed with me, and she was softly snoring. I was spooned behind her and my hand was cupping her breast.

I'd woken up often during the night as four women moved in their sleep all around me, and occasionally switched places to be closer to me. I figured I was living every guys dream, but between the gunshot wound and the weirdness of them knowing me and me not knowing them, I seemed to be out of commission for sex. Nevertheless I played with Dawn's breast a little while she slept. It felt good.

I pushed out of bed slowly so as not to wake Dawn. After the bathroom I went exploring. The house was fairly large but not extravagantly so, and tastefully decorated. There was a second bathroom in the hallway and four bedrooms total upstairs: "our" bedroom, another one with a bed (guest room?) and two offices with fold-out sofas. John Rand's name was all over the paperwork in one of the offices. I walked down the stairs.

It was a convention around the large dining room table. Jay and Mary Beth and Cyndi were there, still nude. Cyndi was sitting next to a nondescript man in a gray three-piece suit. A slightly shaggy looking man in his 50's was holding hands with a classically beautiful redhead. A younger man, short and thin and whippy, sat next to them with a cute woman on his lap, her hands around his neck. Another taller man in shorts and sandals sat holding hands with a stunning blonde.

"Johnny!!"

A young girl came out of the kitchen heading for me at a dead run. All I could think to do was try and cover my nudity.