Keeper's Justice
Copyright© 2025 by Charly Young
Chapter 38: Epilogue:
Six Months Later
The air in room 305, Neuro ICU/Critical Care Unit at St. Joseph’s in Phoenix, was thick with the scent of disinfectant and the electronic symphony of monitors tracking a young man’s life that was suspended between recovery and death.
Sunlight filtered through the blinds, casting stripes across the sterile, pale-green floor. The morning shift was settling into its familiar rhythm, the soft squeak of rubber-soled shoes on linoleum, the distant murmur of the nurses’ station.
In the bed lay a man of perhaps thirty years old. He was known to the staff only as John Doe, or sometimes just “The Patient in 305”. He was their longest-term resident; a mystery wrapped in hospital linens and medical charts that raised more questions than answers.
His body was a canvas. A dense, deep-green band of ivy leaves, tattooed with painstaking detail, encircled his waist. The artistry was remarkable, each leaf rendered with such realistic precision that they seemed to shift and breathe with his shallow respirations. His right arm was a colorful full sleeve dragon that snaked around his arm wrist to shoulder. On his back were five intricate Celtic looking glyphs—knots and spirals heavy with implied meaning—ran across the expanse of his upper back, stretching from one shoulder blade to the other. The physical therapists who came to prevent muscle atrophy had memorized each curve and line, had wondered aloud what they meant, what story they told.
For six months, these markings were the only stories he told, lying motionless in a deep, unresponsive coma. The nurses had long since stopped expecting change. They’d watched his face through seasons—through the fierce heat of summer when the AC struggled, through autumn’s golden light, and now into Phoenix’s easy winter. His beard had been shaved countless times, his hair trimmed, his nails clipped. They knew the topography of his body better than they knew some of their own family members, yet they knew nothing of the man himself.
Elena Morales, a small, wiry woman in her fifties with silver threading through her black hair, was meticulously wiping down the metal surfaces of the IV stand. Her movements were practiced and efficient, her mind half on the routine, half on the tamales she was planning to make that evening for her grandson’s birthday. She hummed a low, tuneless melody as she worked—something her mother used to sing while cooking, the words long forgotten but the tune embedded in her bones.
She’d been assigned to this ward for three years, had seen patients come and go, had held the hands of the dying and celebrated with those who recovered. This one, though—this John Doe—he’d gotten under her skin. Maybe it was the tattoos, so beautiful and deliberate. Maybe it was his age, close to her own son’s. Maybe it was simply the sadness of a young life suspended, neither here nor gone, existing in the gray space between.
Suddenly, the monotonous beep-beep-beep of the cardiac monitor skipped a beat, then another. Elena froze, her cleaning rag halfway to the bedside table.
The monitor stabilized, but at a slightly higher, more erratic pace. Not alarming, but different. Changed.
Elena’s eyes snapped to the patient’s face, and what she saw made her breath catch in her throat.
The man’s eyelids, which had been shut for six months—checked daily for response, tested with light, fluttered. It was the smallest movement, barely perceptible, but after months of absolute stillness, it was as dramatic as an earthquake.
A long, shuddering breath escaped him, a sound far deeper and more vital than the controlled puffs of the ventilator he’d been on weeks ago, before they’d determined he could breathe on his own. His chest rose and fell with new purpose, as if his body was remembering how to want air, how to fight for it.
“Dios mío,” Elena whispered.
His eyes—a startling, clear shade of green exactly like the ivy of his tattoo—flickered open. They were unfocused for a moment, the pupils contracting painfully in the winter sunlight, simply absorbing the shapes and shadows. The whites were traced with tiny red lines, and moisture gathered at the corners as his body relearned the basic function of producing tears.
Then, his gaze landed on Elena.
She saw the moment awareness entered those eyes—the shift from pure biological response to something more, something conscious. A dry, rasping sound emerged from his throat, his vocal cords protesting their first use in half a year.
He tried to move, and the slight shift sent visible waves of discomfort across his face. His hand twitched on the thin blanket, fingers curling slowly, as if testing whether they still belonged to him.
He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the effort, and when the words came, they emerged clearly, perfectly formed, and utterly unexpected.
“Señora... ¿me podría dar un poco de agua, por favor?”
The Spanish was flawless, unaccented, flowing from him as naturally as breath. His voice was rough from disuse, barely above a whisper, but the pronunciation was perfect—the soft Spanish ‘r’, the precise ‘v’ sound in ‘podría’, the gentle lilt of someone who’d spoken the language from childhood.
Elena dropped her cleaning rag. It landed with a wet thud on the pale-green floor, spreading a small dark stain across the tiles. She stared at him, her mouth agape, her dark eyes wide.
Six months of silence, and now he was asking for water in her native tongue, in Spanish so pure it could have come from the streets of Mexico City or the mountains of Oaxaca.
“¿Señora?” he repeated, his voice cracking. His green eyes held hers with desperate intensity, pleading for the simple mercy of water.
Elena’s training kicked in even as her mind reeled. She fumbled for the call button on the wall, her fingers clumsy. “¡Sí! ¡Claro que sí, mijo! Un momento, voy a buscar a una enfermera.”
She pressed the call button three times in rapid succession—the ward’s signal for urgent but not emergency.
The man’s eyes followed her frantic movements, tracking her with surprising alertness for someone who’d just emerged from a six-month coma. He pushed himself up, muscles trembling with the effort, managing to prop himself on one elbow. His hospital gown shifted, revealing more of the ivy tattoo, the leaves seeming to writhe as his skin pulled taut with the movement.
He gazed around the unfamiliar room, his expression cycling through confusion, fear, and disorientation.
“Espere,” he rasped. “¿Qué ... qué es este lugar? ¿Y quién ... quién soy yo?”
The question hung in the air like smoke. He looked down at his arm, thin and pale, the muscle wasted away to nearly nothing, sleeved with the dragon tattoo.
He touched the dragon tattoo with his other hand, his fingers trembling as they traced it. The look on his face was one of profound bewilderment—not recognition, but shock at something entirely foreign on his own body.
Elena, recovering slightly from her initial shock, rushed to his side and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. “Tranquilo, mi joven. Es un hospital. Has estado dormido por mucho tiempo.”
He shook his head slowly, the confusion deepening into quiet panic. He pointed a trembling finger at his chest.
“No sé mi nombre. No recuerdo ... nada. ¿Cómo llegué aquí?”
The door burst open. Nurse Jamison, a tall Black woman with twenty years of ICU experience, rushed in, her box braids swinging as she moved swiftly to assess the situation. Behind her came Dr. Patel, the attending neurologist who’d been following John Doe’s case since admission.
“What’s happening?” Jamison asked, her eyes going immediately to the monitors, scanning for crisis.
“He’s awake,” Elena said in English, her accent thickening with emotion. “He woke up. He’s talking—in Spanish.”
“Talking?” Dr. Patel moved toward the bedside, but Nurse Jamison was already there, her practiced hands reaching for the man’s wrist to check his pulse manually, her eyes scanning his face.
The man’s gaze shifted to her, and something changed in his expression—a flicker of adjustment, like internal gears shifting.
When he spoke again, Elena’s mouth fell open.
“Ma’am, I ... I need some water, please.” The English was perfect, but it wasn’t neutral—it carried the cadence and warmth of African American Vernacular English, the natural rhythm and informal ease of Jamison’s own speech pattern. “My throat’s real dry. Been out for more than a minute, I guess?”