What I Learned Should Have Scared Me

     I visited Allen in the hospital every day for about a week before he woke up. I think it was the last weekend of January, Saturday, maybe, when I first met Allen. He was understandably startled to find himself in a hospital bed, and started to move frantically. But the pain of all his broken bones stopped him pretty quickly. I was just outside of his room when he woke up, and I rushed in. He was very confused, and asked where he was. I told him everything that I knew, and waited for him to tell his side of the story, but he didn't say anything, really. He told me that his name was Allen Bishop. That's the name he gave me at the time. I'm not sure when he took up the alias, but he waited almost a month before he trusted me with his real name. I told him that I had lied about being his girlfriend, and he said he understood, which I thought was surprising, but he asked me if we could keep it up for awhile. I was  taken aback a little, because I thought he was flirting with me. Then after a second I asked him point blank, how he had wound up under that bridge. He promised to tell me as soon as we got out of the hospital. I don't know what it was about Allen, but he really charmed me. Even though he was a complete mystery, and looked a bit like he may have been in trouble with the mafia, or somali pirates, I felt like I could trust him. So, I did.

     After another week of tests and physical therapy, they let Allen out of the hospital. I took him home in a wheelchair. We had spent the whole week getting to know one another, I would just sit in his room in my time off, and sometimes at night, and we would just talk. He didn't tell me about all of the dangerous business he had been involved in, but usually about who he had been before it had all started. He sounded like a really good guy, he was the outdoors type, and used to make stuff for fun. He was so charming, and even though he could barely move at first, he was all smiles while we talked. As I came to understand it, this was the first time he had really stopped moving for more than a couple of days. When I took him home, I made him take my bed, and I slept on my couch. It was saturday night that I took him home. I'm a baker, so I normally go to sleep early and wake up at about three in the morning, to get the bread proofing, but since it was sunday, I sat up with him. He told me everything he had hesitated to tell me before. Hearing him tell it all, the way he had been chased, the people he had hurt, and the things that he had discovered, I was terrified. He looked as scared as I did, and since he was stuck in a wheelchair, I knew he wasn't going to hurt me. He was just so sad. I guess most people who met Allen after the package arrived at his home thought he was a crazy person, or that he was a bad person, but I just saw him as a wounded spirit. He just needed to stop running awhile. Being as broken as he was helped him with that. He was stuck in that chair for much longer than he would have liked.