What He Forgot A Samantha Leary Short Story

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This story contains themes suitable for adults. Please proceed only if you are 18+

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By J.E. Nickerson

The soft gray light of dawn seeped through the curtains, washing the bedroom in pale, sleepy hues. Samantha’s eyes fluttered open, heavy with sleep. The quiet of the bedroom was broken by a buzzing vibration on the nightstand. Her hand twitched toward it. Steven moaned and rolled towards the window. 

Samantha squinted at the screen, still half in dreams. The vibrating light caught her eye. The name lit up: Greg Dickson.

A knot of alertness tightened in her chest. She rubbed her eyes and picked up the phone.

“Hey…” Her voice was rough, hoarse with sleep.

“Morning,” Greg said, clipped, urgent. “Sorry to wake you, but we have a situation. A robbery suspect… head trauma, Doctors think it’s brain damage. He doesn’t remember anything. Police want an interview while he’s coming out of sedation. ICU, Room 12. I need you there.”

Samantha blinked, trying to shake the last vestiges of sleep. “Hospital? Wait… he… doesn’t remember the crimes?”

“Yes,” Greg said. “Exactly. He’s fragile, coming out of sedation. I’ll come by later to talk to him. Officers will be there, so you’ll be safe.”

Her hand ran down over her face, forcing alertness into her limbs. Heart quickening, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, feet cold on the hardwood floor. Beside her, Steven shifted in his sleep, a soft sigh breaking the quiet. She wanted to stay in bed.  Something inside wanted to hold Steven, enjoy a moment together. But the case pulled at her. 

She rose, stretching her arms above her head, muscles stiff with sleep. The apartment smelled faintly of coffee from the kitchen, mingled with the lingering scent of yesterday’s rain on the balcony. She dressed quickly. Suit pants, silk tank top and jacket. She grabbed her, bag and tablet, Slipping a cup under the coffee maker’s spout and waiting for it to fill. Black as always. 

A glance at the clock told her it was barely six. Outside, the city was dim, still mostly asleep, streets slick with early-morning mist. The heatwave that had been smothering Pleasant Falls for the last few weeks still hadn’t lifted.  A stray wind, hot and suffocating, brushed against her face as she stepped outside, the jacket already pressed against her arms, from the humidity.

The world felt muted, quiet except for the distant hum of early traffic and the occasional bird breaking the dawn. Every step toward the car was measured, deliberate, her mind already racing ahead—ICU wing, Room 12, the unknown man she was about to meet, the weight of what he might not remember.

She paused on the sidewalk for a moment, letting her mind run through the list of questions she would ask and the reactions she would watch for. This was what she did best. Observe. Anchor. Measure. She remembered when she had interviewed And now, she had to do it in the most fragile and volatile circumstances she had faced in years.

The car door clicked shut behind her, muffled by the mist. She drove into the awakening city, every red light and quiet street a pulse of anticipation, her thoughts centered on the man who might not even remember why he had done what he had done.

***

The ICU smelled of antiseptic and something faintly metallic, a sharp tang that made Samantha’s stomach tighten. Machines beeped steadily, a mechanical rhythm that clashed with the muted gray light seeping through the high windows. Hospital staff moved around her, as if she was simply existing in a stream. She pushed the door open slowly, the squeak of the hinges loud in the hushed corridor.

He was half-reclined in the bed, sheets pulled to his chest, dark hair damp at the temples. Samantha paused in the doorway. His eyes fluttered open and shut, pupils flickering as if chasing a memory he couldn’t catch. A dark cut on his chin that had formed into a scar caught Samantha’s eye. The man was handsome in a traditional way except for the scar. Wiry build with strong arms and several days’ worth of scruff on his face. 

Samantha pulled a chair close. The faint scraping cut through the steady rhythm of the machines.

He turned his head slightly to look at her. His eyes dull from whatever medication he was still recovering from. “Who… who are you?” His voice was tentative, strained, as if each word cost effort.

“I’m Samantha Leary. I work with the police when people can’t remember things. I’m here to listen,” she said softly. “The police asked me to come. You’ve had a head injury. Some things you might not remember. I’m here to help you start to piece it together.”

He frowned, confusion knitting his brow. He shifted slightly. His face wincing as he tried to position himself. “I… head injury? I… I don’t—” His hand trembled over the bedrail. “They… the police… they say I attacked… I…” The cuffs rattled against the bed rail as he tried to move. “Why can’t I be…”

Samantha waited. Her eyes tracking his movements, She slowly opened her tablet. The silence stretched, thick and unyielding, giving him space to reach for the words himself.

“I… I didn’t… I didn’t mean—wait…” His voice cracked. He twitched, a sudden jerking movement as if startled by an invisible presence. “There was… glass? Or… a door… I can’t… I don’t—”

Samantha started making notes on her tablet. The air around her seeping through the thin jacket, cooling her skin. Sending a shiver through her. 

“Focus on one thing,” she said gently, her fingers gripping the stylus as she recorded his words. “Step by step. Start with what you remember.”

He blinked rapidly, his throat bobbing as he swallowed, gaze darting to the ceiling. “I… I remember running… but no… wait… she… no… someone was there… screaming… I… She wouldn’t shut up… why wouldn’t she be quiet?”

Samantha leaned forward slightly, letting her presence anchor him. She spoke softly, each word deliberate. “The police said you attacked someone.” She watched him. 

The words seemed to settle over him. A flicker in his eyes, his arms tensed as if the words stirred something inside him.

His hands clenched the sheets, knuckles white. “I… I didn’t mean to… I was just—just—” He stopped, trembling. “I… why? Why her? Someone tell me… why did I—?”

The question hung in the room, heavy, unanswered. Samantha’s throat tightened. She didn’t know what to say. No one could give him the answer he was begging for. And her job right now wasn’t to answer his questions. It was to get answers. 

His breaths came in short, uneven bursts. His gaze met hers, searching, desperate. “I… I feel… I feel like… I shouldn’t have… I didn’t… I didn’t want to—I was in a house before. Somewhere I knew… but not then. Not…” He ran his free hand through his hair. Tapping his head furiously. “Why can’t I remember?” 

He drew in a sharp breath, like something had caught in his chest. His eyes fixed somewhere past her shoulder, unfocused.

“I… there was—” He stopped. Swallowed. “No… wait…there was someone else there too. A woman.”

His fingers tightened in the sheets.

“There was blood. She was still.”

The words came out suddenly, like they’d forced their way through.

Samantha didn’t move. She recorded it carefully. 

He shook his head immediately after, panicked. “No—no, I don’t— I don’t know that. I don’t… I didn’t see—”

His breathing picked up, uneven. He looked at his hands as if it was suddenly foreign. His cuffed hand tensing squeezing and releasing.

“She was—” He stopped again, eyes widening. “There was a sound… I think… like— thudding or wet sloshing” He flinched, shoulders tightening. “No, no… I don’t… I don’t know what that was…”

A pause. Longer this time.

“The police found five slashes in her,” Samantha said quietly, leaning forward, letting the words settle between them.

She watched him carefully.

“Do you remember that?”

His gaze dropped to his hands like they didn’t belong to him.

Samantha glanced down briefly at the email Greg had sent—the preliminary report, still incomplete, still forming.

“When they picked you up,” she continued, her tone steady, “you had jewelry, cash. A mix of things. What were you planning to do with them?”

“I didn’t mean to…” he whispered. His fingers flexed against the sheets. “I needed it. Had to sell it.”

His voice faltered.

“I didn’t… I wasn’t— I was just…”

He shook his head, tighter now, like something was slipping away again.

“She wouldn’t shut up.”

A pause.

“Why… why… why did she?”

He sucked in a breath, sharper now, like he was trying to pull something back before it disappeared.

“The floor,” he said suddenly. “There was something on the—”

He froze.

Then shook his head harder, almost violently.

“No. No, that’s not right. I don’t… I don’t remember that. I don’t remember anything.”

He pressed his head deeply into the pillow. “I needed the money. The things they…they would work. I could sell them.”

Samantha watched the shift—the way each fragment surfaced just long enough to exist before collapsing under its own weight. His body knew something his mind couldn’t hold onto.

His voice broke, smaller now.

“I… I don’t know what’s real.”

Samantha watched him, silent, careful, letting the room absorb the chaos. She noted the small things—the tremor in his hands, the flicker of guilt in his eyes, the way his body jerked at the edges of memory. She recorded it all mentally, writing the reactions in the tablet.

“Why can’t I remember?” The man screamed. His voice raw, pleading. “I… I don’t understand… I don’t… I can’t…” His voice broke again, softer now, pleading. “Someone… please… tell me why…”

Samantha swallowed. The dawn light shifted across the room from the far side window, brushing the walls in pale gray. Outside, the city was waking, but inside the ICU, the world had narrowed to this man, fragile and terrifying, clinging to a past he could not fully grasp.

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. All she could do was sit there, quietly holding the space with him, the question lingering in the sterile air: Why?

She knew Greg would be there soon. Wanting answers. Needing a direction to take the investigation. But the man in front of her wasn’t able to give them. Not yet. 

He turned toward her again.

His eyes searched her face, desperate, like she might have the answer he couldn’t find.

“Why?” he whispered.

Samantha held his gaze.

And for the first time, she realized— he wasn’t asking what he had done.

He was asking who he had been when he did it.

Samantha Leary Psychological Thrillers

The moment doesn’t end here. It never does.

For Samantha, this is where it begins—where instinct starts to press against the surface, where something unresolved refuses to stay buried.

If you felt that shift—the quiet sense that something isn’t right—you’re already inside her world.

The story continues in the Samantha Leary series, beginning with the prequel.

Step into the series on Amazon