Chapter 9. The Note Paper

Adam felt sufficiently exhausted that day so he let the woman who had been babbling in her sleep to grab his wrist. Then sleepiness began to strike and he closed his eyes on the edge of the next bed of a body lying down.

Adam did not know how long had slept. He felt pain in his neck and the arm that used as a pillow went numb. He lifted his seat and wiggled slightly.

"Are you waking up, Boss?" someone asked.

Adam turned to find his assistant, Hassan Pribadi, standing there watching from where he was standing. Adam then turned his eyes to the patient who should be lying on bed. Adam's eyes were round, there was no one there. Stammering he pointed to the white cloth mattress.

"Sh-she? Where is she going?" Adam asked.

"Who do you mean?" asked Hassan as he approached.

"A woman who sleeps here?"

Hassan seems confused, "There are no women in this room, Boss. Since I came, only you have been here. Sleeping in the sitting position on that bench," Hassan explained.

Adam blinked his eyes and looked momentarily stunned at the empty bed. It appears that his consciousness has not been completely restored. He looked to the bathroom. The door was open and there was no light. That means no one's wearing it.

Then the man got up to leave the room. As he stepped forward, his eyes caught a piece of paper under a glass. He realized that the bedside table was supposed to be empty overnight, so he decided to pick up the paper. That thin object which folded into two parts was opened by him and indeed a message was left there.

 ~Thanks for your help. I've settled the hospital bills. Sorry for the inconvenience.

~Good bye.

Adam looked intently and then shuffled through the paper looking for a name the author might have left behind. However, no more letters were found there.

Hassan just stood there wondering at the whim of his superior. Then the boss walked up to him.

"Let's go!" Adam took a walk at once to hand the paper to Hassan without stopping his leg.

The assistant accepted and read it as he followed Adam leaving the hospital in a hurry. Based on the brief information of the paper, Hassan made some assumptions and to ensure that, he would ask the man who was now walking in front of him at the exact moment.

 ***

Bianca Savitri, the woman who left Adam alone in the hospital observation room just moments ago, now sat in the passenger seat of a white car. She was not alone. She was sitting with a rising model, Indira Putri Sanjaya, a friend who was considered to be her own sister.

"Okay, now you tell me. Is there another one?" Indira asked with an intently look at Bianca's exhausted face.

The woman who received the question nodded. Then she described what happened after Indira left her alone in the movies. Indira referred to the seizures as post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. If that attack came then Bianca suddenly would have trouble breathing.

"It's quite long enough to have no relapse, but lately it's too often," Indira amazed.

Bianca let out a long deep breath, then leaned on her head.

"It was the right decision to take time off now. You were tired. Almost a month of overtime. In the last week, you have had less bedtime, and definitely your eating must be frenzy."

"Exhausted," Bianca cutted.

"Exactly," Indira said. Then they chuckled together.

Indira was reminded of what happened when Bianca wrote a message to a man sleeping in the hospital. With a mischievous look, Indira pushed her face and smiled sweetly at Bianca and said, "So, My dear sister, who is he?" the girl asked with her hair tied in a ponytail .

Both Bianca's black irises just roll to the left corner to take a quick look at Indira, "He was just …." Bianca's voice stopped. She did not want to tell her friend about him and shook her head on purpose to tease indira.

"Oh God, since when have you tried to keep secrets from me?" Indira yanked away and turned sulk by folding her hands across her chest, while her lips ruffled.

"He was a cameo. Never mind," Bianca answered without a burden.

"No way!" Indira argued.

Bianca used to smile when she heard Indira's comment.

"I don't believe it. Come on, Sis. Who is he?" Indira urged.

"Honestly, I don't know who he is, Indira," Bianca replied as the smile on her face faded.

"What? How come?" Once again Indira was slackened.

"His face wasn't clear. But I think he seems to be the same person who was stuck with me in the elevator," Bianca said unconvinced.

"I wonder if he's being treated as well as you, Bianca?" Indira guessed.

Bianca answered only with a shrug of two shoulders suggesting she did not know either. Indira stopped asking questions after receiving a reluctant reply from her best friend.

Bianca's face was looking at the windshield on her left side. It was almost dawn and the roads were still quiet. In the silence it was as if Bianca's consciousness had been drawn to a few hours earlier, when the incident occurred. How she was still able to feel clearly the difficulty of breathing because of feeling frightened and depressed at the same time.

Unconsciously, Bianca's hands clenched because she held back a painful memory that was sometimes painful. The clatter that Indira caught in the ear. Indira turned to her and saw Bianca getting a little nervous. Immediately she picked up the clenched hand and caressed it gently to soothe the hand's owner.

"It's okay, Bi. You're safe now," Indira said.

She looked over at indira. The woman's eyes began to fill with tears. Then the two of them embraced each other, Bianca began sobbing in her cries.

***

Adam flew himself to Samarinda. Hassan and Trias just drove him to the airport. While his other assistant, Lucky Hermansyah, has been there to make sure the tenders goes well this time and the AS Corp got the best vendor for the national project they managed from an investor last month.

"Boss, in less than half an hour we can start the tenderizer. I'll go down and talk on behalf of the Boss. And Mr. Hendra from the MT group invited you for lunch. I haven't answered that invitation. So, are you going?"

"Is MT group joining the bid?" Adam asked.

"They can't, Boss. Because they've handling a project in Bali. Great Master's message should be no double projects for Bali," Lucky said.

"Any motive?"

"That's what I was thinking, Boss."

"Okay, stick to the plan," Adam replied. "Arrange the lunch here," he added.

Then Lucky went to lead the executive tender. While Adam stayed in his room watching the developments through a monitor that was directly connected to the meeting room.

More than three hours have passed. The tender event has been successfully held. Lucky went back to the room to see Adam and rereported the results of the day's meeting. Lucky submitted a contract document for Adam to sign right away. "I have a reservation at a restaurant hotel on the third floor. It's almost lunch time."

"Okay, we're going now. What time do we're back to Jakarta?" Adam asked as he walked out of the room.

"This afternoon, Boss. At three o 'clock we gotta check out of the hotel."

"Okay."

After exiting the elevator, it turned out to be a restaurant hotel next to a theater. It immediately brought back Adam to the memory of being stuck with an unknown woman.

A lot of people swarmed in the theaters. Capturing the puzzled look on his superior's face, Lucky then remarked, "There is the local movie premiere, Boss. There's a meet and greet of the actors." Lucky's explanation cleared Adam's curiosity.

When the two men in black suits marched up to the meeting place for lunch, the artists who had come to the theater were seen coming through the escalator. Some waiting fans reverberate and hail their idols.

But Adam just stopped. His eyes blinked as if watching someone in the crowd.

"Boss?" Lucky called.

"She was just like the woman in the hospital," Adam said pointedly toward the place where the people were packed.