“What are you? Stupid?”

He shook his head. A distant memory from the past reminded him that he’d once had an office with a Doctorate’s degree in psychology hanging on the wall in a beautiful wood frame.

“N-no,” he stammered, looking up at the man. Seven feet if he was an inch, and every bit a new inmate’s worst nightmare for a cell-mate. “I just….I g-get confused, s-sometimes, is all.”

He set his blankets on the empty cot and began to arrange them with shaking hands as he continued to stammer out explanation.

“I have amnesia, kind of. I think. Dissociative Fugue.”

“Huh. What’d you do to get in here?” A sensible question.

“I d-don’t know,” he replied, turning to sit down on the bed and look up at his cell-mate. “I don’t remember.”

“Right. Me neither.” His cell-mate snorted, then returned his attention to the book he was reading.

“Atlas Shrugged,” he said, nodding at the book. “A real classic, although I have my issues with Objectivism.”

“What’s your name, fish?”

“Steve. My name’s Steve Patricks.”