By the end of the week, Sam still had not regained his memory apart from strange flickers of recollection — odd images without context or meaning — a certain car, a field surrounded by trees, a scraggly looking cat. None of it made any sense, and none of it seemed useful in discovering his identity.

Linda was true to her word and took him into her home. And Sam was true to his word and made himself as useful and unobtrusive as possible. The two of them got along quite well together. Linda had a naturally pleasant disposition, and Sam was humble, thankful, and courteous to her in return. And so the two of them soon became very close, not as lovers, and not as friends, but perhaps as a special brand of family.

Sam had unfortunately lost much of his education along with his identity, so finding work without skills or identification proved daunting, if not impossible. To help with this, Linda adopted Sam as her own, giving him her last name of Carter. She also convinced the hospital brass to hire him as a janitor.

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Sam was very thankful for Linda making him “a real person” again, and so he took the janitorial job without complaint. As it happened, he proved to be a genius with mechanisms and quickly earned a reputation around the hospital as the go-to guy for getting something fixed.

After a year or so, his prowess with machinery was officially recognized, and he was given a small workshop in the basement and a sizable raise. On the door to his workshop, someone had affixed a sign that read “Mr. Fixit.” Sam took some pride in that.