"Shake the machine and it goes out of order;
shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position."
— Robertson Davies, Tempest Tost
At some point every writer finds they have to deal with one of the classic themes of literature: amnesia being one of them.
Here, then, is my contribution to the vast trove of amnesia-based fiction.
It is not, strictly speaking, a sequel to The Night I Escaped From the Zoo, but it does occur in the same location, two years later, and grapples with some of the same events that happened back then.
I hope you enjoy it.
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux
It was like watching a play. Up goes the curtain, and you see... something. Or, it's like turning the TV to a random channel, where you happen upon... some scene.
You don't have any preparation for what you see. No one hands you an explanation. There's no summary; no scorecard. No list of players. The story unapologetically kicks off at a certain point: Maybe it's the beginning. Maybe it's the end. You don't know. It's fine, though: you're confident that as the situation unfolds you'll understand. You'll piece together who's who and what's what.
Everything will click.
In the meantime, your only clues are the things you see and hear. So you pay attention.
Of course, the scene in front of you, right here, right now, isn't a play. It isn't a TV show. It's not even a documentary. It's one big slice of real life: real people, real events, as they happen. And you are there.
I watched, expectantly, puzzling over it... trying to put it together... asking myself Am I a part of this? or just an observer? At the moment I found myself sitting, watching, at a medium distance, waiting for a gestalt to form, expecting an ah-ha! moment to light up my brain.
What I could see were two cars, both of them badly smashed up. One blue, one white. The aftermath of a car accident, a car crash. That much was clear.
A long, straight road separated the two cars: one off the road on the far side, the other off the road, but nearer to me. The road itself was empty -- clear and unencumbered, completely devoid of traffic. Clearly, what happened before, what I'd somehow missed, was that the two cars were driving on that road, heading toward each other, and somehow couldn't manage to avoid smacking into each other.
When the two cars hit, one went this way and one went that way, like two billiard balls that collided.
Unlike billiard balls, the cars left a lot of debris on the roadway: broken glass, mostly. Skid marks. Odd bits of metal and plastic.
The road was thick, dark-gray line that stretched off into infinity in both directions, as straight as if you'd laid a ruler down on that flat, empty landscape and drew a line with a big fat grease pencil.
Because, yes, aside from the cars and the road, there was nothing to see but a brown, flat, desolate landscape, as far as the eye could see. No trees, no grass -- no plants at all, except for here and there an ugly tuft of scrub grass.
In a word, a desert. I was sitting on the ground in the middle of a desert. Not a desert of sand, though: there wasn't a single grain of sand. Just death-dry dirt, hard-packed dirt, dirt cracked by days, weeks, months of relentless sun.
Of the two cars, the blue one was closer to me. It looked by far the worse of the two. Even though it stood square on all four wheels, it had obviously rolled over, at least one complete tumble, but judging by its distance from the road, it most likely rolled over twice. The roof was uniformly flattened, pressed down into the car, reducing all its windows to horizontal slits just a couple of inches high.
The motor was roaring, as if someone's foot was heavy on the gas, but the car wasn't moving.
The white car sat farther off. As I said, the crash had obviously blown the white car off the road as well, although somehow it managed to remain upright. It seemed, at least from my vantage point, that all the damage was taken by the front end, which was crushed, smushed, pressed like an accordion -- and then peeled open, ripped back, baring the left front tire completely.
The windshield, on the other hand, was intact, with nary a crack or chip in it.
The airbag had deployed, filling the driver's window, hiding the driver, if the driver was still in there...
Where *are* the drivers? I asked myself. There are two cars; there must be two drivers.
Right on cue, the door of the white car popped open, just a bit... only slightly ajar. The bent metal held it, requiring more effort on the driver's part. He struggled with the airbag, wheeling his arms. Then he leaned into his door and pushed, hard. I could him grunting with effort, and after a particularly loud expletive, the door gave way, squealing and screaming as it slowly opened, but only far enough that the man could venture one foot to touch the ground.
He made quite a lot of noise, groaning and swearing; whining and nearly crying. I followed his progress with interest. After his foot, one hand emerged, then his head, the other foot, and soon he stood upright, wobbling unsteadily next to his car.
He blinked and winced at the sun, as though he'd just woken up, or as if he'd crawled from the darkness of a cave into daylight. He was dressed well. He must have been on his way to somewhere important. Even at this distance I could see his shoes were shined. His clothes were clean. His pants had a sharp crease, his shirt bright-white and wrinkle-free. A dark blue tie finished off the look.
He looks like a lawyer, I told myself. Every inch a lawyer.
The man ran a hand through his hair as he took a few uncertain steps. His head swiveled anxiously, this way and that. Then he stopped for a moment, stock still, and covered his face with his hands.
He's frightened, I told myself. He's afraid. He's very afraid.
The lawyer took a few more steps before he bent down and rested his hands on his thighs, staring at the earth between his feet. I thought he might pass out, or throw up, or maybe start to cry, but he didn't do any of those things. It seemed that he'd stopped to gather his wits.
And then it came to me: He's drunk, I told myself. It's early in the day, but he's already drunk.
I didn't judge him. I didn't know him. I only watched him. Every movement in his pantomime told me something.
He was one of the drivers. He was driver number one, the driver of the white car.
He stood with his back to me, surveying the damage to his car, gesticulating with open arms, emitting gasps of disbelief.
He's upset about his car, I observed to myself. It seemed pretty obvious, but as it turned out, I was wrong. Or at least, he was far more upset about something else.
The driver made a half turn, clasped his hands, and folded in on himself, bending his elbows and knees. Was he hurt? Was he about to fall over?
No -- neither. He was overcome with emotion. He let loose a litany of laments, curses, cries, and imprecations. Jesus figured heavily in his tirade, but not in a good way. He finished up by exclaiming over and over that he was fucked, totally and completely fucked. "This is the end!" he cried. "I'm through! I'm done!" After he poured out the cup of his bitterness and desperation, he heaved a heavy, heart-breaking sigh.
That done, he turned toward me. His eyes large and liquid, his mouth partway open, his eyes ping-ponged between me and the blue car.
"Were you the driver?" he shouted.
"I don't think so," I shouted back. Then I clutched my head and squeezed my eyes shut, tight. Pain, like bolts of lightning laced with lava shot through my skull. Ow-wow-ouch!!! Shouting made my head hurt! It made my head hurt a lot, a hell of a lot, for some strange reason.
My answer seemed to puzzle him. "If you're not the driver--" He muttered as fretfully he crossed the road and came closer to where I sat. As I said, I was sitting on the ground. I don't know why, but there I was.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
I laughed. "Of course I'm okay. Are you okay?"
"No," he replied. "Well -- physically I'm fine, but-- are you hurt? I mean, apart from those bruises. They must hurt like hell." He pointed to my arms and legs. "And you were clutching your head."
I took a look at myself, astonished. My left leg, my left arm, were well-covered in bruises. "What the heck?" I asked aloud. "Where on earth did those come from?"
He pointed to my forehead, and was about to speak, but first his eyes swept over me, from my feet to my... chest. The expression on his face changed from despair to alarm. He froze for a moment, then asked in a soft, cautious voice, "Are you... are you... a cop?"
"No," I replied with a scoff and a frown. "I'm not a cop. Why would I be a cop?"
"Your shirt," he explained, pointing first to his own heart, then to mine.
I checked my chest, and sure enough, there was a design printed in white on my enormously oversized shirt: it was a perfect drawing of a police badge surrounded by the words ROBBINS POLICE DEPT.
"Huh!" I exclaimed. "Where did that come from?" Clearly, the shirt wasn't mine. It was way too big for me. Way, way, too big. It was practically a dress. A mini-dress, at least.
"So, if *you* weren't driving...," he began, and glanced over his shoulder at the blue car. Its motor was still roaring.
"I'm going to check on your friend," he told me. "My name's Wade. What's yours?"
"Mason," I told him. Mason? It sounded right. Mason, I repeated to myself. Again, he seemed perplexed by my answer, but he turned away and dashed to the blue car. He bent down and peered into the slit that used to be the driver's window. "Hey, buddy. Hey. How are you doing in there, man?" he called. "Can you hear me? Are you alright? Are you conscious? Are you awake? Are you in pain?"
After a moment, a weak voice answered, nearly crying. "I'm banged up pretty bad." A soft sob followed, then the question, "How is Deeny?"
"Deeny?" Wade glanced at me. "Your name is Deeny?" I shrugged. It didn't sound right.
"She looks okay," Wade said, "She's got a big lump on her forehead. Must have banged her head." Wade pulled out his phone. "It was just the two of you in this car, right?"
"Yeah."
"I'm calling 911. What's your name?"
"Amos Casshon."
"Can you turn off the engine? And tell me: what kind of shape are you in?"
Amos, after some coughs and whimpers, shut off the engine. The roaring stopped, but even in the silence that followed, I had to strain to hear Amos' weak, almost whispered, replies. "I'm banged up pretty bad. I think my left arm is broken. My legs are pinned under the steering wheel, and it hurts like hell. I can wiggle my toes, though. I guess that's a good sign. I'm all doubled over and the roof is pressing down on my head and shoulders. It's really tight and uncomfortable in here. I'm trying to stay calm, but..."
Wade got on the phone and asked for two ambulances. "You'd better bring the jaws of life," he told the dispatcher. "Amos is trapped inside his car. The roof is crushed flat on top of him. I'm going to try to get him out, but I don't think--" He stopped; the dispatcher was talking to him. His shoulders sagged. "Yes, alcohol was involved. I've been drinking. Yes. Yes. A lot. No, I'm pretty sure the other parties were not. Not at all. No. No." He pressed the phone against his chest and groaned, "I'm fucked. I'm completely, totally fucked. This is it for me. This is the end. This is the fucking end. I'm done."
"Hey," I called to him, in as loud a whisper as I could manage, "Wade! Try to keep it together! You're doing all you can right now!" Talking still hurt my head, but less than before, especially if I was careful not to shout. Once the pain of talking passed, I tried to get up. I meant to go to Wade, to put my hand on his shoulder, to encourage him, and to see if somehow together we could pry Amos out of the wreck. I rolled to my side and got up on my hands and knees.
Before I could straighten up and stand, the world began to spin around me, violently. It was like a kaleidoscope, a calliope -- what was the word? Merry-go-round? Tilt-A-Whirl? The earth beneath me pitched and yawed. I feared for a moment that the whole scene would flip over and I'd fall into the sky. "Whoa!" I shouted, "whoa, whoa, whoa! Turn it off!" and held steady on all fours. I clutched some scrub grass with each hand to keep from rolling off and away. Squeezing my eyes shut, I did my best to keep still... I didn't want to fall... in any direction. Panting and huffing, it became crystal clear that if staying on hands and knees took so much energy, standing was going to be completely out of the question. The spinning didn't stop or even let up, so I gingerly rested my hip back down on the ground, and carefully lowered myself onto my side.
"Oh my God," I cried once everything stopped moving. "Did somebody slip me something? Holy mother!"
"Hey! You better take it easy," Wade cautioned. "You're pretty banged-up, in case you haven't noticed."
"What the hell happened?" I cried out. "Were we at a party? Did I take something? Did somebody give me something? Was it roofies? I don't remember a goddamn thing!"
"Are you out of your mind? A party? What the hell are you talking about? We were in a car accident! Just now!" he shouted back. "Look around you! What do you *think* happened?"
"A car accident?" I gasped, clutching my head. "A car accident? That much I know, thank you very much! But what about *before*? What happened before?"
Wade groaned with disbelief, and turned his attention back to Amos.
Muttering defensively and huffing impatiently, I said, "I want to get up. I want to help. I just have a few questions, that's all."
So... a car accident. I mean, sure, I'd already gotten that far on my own. But before the accident... before the cars were crumpled and thrown, they must have been moving, one going from A to B, the other going from B to A. I was in one of the cars. Probably. Probably going somewhere.
I had so many questions. Questions... about... pretty much everything.
While we waited for the ambulances to arrive, nothing changed much, at least for Amos and me. He was still trapped inside his car, while I was, essentially, glued to the ground. I tried several times, without success, to get up, but each time the world aggressively swirled around me like my own personal tornado, pushing me back down to the ground again.
"Just stay down!" Wade told me, several times, each time a little more impatiently. "You don't want to fall. That will only make things worse."
"I want to help!" I protested. "Maybe together we could get one of the doors open... get Amos out of there."
"You don't look especially strong," Wade objected. "And these goddamn doors are crushed shut. I've been trying. You've seen me. They will not open. Except for that one..." He pointed to a blue car door, lying off on its own, apart from the wreck. Wade explained that the passenger door in back, on the far side, had been torn off when the car rolled over. It didn't leave much of an opening, though: Wade was able to stick his head and shoulders in, but little more than that. The insides were so compressed that he could only see bits and pieces of Amos: the side of his face, his hip, his elbow.
But he did find a large black umbrella in there, on the floor. He unfurled it with a snap, and presented it to me.
"It's not raining," I told him. "In case you hadn't noticed."
He knelt down, took my hand, and wrapped my fingers around the umbrella's handle. "You're getting badly burned," he countered. "In case you hadn't noticed."
He was right. My thighs, my legs, my arms, and even my feet, were a fiery red. I needed the shade. After I curled my legs into the new-found shadow, I looked the umbrella over, and was struck by sudden recognition. "Hey, this is mine!"
"Good for you," Wade commented in a distracted tone. He ran his hand through his hair. I looked up at him, at his face. His expression was easy to read: Wade was worried. Very worried.
"You're a very responsible person," I observed.
"I'm glad *you* think so," he scoffed.
"And it looks like you've sobered up."
"Are you being sarcastic?"
"No, I mean it. Before, you were stumbling and slurring your words a little. Now, you look all... here... now. Attentive. Responsible, like I said."
"Please stop saying that word."
"Which word?"
"Responsible."
I shrugged and nodded.
"It would be wonderful if you were right," he confided, "But there's no way I'll pass the breathylizer or a blood-alcohol test. And I can't pretend I wasn't driving."
"Maybe they won't do the breathylizer," I offered.
"No, they'll do one for sure. I have a record. There's no point in trying to lie; it would only make things worse. I'm a lawyer... I'm supposed to be at a hearing right now, representing a client. Clearly, that's gone to hell. Worst of all, this will be my third DUI. I'll get disbarred for sure. I'll lose my law license, my drivers license. Everything in my life will go to shit..." He gestured across the road. "My car is totalled. I'll be found at fault. There's no two ways about it: I'm about to lose everything. Everything. My life was a wreck already; now the disaster will be complete."
I scratched my head. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to tell him to look on the bright side, but for the life of me Wade's bright side was pretty hard to find.
He stared at a the ground for a few moments. Then he lifted his head and looked at me. "So what about you?"
"What about me?"
"Do you really not remember the crash?"
"No. Not at all. I mean, for all I know, I was just sitting here minding my own business when the two cars collided."
He scoffed, and almost laughed, but not quite. His lips bent back down to a frown. He rubbed his chin. "Okay...," he said slowly, drawing out the vowels. "You must know that that's not what happened. I mean, there's no way you were just sitting here when the crash occurred."
He studied my face for a bit. "And did you seriously think we were at a party? Were *you* at a party?"
I tightened my lips. Was he making fun of me? Aggressively changing the subject I asked, "How is Amos?"
Wade blew out a long breath before answering. "I wish the ambulance would hurry up and get here. Maybe I should have told them to send a helicopter."
"We should go over and sit by him," I suggested.
"What am I supposed to do? Drag you over there? I might be able to carry you, but it's not a good idea, moving an accident victim. It would only increase my liability."
We looked at other for a few moments. Then he said, "I'll go back to Amos in a minute. It's hard, though. I don't have anything helpful to say to him."
"Okay.""
He rubbed his hands together, and after searching for a topic of conversation asked, "So tell me, what's the first thing you remember?"
I gestured at the two cars. "I was sitting on the ground here, and I saw the two cars. It was just like turning on a TV and seeing a show already in progress, you know? Then you got out of your car, and... you know the rest."
"Amos told me that he picked you up hitchhiking. Do you remember that?"
"Hitchhiking? No. Me, hitchhiking? Where? Like, out here, in the desert?"
"Yeah, maybe a dozen miles west of here."
I tried to put it together, but the pieces didn't fit. "Hitchhiking... dressed like this? Barefoot? With an umbrella? What-- did I drop out of the sky? Like Mary Poppins, with the umbrella?"
Wade shook his head and shrugged.
"Did I tell Amos anything? Did I explain? Did I tell him where I came from?"
"No. He said you didn't want to talk much. You told him your name is Deeny. You asked him the name of the next town, which is weird, I guess -- not that any of this isn't weird."
"What is the next town?"
"Going that way, which is west--" he pointed left "--is Aldusville. That's where I was headed. That direction, which is east--" he pointed right "--is Robbins. That's where you were going."
"Robbins," I repeated. "Like my shirt."
"Yeah," he said. "Which probably means you were heading back to Robbins, but, uh, if you didn't have amnesia back when Amos picked you up, before the accident, it's weird that you didn't know where you were heading."
A shiver ran through me when he said the word amnesia. "Fuck," I muttered, mainly to myself.
The two of us sat in silence for a quarter of a minute, when Wade got up and visited with Amos for a spell.
I watched Wade struggle with the doors again. Without success, again. He conferred with Amos for a while. Time passed. I must have been in some kind of a daze because I couldn't tell whether the minutes were moving quickly or slowly. I can't say I was thinking, though. My brain seemed full of fuzz, static, stuffing. A line from a song came to mind: If my head was full of stuffin' / I could be-- I could be what? I didn't know. Eating muffins?
I tried to look into my own head. There was nothing there. No thoughts, no memories, no worries, no words. It didn't feel like I was waiting for anything. No active processes running.
The blue car started up. It roared for a moment, then dropped to a normal idle and kept going. Wade conferred with Amos for a half minute, then returned to me.
"Amos was getting cooked in there," he explained, "It was like an oven, so I suggested he start the car to get some AC."
"Did it work?"
"Yes."
"Good for him."
"He managed to move his foot off the accelerator. It's a good sign, that he was able to do that."
I nodded.
Wade seemed a little more animated after his conversation with Amos.
"I think I know how the accident happened," he told me, nodding. His eyes were sharp. He had the hint of a smile. "I assumed it was all my fault, but, uh, Amos played his part as well. Not that it helps me much."
"Okay," I said, noncommittal.
"AND, now I know why you were in the back seat, instead of up front with him!"
"How do you know I was in the back seat?"
"The door that got ripped off when the car was rolling -- it was the rear door on the passenger side, okay? So, you were thrown out, or fell out, or got out, or something. Maybe you crawled a little. It doesn't matter.
"The thing is, Amos says that the passenger seat belt in front is broken. If you sat there, it wouldn't be safe. In fact, if you HAD sat up front, you'd probably be dead right now. Or worse. Besides that, Amos could have gotten a ticket if a cop saw without your seat belt. Last of all, the alert, the beeping, would never stop, because you wouldn't be able to lock your seat belt. That's why he told you to climb in the back."
It sounded complicated, but since I didn't remember, I didn't comment.
Wade actually smiled for a moment, which was nice, and I was just about to ask him what he'd worked out about the accident, when the ambulence siren cut through the air.
Wade had requested two ambulances, but they only sent one, along with a police car, and a pickup truck from the fire department.
The firemen set to work right away, prying Amos' car open with the jaws of life. I wanted to watch, but the EMTs popped me onto a stretcher and pushed me deep into the ambulance, where they checked me over. "Gotta get you out of the sun," they said. "You're pretty red already, and you're going to get redder." Blood pressure, temperature, blood oxygen... They checked for broken bones, cataloged my bruises, and... "You've got a nasty bump on your head there," one of them told me, pointing above my right eye. It's about the size of a golf ball." I cautiously felt around the edges of the thing, and told him, "Hopefully it's only half a golf ball, right? I mean, I don't want half a lump inside, going the other way, am I right?"
The EMT laughed, told me I was "a trip," but he didn't answer my question.
While one EMT looked me over, another checked Wade, who sat on the edge of the open back door. While the EMT treated Wade's cuts and scrapes, a policeman stood nearby, watching, as if he expected Wade to jump up and run off. I could have told him that Wade wasn't going anywhere -- and not only because there was nowhere to go. Wade's body language read dejection, resignation, acceptance of his fate.
Outside, out of sight, the jaws gave off a noise like a big electric mixer, punctuated with loud and soft pops. The pops were the doors being pried off, and the roof being pried up.
I kept asking for progress reports, but the EMTs pretended not to hear me. Before they were done extracting Amos, a medevac helicopter landed, and in the midst of the roar of the rotors the policeman bent forward and spoke into Wade's ear. Wade nodded. He gave me a grim wave goodbye, his lips pressed together in a tight line. Then he offered his wrists to the policeman, who cuffed him and led him away.
The EMTs waited for the helicopter to carry Amos up into the sky before they closed up the ambulance and drove me to Robbins.
The ride was pretty quiet. The EMTs talked basketball. Every so often they'd shine a penlight into my eyes and have me squeeze their hands. "Neuro checks," they explained. I closed my eyes for a moment, and one of them nudged me. "No sleeping!" he said.
Everything changed the minute we hit the city. "Time to make some noise!" the driver sang out. He switched on the sirens and lights. He kicked the ambulance into high gear, driving faster through the city streets than he had along the desert highway. He also seemed to favor sharp turns, twists, swerves, and bumps. I'm sure he drove over some curbs, and he leaned heavily on the horn -- a horn that didn't toot or honk. It let off a rock-splitting, get-the-hell-out-of-my-way blast.
By the time we arrived at the Emergency Room, my heart was already racing, but if we were in high gear before, we were in overdrive now. After a whip-sharp turn, the ambulance driver violently jerked the transmission into reverse and backed rapidly toward the admitting doors.
One of the EMTs kicked open the back door of the ambulance. In response, two enormous, lead-weighted Emergency-Room doors flung themselves open. Happily, no one stood in the path of those doors; they would have been tossed aside like rag dolls.
Six people dressed in blue scrubs streamed from the opening, converging on me, everyone talking at once -- each of them talking with each other, over each other... none of them talking to me. But then again, I had nothing to say. I was overwhelmed. I felt, more than anything else, like a freshly delivered package. Grabbing hold of the sheet beneath me, they shifted me with a one-two-three, sliding me sideways from the flimsy ambulance stretcher to a more solid hospital gurney. They didn't give me a word of warning or so much as a by-your-leave. Zip! There you go!
But it was fine. I mean, no one was unkind or unprofessional. It was all very quick, impersonal, unemotional, efficient. They wheeled me into a small, curtained-off area and hooked me up to a heart monitor. They snapped a clothespin-like thing on my finger to track my blood oxygen level. And of course I still had the IV that the EMT had started in the ambulance earlier.
Once all that was settled, they drew curtains around me and left me alone. There were curtains on three sides, and a solid wall behind me.
I listened. The flurry of activity I experienced on arrival seemed to have calmed down, died down to nearly nothing. Behind the curtain on my right, a man coughed softly. Probably an old man. I didn't hear anything behind the curtain on my left. I turned my head every which-way, looking for a clock, listening for any tell-tale sounds. I didn't see a clock. I didn't hear any noise that I could try and decipher.
What was supposed to happen next? I didn't know. Did they expect me to call out? To volunteer some kind of information? There wasn't any button or signal near me, that I could press and ask for help. But then again, it wasn't help that I needed. It was information. Clarity. Explanations.
After a few minutes a young woman with an honest-to-God clipboard ambled in. "Deeny Mason?" she asked.
"I guess so," I replied. She gave me the stink eye, so I amended my response to "Yes."
"Date of birth?"
No answer came to me. "I don't know," I told her. "Honestly, I don't know."
She lowered her clipboard and fixed me with a baleful look. I shrugged. Her expression didn't change.
"Do you have your insurance card?"
"No."
"Do you have insurance?"
I licked my lips thoughtfully, then: "Sorry, but-- I don't know. I swear."
She cut me off by handing me the clipboard and a pen. "Sign down here."
It was a brief paragraph stating that I would be responsible for the payment of whatever treatment I received not otherwise covered by insurance. I hesitated a moment, then did a quick series of scribbles. It would have to do.
To my surprise, she seemed satisfied by my meaningless scrawl. Now that she had it, she pushed her way out through the curtains and was gone.
As soon as she left, the curtain parted again and a small blonde nurse walked in. "Hi, I'm Emma," she told me, and gave me a quick smile. "How are we doing today?"
"Fine," I replied, automatically.
"Good. Are you in any pain? Do you need anything? Is anyone with you?"
So many questions! "I, uh, yes. I have a headache. It seems worse now that I'm out of the sun. And I have these bruises on my left arm and leg. They don't hurt. I mean, they don't hurt yet... anyway. And I'm really really thirsty."
"Okay, I'll get you some water. Let me just get your vitals first."
She took my blood pressure. Jotted down some numbers from the machines on the wall behind me. Then, "So... Deeny Mason. What's Deeny short for? I'm guessing Denise."
"Oh!" I exclaimed. That kind of made sense. Deeny, Denise. I could see it.
"Is that right?" she asked, her eyes bright, thinking she'd hit on the right answer.
"I don't know," I replied. I felt a little guilty, as though I'd let her down.
In fact, her face fell, a little bit. "Sorry," I told her. "I don't remember."
She gave me a concerned look. Her eyes went up to my forehead. "You have quite a bump on your forehead," she said. "Does it hurt?"
"I have a bad headache," I repeated. "I don't know if it's from the bump or from the sun. Can you give me something for it?"
"The doctor will have to write a prescription."
"I'm not asking for anything serious," I told her. "I don't need a prescription. I just want aspirin or tylenol, that's all."
"Sorry -- the doctor will have to see you first." As she spoke, she slowly stretched her hand out toward my face. "Can I--" and she touched the bump.
A blinding flash of pure white light and a searing, red-hot pain drove through my head. It felt like a madman lifted an axe, hot and fresh from a blast furnace, and drove it with all his might, slicing my head neatly in two, from forelock to brain stem.
It was not as much fun as it sounds.
"MotherFUCKER!" I screamed. It was completely involuntary on my part, I swear. Emma, her face gone white, jumped backward, throwing herself into the curtains and nearly falling. The old man in the next bed, the man behind the curtain, jumped. I heard him bodily lift off his gurney and drop back down heavily to earth. "Language!" he exclaimed.
I didn't bother to excuse myself. For one thing, I was speechless, as I waited, gasping, for the blinding pain to subside. For another, Emma was busy babbling effusive, barely articulate, apologies, more enough for the both of us.
"Yes, it does hurt," I assured her, once I was capable of speaking.
"Would you like some ice?" she offered.
"No," I said, feeling my patience wearing thin. "I just want aspirin, tylenol, ibu-pro-whatever it is. That's all I want."
"Okay," she conceded. "I'll... uh, go get you some water and make sure the doctor comes right away."
I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hands, careful to not touch the swelling above my right eye.
The sound of the curtain swished open and closed again, telling me that Emma was gone. Immediately after her departure, I heard the swish-open/swish-close once again, so I opened my eyes and peered through my fingers to see who was there.
A short, stocky man had stepped inside. He wore khaki pants and a shirt with red and white horizontal strips beneath a long white lab coat. His eyeglasses had round, wire rims that blended into the wrinkles of his face. His hands were blocky, stubby, with thick fingers. A stethoscope hung around his neck, and his name tag read "Dr. Thistlewaite, Neurosurgery."
I smiled when I noticed he was wearing bright green sneakers. I liked him right away. He didn't exactly look like a garden gnome, but he put me in mind of one.
"Hi there, hello," I said, before he had a chance to open his mouth. I really wanted to get in there first. "Are you my doctor? Can you give me something for my headache? It really hurts. I asked the nurse, but she said she couldn't."
His smile broke a little. "I'm not-- uh--"
"I'm not asking for oxy-condone--"
"Oxycontin," he corrected.
"Whatever! All I want is, like, tylenol or aspirin. Something simple. My head is splitting, and when I talk it makes it worse."
He hesitated, but after looking me in the face a moment, he said, "Hold on. I'll get you something. Don't go anywhere." He left quickly and returned a few moments later followed by a tall, skeletally thin male nurse. He held a shallow pleated paper cup that contained two white pills. In his other hand he had a huge, big-gulp-size container filled with ice water. I tossed the pills in my mouth and drank mouthful after mouthful of water.
"You were thirsty, weren't you!" the nurse marvelled.
"I woke up in the desert this morning," I informed him. His eyes widened. I'm not sure he believed me. It hardly mattered, though: he took the empty pill cup from me, and left.
Thistlewaite nodded, smiling. "I hope that helps."
"Thanks. The water helps a lot."
"Good. I'm Dr Thistlewaite. I heard you're having trouble remembering things."
"You could say that. Yes, some things. Most things. Practically everything."
"You were in a car accident this morning?"
"It seems that way."
"But you don't remember being in an accident?"
"No. I remember the aftermath. I saw the crashed cars. I talked to the drivers."
"Do you remember anything that happened before the accident?"
I stopped and considered his question. I tried to look into my memory. Mentally, the effort is a lot like looking back over your shoulder, except that you're really looking behind your eyes. Usually there's plenty to see. This time, though, I came up empty. I looked. I really looked. I asked myself. I wondered. I looked up. I looked down. I searched my mind. It was like walking through a house, a big house, full of large, empty rooms. It was clear that things were missing -- there was no furniture; there was nothing on the walls. But I couldn't tell you *what* was missing. I had no idea what was supposed to be there.
"No, nothing," I told him, feeling the beginnings of a state of existential alarm.
"It's okay," he said, in a calming tone. "Don't worry. Memory loss like yours is usually temporary. When I say temporary I mean that it's usually brief, like days, or even hours. It will all come back to you."
"Is there any way you can speed it up?" I asked him. "Are there any pills I could take? Or maybe hypnosis? Or electric shocks?"
"Good lord, no!" he exclaimed. "Electroshock would likely have the opposite effect -- make you forget even more than you have already -- and hypnosis is not recommended. You'd be as likely to recover fantasies as actual memories. The best way to go is to simply let your memories come back on their own."
"And if they don't come back?" I asked.
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux
"What if my memories don't come back? What if I forget even more?" I didn't mean to panic; I didn't want to panic... and yet... panic was there, waiting to pounce, ready to devour me.
In spite of my rather obvious distress and incipient fear, Dr Thistlewaite struggled to keep an amused half-smile off his face. "How could you possibly forget more?"
My eyes widened in disbelief. "What if I wake up tomorrow, and I don't remember today? What if I forget the little I remember now? Don't laugh at me — please; I'm serious."
"I'm not laughing," he quickly (but not convincingly) assured me. "The thing is, it doesn't work like that—"
"How do you know?"
"Because you aren't the first person to go through this," he replied. "Listen. You were in a car accident. You hit your head. You don't remember the accident, and you don't remember anything *before* the accident. This is a fairly common pattern, for this sort of amnesia." He smiled, warming to his subject. "As I said: you aren't the first person to experience this. What you have is called PTA, or post-traumatic amnesia. As the name implies, it was caused by a trauma — the car accident, the blow to your head—" he pointed above his right eye, to the spot where I had the lump— "It's retrograde, which means you don't remember old memories. It doesn't affect new memories, memories formed *after* the trauma. Okay?"
I shrugged helplessly. What could I say?
"The pattern, in these cases — cases like yours — is that the amnesia doesn't last very long — as I said, hours or days. Little by little — or all at once — your memories will all come back to you."
"And if they don't?" I repeated, insisting.
"They will," he assured me. "Believe me, they will. And — and — if you were going to forget more, you'd be forgetting things already." He covered his name tag with his hand. "Tell me: what's my name?"
"Thistlewaite."
"See? And that's not an easy name! Now tell me: how many cars were in the accident?"
"Two."
He spread his hands, palms up, as if say, you see?
I twisted my mouth to the side as I digested this. Then I asked, "What about this: why *do* I remember new memories? And how come I still know how to talk? Why didn't I forget that, when I forgot everything else? Do I have to worry about that disappearing?"
He shook his head no. "Different parts of the brain," he said. A sound outside the curtain distracted him. "The brain isn't all one thing. It has a lot of compartments... components... different components have different jobs to do. Okay? Listen, I'm going to have to leave you now. I'll see you upstairs, after you're admitted. Okay? In the meantime, try not to worry. Try not to stress! Stress makes it harder to remember. Don't rush things."
He put his hand to the curtain, then stopped himself. "Oh! I just remembered something that might help! Have you ever heard the saying Don't push the river; it flows by itself?"
"No," I told him. "I'm pretty sure I've never heard that."
His eyebrows danced. "Interesting that you put it that way! Well, in any case, it's something Fritz Perls said. It suits your present situation perfectly. Don't push the river."
"Okay," I said. "No river-pushing. I promise."
There came a cough from outside the curtain, a cough that signalled someone else wanted their turn. Thistlewaite gave a quick smile and a wave before he swished the curtain open.
"Hey!" I stopped him. "Can we talk about my name? I'm not sure this Deeny thing is really my name."
He glanced at the person outside the curtain for a moment, then told me, "Upstairs. Okay? We'll can pick up our conversation at that point.. Alright?"
With that, he was gone.
As Dr Thistlewaite exited, a trim, business-like woman entered. She wore a long white lab coat and had a stethoscope around her neck.
"Hello, Deeny," she said. "I'm Dr Lukkenbocher, but you can call me Dr Sandy. How are you feeling?"
I tried to work up a witty remark about doctors with long names, but Dr Sandy was like a train. Once she started, she was ready to move on, with or without me.
As she spoke, her eyes danced over the machines in the wall behind me. She picked up my arm and took my blood pressure.
"Any aches and pains?" she queried, and shined a penlight into each of my eyes in turn. She asked me to grip her hands and squeeze them.
"Follow my finger with your eyes," she directed, moving her index finger in front of my face, up, down, left right.
"Good!" She consulted my chart. "I see you got some tylenol for your headache. Did it help?"
"I guess," I said. "Will it be hard for me to get more if I need it?"
She seemed amused. "Was it hard to get it the first time?"
"Yes," I answered, a little nettled. "It *was* hard. I had to ask ten times. They told me a doctor had to give it to me, so..."
"I see. I'll write an order. Every four hours, if you need it. If you ask for it."
"Great."
She reached forward and, starting gently, dug her fingers into the soft tissue of my shoulders and neck. "Any pain up in here?"
"No."
She had me move my head in every direction. She asked about my bruises. As she talked to me, she poked and prodded my arms and legs. She ran her hands over my scalp. She looked at the lump on my forehead, but didn't touch it. "Does it hurt?" she asked.
"I have a headache. I don't know if it's from the lump or from the sun. The bump hurts like hell if you touch it."
She pressed a finger into my right forearm, the arm that isn't bruised, and let it go. "You're pretty red," she observed. "I'm worried about sun poisoning. Make sure you drink lots of water, okay? We're going to keep this IV running, to help hydrate. And I'm going to order you some aloe vera gel. Will you remember to apply it? Cover all the red, all the burn, even on your face and scalp. Don't forget the back of your neck and your feet. Okay? The nurses can take care of your back."
She asked a lot of questions. She wanted to know whether I had any allergies to foods or medicines. Of course, I had no idea, but I told her that I didn't think so. Then she told me she was going to do a general examination, to see if I had any injuries I wasn't aware of. "Another thing: The police asked me to check for distinguishing features," she informed me. "so that will be part of the examination."
"The police? Why?"
"Well, you're a Jane Doe, an unidentified female. Hopefully someone reported you as a missing person."
"How can I be missing?" I asked, laughing. "I'm right here."
She gave me a serious look. "Imagine someone who loves you. Someone who has no idea where you are. You lost your memory, haven't you? You have no idea how long you've been away. Maybe it's only hours, but for all you know, you've been gone for days or weeks or even longer. Think about that. And imagine: the people who know you... imagine how they must feel."
What she said made me confused and seriously uncomfortable. "Who would... Does somebody have to be... I mean... who's allowed to report me missing?"
"Anyone," she answered. "Anyone can file a missing person report. It could be a friend, a neighbor, someone in your family, a roommate, a boyfriend, your husband. The police will match you up, if they can."
I scowled at the words boyfriend and husband. "No boyfriend, no husband," I told her.
"For someone who lost their memory, you sound pretty sure," she said with a smile.
"How could I have a boyfriend or a husband?" I scoffed.
"Woo!" Dr Sandy exclaimed, puffing out her cheeks. "How? Are you seriously asking that question? At your age? Didn't your mother explain to you about the birds and the bees?"
I blushed, but didn't know how to respond.
She let me stew in my embarrassment for a few moments, then, quietly teasing, said, "I'm quite curious as to whether you've forgotten all that!"
Dr Sandy pulled down the neck of my hospital gown so she could look at my chest. My jaw dropped when I saw a pair of breasts sitting there, stuck on me. They were obviously my own. I'm sure I was vaguely aware of them this whole time, but actually seeing them was quite a shock. I almost blurted out Where in hell did *those* come from? but stopped myself in time.
She caught the look on my face, and quite bemused, asked, "You look surprised. Are they different from how you remember? Is this something else you've forgotten?"
"Ahhh — I don't know," I replied, drawing out the vowels. "I guess I, uh, hmm."
Sandy's face reverted to a perfunctory professional half-smile as she had me turn first to the left, then to the right, so she could check my back. "We probably ought to take photos of these bruises," she observed. "I'll have one of the nurses come in afterward to do that. Okay?"
"Sure."
Next she checked my feet and legs. "Your legs are very smooth," she commented. "I assume you wax them."
"Um— I guess?"
She gently lifted the hem of my gown, when a loud clang! made her turn her head away. "Somebody dropped a bedpan," she explained with a laugh.
Thank goodness someone did! If Dr Sandy thought I looked surprised when I saw my breasts, she would have been astonished at my reaction when I saw the... nothing... the space... the gap between my legs! Where the... what... I wanted to gasp, but I bit my tongue.
"Okay," she concluded, pulling my gown back into place and covering me with the sheet.
"So how do I rate, as far as distinguishing features are concerned?" I asked her, a little nervously.
She made a vague gesture. "You don't have any. Which is nice for you, as far as your appearance goes, but it doesn't help the missing-person process. No tattoos, no birth marks, no piercings, no scars..."
"Scars?"
"Sure, from accidents... I mean previous accidents... or surgeries."
"Surgeries?" I repeated. "Oh! Like operations?"
"Well, yes, of course," she replied, with an amused smile. "Surgeries, operations... they're the same thing."
"But what if— what if— it was an internal operation?" I asked. "Could you still tell?"
Dr Sandy was puzzled by my question. "Do you mean, like, having your tonsils removed? Or some kind of umbilical surgery?" She considered for a moment, then added, "Or are you talking about a D&C? Something like that? It's possible I'd miss something along those lines — but... do you have any reason to think you've had a surgery like that?"
"Well, not like that," I replied.
"Then I don't know what you're getting at," she said. "Most surgeries leave traces that I would see." She scratched her head. "Still, I'm really curious to know what you're thinking, especially given your memory loss. If you could be a little clearer, more specific, I'd have an easier time giving you an answer."
"I guess I don't know what I'm thinking," I told her at last.
"There's one last thing," she said, hemming and hawing a little. "The police also asked whether I could do a rape kit. I told them I'd need your consent before I could do that."
"A rape kit!?" I exclaimed. "What the hell! Why?"
Sandy dropped her voice just above a whisper (which made me realize I'd been shouting.). "Look at it this way: you don't know where you've been or who you've been with. Anything could have happened to you."
"Not that, though!" I assured her. "Not that!"
"How you can be so sure?" she countered. "I mean, superficially it doesn't look like you've had sex recently... Maybe they'll be satisfied if I tell them that... If they push it, I'll tell them you refused. How's that sound?"
I nodded.
"Excellent teeth, no cavities, crowns, or bridgework," she said as she scribbled on my chart. "Your ears are pierced in three places — that's interesting, but so do a lot of women your age. No nail polish, but nails are carefully tended. As I said: no tattoos, no body piercings, no scars, no birthmarks."
She scribbled some more, her head down. When she finished, I said, "Dr Thistlewaite told me I was going to be admitted. Um, I have some questions..."
"You had a head injury; probably a concussion. We want to keep you overnight for observation. Tomorrow, if everything looks good, you can home! Okay?"
Without waiting for my answer, she swished through the curtain and was gone.
"Home?" I repeated lamely. "Home," repeated the old man behind the curtain, sounding as though he spoke in his sleep.
Home, though. Home. It ought to be evocative, shouldn't it? Home. I kept repeating it, expecting to get a mental image, a picture: a house, a street, a yard... a tree? A tire swing? Something. Anything.
Instead, I got nothing. I drew a complete and utter blank.
I didn't even get a feeling. No sense of who I might find at home, of who I'd expect to see at home. Of who *I* was, when I'm at home.
Nothing. All a blank. A tabula rasa.
And speaking of blanks... of a tabula rasa... I slipped my hand down between my legs, to my groin. What happened there? I wasn't about to tell the doctor this, but I felt sure that I used to have a penis. Seems impossible, given its absence. It's hard to believe I'd *imagine* something like that. And yet, my certainty... how reliable was my certainty, given my amnesia?
Was it possible that I used to have one, and had it lopped off? Was I transgendered? Seems like I'd remember that. Wouldn't I?
I didn't exactly want to come out and ask the doctors, though. They'd think I was crazy, and I didn't want that.
I gave my breasts an experimental squeeze. They were thoroughly real, as far as I could tell. Then my hand drifted down, back to my... zone. It didn't feel bad or wrong. It was just... puzzling. Unfamiliar. New. But how could it be new? I didn't venture to explore any further. I was too nervous. Too frightened of what I might find or feel.
Good thing, too, because the moment I'd settled myself, with both hands chastely above the hospital sheet, the police walked in. Of course, they said "knock, knock" and didn't open the curtain until I answered "come in," but I'm glad I was ready. I didn't want to be making furtive movements in front of the police. I didn't want to look embarrassed, or have something to explain. I *especially* didn't want to explain something that I didn't understand.
The police, in this case, were a pair of young, polite, professional women. One was a detective, Carly Rentham, and the other a uniformed officer, Tatum Scrattan.
The detective, Carly, started off by asking how I was feeling, pointed to the lump on my head, made an ouchy! face and said, "God! That must have hurt!" and so on.
Once the brief obligatory chit-chat was over, Taturm, the uniformed cop, opened her hand-sized notepad and poised, pen at the ready. She looked me full in the face and asked whether it was really true that I'd lost my memory.
"Yes, it's true," I replied. "I don't remember the accident or anything before the accident, but I remember everything since then."
From there on, they pretty much alternated in throwing questions at me.
Carly: "You weren't driving, were you?"
Me: "No."
Tatum: "How would you know, if you don't remember?"
I opened my mouth to answer, then hesitated. How *did* I know?
Then it came to me: "There were two cars, right? I saw Wade climb out from the driver's seat of his car, the white car. Amos was trapped in the driver's seat of the blue car. Both cars were all crumpled up when I first saw them. It was hard for Wade to open his door, and Amos couldn't open his at all. So nobody could have been hopping in and out or changing places."
Carly: "Were you under the influence at the time of the accident? Drugs or alcohol?"
Me: "No. I mean, I was in a daze, but that's 'cause I was knocked on the head." I pointed at my forehead, as evidence.
"Was anyone else?"
"What? Under the influence?"
Carly nodded, so I replied, a little unwillingly, "Amos, I don't know. Wade told me that he was, himself, but you know, I didn't smell his breath or see him drink." After a moment I added, "But he behaved very responsibly. The whole time."
"Good for him," Tatum commented. I couldn't get a read on her level of irony.
Carly: "Okay. So you don't remember anything at all from before the accident: your name, where you were going, where you were coming from... nothing."
Me: "That's right."
Carly: "And no idea where you got that Robbins Police t-shirt? You don't know who gave it to you?"
Me: "No idea. Is that important? I mean, it's just a shirt, right?"
Carly bristled. "No, it isn't just a shirt. And yes, it's probably *very* important, because there's only two ways you could get a shirt like that: you'd either have to be a cop here in Robbins — which you're not — or a cop would have to give it to you." She paused, tight-lipped, then: "And we're not supposed to give those shirts to anyone."
Tatum touched her pen to her lips, thoughtful, and added, "There is a third way you could get one of those shirts: you could steal it from a cop. But you didn't do that, did you?"
I frowned, offended. On the other hand, I had no idea what I did or didn't do to get that shirt. Still, I wanted to express my indignation. She called me a thief! Then, a sudden thought struck me: There was an upside to my having this shirt. My eyes brightened. I bounced a little as I sat up straighter. "So— that means— somebody must know me! Somebody on the police force right here! They must! Right?"
Carly gave a one-shouldered shrug: "It's possible. Seems likely. We'll ask around."
Tatum smirked and said, "We'll put your photo on the MOST WANTED board."
Carly shot Tatum a look. "She's kidding," she informed me.
"Yeah, I got that," I lied.
Tatum frowned at her notebook for a moment, then returned to her questions. "Do you remember anything at all about the accident... anything that happened before the accident — I know you said you lost your memory, but maybe you've still got pieces of memories? Even if it's just a sound, a smell, an impression... anything?"
Carly gave Tatum a dubious look and half a frown, but she the question stand. I cast my mind back. To my surprise, my mind didn't seem so completely empty now. In answer to Tatum's prompt, there wasn't anything you could call distinct or clear. Even so, instead of finding empty rooms full of nothing, I encountered a jumbled mess of something in my head. There wasn't any timestamp on it, but I could sense that it stood on the other side of a fence; the fence that divided me from the world before the accident... the universe before my personal big bang. I peered into a mess formed of cobwebs, static electricity, and softly plumed tumbleweeds. Tatum's word impression echoed, and a dim glow appeared in my inner brush pile.
I carefully drew the fragment into the light and examined it. There was an unmistakeable texture under my fingers. "Finding something?" Tatum queried.
"A scratchy blanket," I told her as I touched the memory. I felt like a psychic, weaving together the uncertain threads of someone else's message — even though this message was my own. "A blue scratchy blanket." I shrugged apologetically. "Heavy. Kind of stiff. But clean." More of the memory emerged. I saw myself in the blanket. "It was nighttime. I was sleeping, wrapped up in a blue blanket. I was naked. I was shivering. From the cold. It was so frickking cold."
Then it was gone. The memory lost its tactile sense and faded away.
I shrugged apologetically. "Sorry, but you said *anything*."
She poised her pen over her little notebook. "You said scratchy. Scratchy like wool?"
"Yes, exactly like wool." There was something else in my mental hodgepodge... "Oh, yes! And a big black umbrella! It was on the floor near me. I'm sure about that! After the accident, Wade found it — the umbrella — in the back seat of Amos' car. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was mine, from before. Before the accident!"
Carly and Tatum exchanged glances. Tatum shrugged and scribbled in her book.
Carly: "You've mentioned Wade and Amos by name. If you have amnesia, how do you know their names?"
Me: "I met Wade when he climbed out of his car. So that was *after* the accident. He introduced himself. And then Amos... I've never actually met him or talked with him. That I remember, anyway. I've never even seen Amos. I don't know what he looks like. He was trapped in his vehicle. Wade went back and forth, talking to me, then talking to Amos."
"Why didn't you go over to Amos? Save Wade all the back and forth?"
"I couldn't stand up. Every time I got to my hands and knees, the world would start spinning, hard, violently. It was pretty bad. So I couldn't move, And Amos was trapped in his car. He couldn't move, either. They had to cut him out with the jaws of life. I didn't get to see that; I was already stuck inside the ambulance."
The women nodded. Tatum scribbled in her notebook.
"Hey," I ventured, "Do you think I could go talk with Amos? Do you know what floor he's on? Do you know what kind of shape he's in? Maybe he could fill me in on some of the things I don't remember."
"No," Carly replied, shaking her head. "No, you can't see him. He's too far away. In fact, normally the two of us would question everyone involved in an incident like this, but Amos is all the way up in Chatterbridge. It's a long drive. See, you came in an ambulance to Robbins Memorial, because it was the closest town, but Amos left the scene in a helicopter, and the medivac only goes to Chatterbridge, which is a regional trauma center."
"Oh," I muttered, crestfallen. "Well, when you find out how he is, will you let me know?"
"Sure thing," Tatum replied.
"And if he can tell you anything about me, I'd be very interested to hear it. I mean, apparently he picked me up hitchhiking, so we probably exchanged some words before the accident."
"You were hitchhiking? In the desert?" Carly asked, eyebrows high.
"Apparently. That's what Wade said Amos told him."
Carly blinked several times. "Hitchhiking? In the desert? Barefoot? Wearing only a t-shirt?"
Tatum, with a half-smile, supplied, "It was an extra-large t-shirt."
"And I guess I had the umbrella," I added. "I must have had it, because I had it later."
The two of them took all that in, in silence.
Once that information was digested, we went through what little information I could provide about the accident. The two women tried to come at it from every direction, taking various tacks, but always running aground on my amnesia.
On the other hand, I was able to tell them plenty about the accident's aftermath.
After what seemed the fifth loop through the same material, my energy began to flag. So many questions! So many questions repeated, over and over, in different ways... in the same ways!
Still, I kept at it, kept up with them, until they were satisfied. Once they finished with their questions, they set to work on identifying me.
For the sake of matching me up with a hypothetical cop who might know me, or of finding me on a missing-person report, Tatum took several photos of my face.
Then, in case I was "in the system" for one reason or another, she used a high-tech inkless pad to get my fingerprints.
"Wouldn't I have to be a criminal to be in the system?" I asked.
"No," Carly answered. "There are plenty of legitimate reasons for an ordinary civilian to be in the system. People who work in finance, people in the military... and other professions, have to give their fingerprints as part of their background check."
Tatum added, "Also, many elementary schools fingerprint their students... you know... because of—"
"Abductions," Carly abruptly finished the thought.
"Now for your DNA," Tatum announced.
"Oh, DNA!" I exclaimed enthusiastically, as she produced the swab. "Will you tell me the results?"
"The results?" Tatum echoed, amused, with a slack-jawed smile. "Well, yeah — we'll tell you if you match up with any record already in the system. We're not going to do the ancestry thing, though, if that's what you were thinking. We don't do your ethnic breakdown."
Carly, with a half-smile and side glance to Tatum, said, "Did I ever tell you that I'm 65% Scottish?"
Tatum blinked a few times, not knowing how to respond at first, and then: "Yeah? Well, anyway, we're not going to do that. We'll just check and see if you're in the system."
"In the system," I repeated. "What if it turns out that I'm a criminal?"
The two women laughed. Carly responded, "Honey, if you're a criminal, we'll lock you up!"
"I don't think you're a criminal," Tatum quipped.
"Still... you never know!" Carly teased.
"You can laugh," I said, "but I have no idea who or what I am. I could turn out to some kind of monster... or some kind of crazy person!"
At that, Tatum burst into laughter. She caught herself, stopped laughing, and quickly apologized. "Sorry, but have you looked in a mirror lately? You're not a monster. You're just a regular girl. I mean, woman. You're not a crazy person."
"But if you do turn out to be a monster," Carly added, teasing again, "We'll put you in the zoo, with all the other monsters. Okay?" She took a breath and smiled. "And if you're crazy... uh..." She stopped, unsure of how to end that phrase. After a moment, she gave up. "Okay, I don't have a punchline for that. But listen: don't worry. The doctors say your memory will come back quickly, and everything will be alright. In the meantime, with what we've got — your picture, you prints, your DNA, we'll probably find out who you are... before you do! I mean, we could get the results before you have time to remember. In any case, we'll let you know. And we'll be back. Okay?"
They gathered up their equipment, preparing to leave. Tatum closed her little notebook and stuffed it into a pocket.
I stopped them. I asked, "Hey... what happens if I don't remember who I am?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, suppose tomorrow the hospital wants to discharge me, and I still don't know who I am. Where do I go?" I looked from one face to the other, helplessly.
"Uh— the doctors are pretty sure that's not going to happen. Okay?"
I persisted: "But what if it does?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Carly asserted. "In the meantime, there are a lot of ways this could resolve. We've got a nice handful of leads here. Missing Persons might know who you are, right off the bat. One of our cops might ID you, just like that!" She snapped her fingers. "Your prints might tell us, your DNA might tell us... And then, of course, there's your memories... you know? You've got plenty of eggs in your basket. At least one of them is bound to hatch."
I opened my mouth to object, but Carly held up her hand. "Nobody's going to toss you out on the street," she assured me. "Okay? You're going to be fine. Don't worry."
With that, they were gone.
I liked the two policewomen. I felt I could trust them.
But what about the Missing Persons department? Or was it a bureau? What did I know about them? What if some nefarious person came forward — someone who has nothing whatsoever to do with me — no legitimate tie — what if *they* claimed me, the way a thief takes someone else's suitcase at the airport? What then?
I should have asked the police about that before they left.
I mean, Dr Sandy said that anyone could file a missing-person report. So... could anyone come here and claim to be my sister or brother or whatever? Even if it wasn't true? They could pick me up and take me away, and that would be that.
"She was never seen again," I said aloud, then kicked myself for talking to myself.
I didn't even have time to ask Carly and Tatum a more practical question: if the hospital kicked me out, and I still didn't know who I was, would the police let me sleep a night or two in a jail cell? At least there I'd be safe and warm.
While I lay in the hospital gurney, fussing and upsetting myself, Tatum returned, sticking her head through the curtains without preamble.
"Hey," she asked. "Where's your stuff?"
"What stuff?"
"Your phone, your clothes, your wallet..."
"I don't *have* any of that!" I exclaimed. "That would make it too easy, wouldn't it! Maybe it's back in Amos' car, or somewhere on the ground nearby?"
"What about the clothes you were wearing?" she asked.
"You mean the police t-shirt? I don't know where that went."
"I have that," she replied, a little irritated. Then, as she got what I was saying, her eyebrows popped. "That's all you were wearing? Seriously? No underwear? No shoes? I thought you were joking earlier."
"I said I was barefoot," I reminded her. "I wasn't wearing anything but the shirt," I assured her.
"And you were hitchhiking."
"Apparently, yeah."
She took a breath and blew it out. "Okay. Our team is still out there. I'll give them a call. If they turn up anything of yours, I'll let you know. But here's another thing... When the medivac carried Amos to Chatterbridge, they spotted another car, a third car, in the desert, about thirteen, fourteen miles west of your accident. Does that ring any bells?"
I shook my head no, and asked, "Do you think my stuff might be in that car?"
"It's possible," Tatum acknowledged. "Kind of seems likely, doesn't it? Not that I'm promising anything! Anyway, Carly and I are going to drive out and take a look at it. If we find anything that relates to you, we'll let you know. But first we're going to drop off your picture, your prints, and your DNA at Missing Persons. We'll tell them that someone on the local force might know you. If they figure out who you are, you'll be among the first to know." She paused and looked me in the eye. "By the same token, if *you* remember who you are, or if you remember anything relevant, you'll let us know, right?"
I nodded yes and said, "Of course!"
"We'll be back to see you. If not later today, then sometime tomorrow. In any case."
With a swish of the curtain she was gone again.
Damn. Once again, I missed asking whether I could sleep in a jail cell.
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux
When I say that my mind goes blank at times, I don't mean anything bad by it. At least, I don't *think* it's bad. It's just that... there isn't much going on inside my head. Could it be that my subconscious has gone quiet because it has no memories to play with, to play off? Are my mental doldrums due to the absence of memories?
But then, see? That word doldrums (I know the word, somehow!) — it conjures up a picture of huge sailing ships, far out at sea, utter still, unmoving, *becalmed*, their sails hanging slack for lack of wind. No wind, no movement.
The same with my brain: it wasn't broken; not really. It was becalmed. No longer driven forward by memories, my mental gears keep slipping into idle.
And weird, yes, that I could come up with all those words and concepts: doldrums, gears, and so on... Honestly, it's disturbing! Almost infuriating! I have no problem pulling words out of my invisible vocabulary, and yet I can't remember my home, my family and friends... I can't remember my own life; not even my birthday.
In spite of all I can't remember, I *do* know that when a person is still, with no immediate task and no one to talk to, what would otherwise be internal silence is filled by memories playing on an inner screen — like a TV someone left on in the next room. You can hear it, though the volume goes up and down. You glimpse its images through the doorway, but you can't change the picture. You can't touch the remote control because it's firmly in the hand of your subconscious, and where is your subconscious? He's sitting there, inside the doorway, just out of sight. What is your subconscious doing? Changing the channel, endlessly skipping through the thousands of available channels and programs. Or else he casts images, snippets, moments, onto the screen in a near endless loop.
I know this; I remember experiencing it. Don't ask me how. Thistlewaite would say different parts of the brain; different components have different functions as if that explained everything. It doesn't.
Well, my TV — the one inside my head — was on the blink, as though I had no network connection. The power was on, but the screen was dark. My streaming services were disconnected. Apparently my subconscious, with so little to do, had gone on vacation. All quiet and dark back there. Someone needed to check my circuit breakers. System reboot required.
Time passed, or didn't pass... I wasn't aware of either state. I mean, I knew time was passing. That's what time does. But how much time was passing? I had no way of measuring the quantity. A little time? A lot of time? My inner status was... Waiting... I was simply waiting. Not waiting for anything in particular. I had no impatience or concern about when whatever-it-was would arrive — whatever waterever-it-was was. A clock would have helped, but only as a measuring stick. If I could see a clock, I'd be able to say, "I've been sitting in this ER for two hours" or "It's been thirty minutes since anyone's poked their head in here." Instead, I only knew that I'd been here, sitting, doing nothing, knowing nothing, with little to do but listen for the occasional cough of the old man behind the curtain to my right.
At some point an anonymous orderly pushed open the curtains as wide as they could go, and he rolled my gurney out of the Emergency Room. Down a hallway, into an elevator, up to the sixth floor. Room number 632. He didn't say a word to me the entire time. I searched my brain for a conversational prompt or ice breaker. All in vain! In the end, I didn't say a word to him, either.
The bed in room 632 was, like most hospital beds, raised up to waist high, so I had a great view out the window. It happened to be a view of a river, snaking its way to the horizon. There were roads and rooftops on both sides of the river, filling all the available groundspace, ending in the distance at a rough arc that traced the city limit.
The orderly pushed the now-empty gurney out of the room and away down the hall, leaving me alone with a nurse. She was young and blonde. She radiated positive energy, and looked very soft. I don't mean *fat*. I mean that she struck me as a person without any hard edges. She gave the impression of a person who is kind, empathetic, a bit excitable and emotional. A person in whom all those traits were reflected in her physiology. Soft.
She hadn't spoken yet, but clearly she was brimming over with barely-suppressed excitement. She subliminally bounced. I thought she might explode at any moment. She bit her lower lip; her eyebrows danced high on her forehead.
"Hi," she greeted me in a stage whisper. "How are you feeling? Oooh, that's a nasty bump on your head!"
"Um, I'm okay, I guess," I responded, cautiously.
She drew a deep breath and her eye lashes fluttered. "Are you the woman with amnesia?" she asked, all breathy, still whispering.
"Yes, that's me." I replied. "But you don't need to whisper. It isn't a secret." I meant it to be funny, but it sounded a little mean when I actually said it.
"Ah, right," she acknowledged, biting her lower lip again. "So... you don't remember anything?" she asked.
I shrugged. "I remember everything since the accident, but nothing from before."
"So, you don't know your name?"
"Nope."
"Oh my God! I can't imagine!"
I really didn't want to have this conversation, honestly. I didn't want to sift through the details of my not-remembering. At the same time, I didn't want to hurt the poor woman's feelings. So I tried to change the subject. Gesturing with my chin, I asked, "What's the name of that river out there?"
"Oh, that! It's the Robbins River."
"And we're in Robbins, the town of Robbins?"
"Right. Robbins. Robbins River. And we're in Robbins Memorial Hospital right now. We're not very original with names in this town." She smiled at her little joke.
"Hey, you know something?" she began, now speaking at a normal tone and volume. "My boyfriend and I, we were watching this new series called The Tourist — do you know it?"
I lifted my arms and shoulders slightly in a helpless shrug.
"Oh! You wouldn't, would you! Well, it's about this guy — Jamie Dornan — do you know who he is?"
I took a breath and looked at her. I wanted to ask Are you kidding me? but instead I only shook my head. Gently, to not set off the bump on my forehead.
"Fifty Shades of Grey? No? Right. Right. So he is in a car accident — just like you! — but he's in Australia and he has NO IDEA who he is."
I scratched my head. I wanted to ask Why Australia? but instead I prompted her to continue by saying, "Like me."
"Right! Like you! Pretty much. And he doesn't even know what kind of FOOD he likes — and he doesn't know who the Spice Girls are!" She let out a little giggle. "Can you imagine?"
As she spoke, I realized (to my chagrin) that I, too, had no thoughts or memories of food types and food preferences... and as for— "Did you say Spice Girls?" I asked. "Are they, like, famous cooks or something?"
With a gasp, the nurse put her hand on mine, and exclaimed, "You don't know either, do you! Oh my GOD!"
It was distressing, to say the least. Not the bit about the Spice Girls, whoever or whatever they were, but this sequence of reminders of all the elements of life that I didn't know or couldn't recall.
I saw she was about to launch another unintended offhand assault, so this time I cut it off, saying, "Listen, I know you mean well, but I have to tell you that this is not in the least bit funny for me. Honestly, it's pretty frightening."
She was so shocked, her face went white. "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't think— I didn't mean— it's just
"How often *do* you see people with amnesia? I mean have *you* personally dealt with an amnesia patient before?"
"Well," she replied, calming down a little, "Not a patient, no, but a friend once, yeah."
"You had a friend who lost their memory?"
She seemed embarrassed by the memory, and after a brief inner squirm, she came out with it. "Okay, so, when I was 16 — right, I was 16 —, my boyfriend and I were climbing a really high fence, and he fell off and hit his head. I jumped down and asked him if he was alright, and he gave me the strangest look, and he asked me Who are you?" (Here she grabbed my arm, a little hard.) "I thought he was joking, so I laughed and laughed. He didn't laugh, though. He kept saying, No really, who *are* you? Please stop laughing! But I couldn't stop laughing until he grabbed my arm really hard—" Here she squeezed my arm more tightly— "and I realized he was afraid... and angry, too, but mostly afraid."
She drew a breath and held it a moment, reliving the memory. "Later he told me that he would have run away from me, except that he had no idea where we were or what was nearby."
She let go of my arm (thank goodness!). She stopped and looked at the floor for a moment.
"What happened next?"
"I brought him home, to his house. He had no idea where we were going — he kept asking me, like he didn't trust me. His mother was there. He didn't remember her, either, and he didn't recognize the house or anything. He was a little afraid to be left there, but his mother made me leave. It was pretty freaky."
She stopped, as though that was the end of the story. "And then?" I demanded.
"Oh, well," she admitted, "The next day he was fine." I could tell from her face, from her eyes, that she was looking into the memory, seeing it, living it again. I got the feeling that her boyfriend's bout with amnesia changed him ever after. Made him foreign to her, maybe. As though he'd gone to some strange land, and returned, forever altered, yet unable to describe where he'd been or what he'd experienced.
And yes, I really did get all that from the look on her face, from the reflection in her eyes.
I had to ask: "Was he still your boyfriend after that?"
"No," she said, scoffing, regretful. "His mother blamed me, as though it was MY fault." She frowned. "It wasn't fair."
Still, there was one encouraging thing for me in her story; one glimmer of hope: the next day, his memories had come back.
"Hey," I asked, "that TV show you mentioned... was it a true story?"
"Oh, no," she laughed. "It was too crazy to be true."
"Did that man get his memory back?"
"Oh!" she softly exclaimed, her eyes widening. "Well, yes and no. He took, uh—" and then she stopped, and looked me in the face. "Um, well, it's kind of a spoiler. Are you sure you want me to tell you?"
"A spoiler!" I exclaimed, not so softly. "I couldn't give a— look, I don't care! Just tell me what happened."
"Well... and so... he took LSD, and he remembered all kinds of things, but it came to him in weird bits and pieces, all mixed up. Afterward he wasn't sure how much of what he remembered was even true. And it wasn't everything anyway. Important parts were missing."
"Hmmph," I grunted, and scratched my cheek thoughtfully. That was one show I'd be sure to miss.
Then, remembering her duties, the nurse took my blood pressure, temperature, and did my neuro checks. "I'll be back in a bit," she promised. "Oh — do you need any pain medication? It's been four hours since the last dose. You can have Tylenol if you like."
"Yeah," I told her. "Somehow my headache returned."
She nodded and left the room
While she was gone, I stared out the window, empty-headed, like before.
Strangely, I liked it better up here, in room 632, much better than the Emergency Room. Definitely better than the ambulance or the desert. "The best place I've been all day," I said aloud, and laughed.
Talking to myself... should I worry that I was talking to myself?
Strangely — as I was saying — strangely, in this room, looking out the window at the river, I felt fairly peaceful. Up to now I've been pretty... how was I? Unsettled? Nervous? Worried? Fearful? And a hint of something else. A sense of betrayal? What kind of sense did that make? But yes, that was definitely one of the flavors in my blend of emotions. Before I could unravel myself any further, the nurse returned, holding a tiny scalloped paper cup, and a huge glass of water. Same type of enormous water container as they had in the ER. I popped the two white pills from the little paper cup into my mouth and took a big sip of the icy water to wash them down. As I did so, I read the nurse's name tag: Jen Columbus.
She saw me reading her tag, and smiled, pointing at it, and in a cutesy voice said, "1492, right?"
"Ah... 1492?" I repeated. I gave my head a little shake.
Her mouth fell open. Her eyes grew big as saucers. "1492? Sailed the ocean blue?" She gaped at me in utter disbelief. I shrugged.
"Columbus!" she exclaimed, her body bent forward, her arms thrust out in child-like disbelief. I couldn't help but burst out laughing, even if it hurt my head a little.
"Oh," she said, calming down a little bit. "You're pulling my leg, aren't you?"
"No," I told her. "I have no idea what on earth you're going on about."
She made a "Hmmph" noise and tossed the tiny paper cup in the trash.
She stood there in silence for a few beats, looking down into the little trash can, as if studying the crumpled paper cup she'd thrown there.
At last she took a breath, straightened up, and looked me in the face. "I'm sorry," she said. "I realize that this is probably scary and weird and frustrating for you—"
I nodded and gave my eyebrows a little bounce.
"—but you know, from the outside, like, for me, it's one of the most exciting things ever! I mean, look at you! You could be anybody! Do you realize that?"
I didn't know what to say to that, so I cocked my head and listened. Jen went on:
"It's like a movie, isn't it? I mean, in a way, isn't it just glorious?"
I couldn't help but give her a puzzled, frustrated frown. "In what way is this glorious? I'm lost, Jen, do you understand that? Do you really think I could be anybody? Anybody at all? It's a hell of a lot more likely that I'm nobody! Nobody at all. A person alone. Connected to nothing. Nowhere to go, nothing to be or do. I mean, everybody keeps telling me that my memories will come back, but what if they don't? That must happen sometimes. I don't find that prospect 'glorious' at all."
"Okay," she replied in a cautious tone, as if walking on eggshells, afraid of offending or setting me off any further. But she sincerely believed in my soap-opera, fairy-tale possibilities, so she couldn't keep herself from insisting. Her palms faced forward and down, pumping the emotional brakes. "Okay. Okay. Maybe so. Maybe so. But keep in mind that what you just said is only *one* possibility. Even if that's how it goes, we'll find a way to work things out. You won't be alone. Robbins is a nice place, full of really nice people. Everyone who hears about you will want to help."
"I'm a curiosity," I acknowledged.
"Yes, I guess you are." She gave a little smile. "There are worse things to be, though, aren't there? And even so... you know, the nobody thing — like I said, that's only ONE possibility. On the other side... I mean, really: you could be anybody. You could be somebody's evil twin!" Her eyes lit with another possibility: "Oh! Or you could be like Jason Bourne!"
I gave a loud, unapologetic, audible sigh. "Who's Jason Bourne?"
"He lost his memory when he fell into the ocean, and he turned out to be an international assassin!"
I couldn't help but chuckle. The idea was beyond ludicrous. "No." I told her. "That's not remotely possible." And then, suspicious: "This Bourne guy, was he a real person? Or is this another TV show?"
"No, neither: it was a movie."
"Oh." Disappointing.
"Or... you could be a lost heiress, or the president's daughter! Or a princess, like, um, Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries."
"Another TV show?"
"No, a movie."
I shook my head. "All of those things are extremely unlikely, if not impossible."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, her hand to her mouth.
"What?"
"Anne Hathaway didn't have amnesia in The Princess Diaries."
I smiled. "I guess that means I'm not a princess, right?" and I laughed.
"The point is..." Jen insisted, turning a slight shade of red, "the point is, that now we — you — don't know anything. Everything is potential, right? The sky is the limit."
"That's only the upper limit," I countered.
"Whatever," she replied dismissively, sweeping my lower limit away with her hand. "I have to check on my other patients. I'll be back later. Press that button if you need anything."
The conversation with Jen Columbus left me irritated and frustrated. It wasn't only because she kept harping on the things I didn't remember... and it wasn't entirely her fault. What bothered and puzzled me where the things that I *did* remember. For instance, I knew about movies and TV shows — at least, I knew what they *are*, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember a single film or TV program, least of all the ones Jen mentioned.
And vocabulary! How could I know so many words, in spite of forgetting everything else? Sure, the neurologist said it was "different parts of the brain," but his explanation struck me as a bit glib. And see? Right there? How could I know "vocabulary" and "glib"?
Honestly, it pissed me off.
The feeling didn't pass. I sat there stewing for I don't know how long, until the sun slipped down and rested on the horizon.
The sky filled with rosy light, which for some reason disgruntled me even more.
At that point, Dr Thistlewaite came in, beaming. His smile faltered when he saw the look on my face.
"What's up?" he asked. "Did something happen?"
"No," I grumbled. "Everything's fine."
"Everything's fine? You need to tell that to your face."
I gave a little scoffing laugh. "It's this stupid amnesia," I explained. "It's got to be the most idiotic... whatever it is! Can you call it an illness? An injury?" I frowned as I cast about for the right word.
"You can call it a syndrome," he offered.
"Well...," I responded, rolling the word around in my mind, "As a syndrome, it leaves a lot to be desired."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I *do* remember a lot, but it seems like... nothing particular. I mean, like, a nurse was in here, talking about TV shows and movies. What's weird is that I know what movies are, right? But I can't remember a single one. What kind of sense does that make? I know what food is, but I can't name a single dish. See? And I know all those words I just used, but I don't know my own name. How is any of this possible?"
"For one thing," he replied, "It's pretty lucky."
"Lucky?"
"Imagine that you couldn't remember anything at all AND that you forgot all about words! You wouldn't be able to talk or understand."
I could easily imagine that. It would be like being a prisoner in my own head. "That would be horrible."
"Right. So, while *some* of your internal connections are down, at least you're still in contact with the outside world."
Okay, so things were not as bad... or as awful... as they potentially could be. I grudgingly admitted it, and then I fell silent, in a sulky funk. Conversationally, emotionally, I found myself in a cul-de-sac.
Thistlewaite bent down, so he could peer into my eyes. "Where are you now?" he asked.
"In a cul-de-sac," I told him. Another vocabulary word! I looked up at him. "At a dead end."
He nodded. "Downstairs you wanted to talk about your name. You didn't think Deeny Mason is your name. How do you feel about it now?"
"I don't know. Deeny. Deeny? What kind of a stupid name is that?"
"I don't know. It sounds like a nickname. In any case, where did it come from? Why did you think it's your name?"
I thought for a moment. "*I* didn't think it was my name. First time I heard it was after the accident. Wade told me that Amos told him that I said it, before the crash."
He opened his mouth; tried to recollect. Couldn't. He asked, "Who are Wade and Amos?"
"The drivers in the accident. I was in Amos' car. Amos told Wade that I'd said my name was Deeny."
"Well..." the doctor ruminated, "Not to throw another wrinkle into the mix, but Amos might have heard it wrong from you, and Wade might have heard it wrong from Amos... like a game of telephone."
"Or I might have lied to Amos," I found myself saying.
Thistlewaite, taken slightly aback, asked, "Why would you do that?"
"I don't know."
"Why did you say that, just now?"
"It was spontaneous. Like I said, I don't know. The words just came out of my mouth," I assured him, in all truthfulness.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go with this, then. We've thrown the name Deeny up in the air, or out the window. What about Mason?"
"Mason sounds about right," I said.
"Okay. What comes to mind when you think about the name Mason, when you say the name Mason, when you hear the name Mason? Or if you take Mason simply as a word?"
As I weighed Mason in my mind, Thistlewaite prompted me: "Just whatever pops into your mind. Don't worry about making sense. Just—"
"Police." I interrupted. He nodded.
"Cops." I added. "Detective." I tried saying the name Mason several times aloud, then: "Black and white."
Thistlewaite smiled, as if he knew something I didn't. "That's interesting. Black and white?"
I didn't know, but I ventured the very next thing to pop into my head: "TV?" And then, finally, I came to a name.
"Perry Mason," I said. It felt almost as though I was repeating sounds from a foreign language, but in spite of that, it sounded right. Very right. One word led to the next, and the trail ended up at Perry Mason, and there it stopped. "Could that be my name? Perry Mason? I like the sound of it."
"Uhhh," he temporized, drawing out the sound. "Hmm. Do you get any mental pictures when you hear the name Perry Mason?"
Irritatingly, I did get an image in my mind. It was the image of a *man*. A big guy. Not a fat guy, but a solid man with wide shoulders, and an intense, unblinking look on his face. Oddly, only in black and white. Oddly, only in flashes. "I don't know," I confessed. "A man? I don't know! Who is he?" I heard the word he come out of my mouth, and it stopped me. "Wait. Damn it, is Perry Mason a man? Does that mean it can't be me?"
"I don't know — I suppose Perry *can* be a girl's name," he said. "It's an unusual name, anyway, for anyone, man or woman. Still, many people do have unusual names. Could Perry be your nickname?"
"So who was the *man* Perry Mason?" I repeated, a little impatiently.
He hesitated, as though he didn't want to tell me. I gave him an impatient look, and he responded. "Perry Mason was a fictional detective, on an old-time TV show of the same name. The show was based on some noir mystery novels. Oh, wait — the courtroom... right. He wasn't a detective per se; he was a lawyer. But he solved crimes. Sorry, I don't remember it very well. The show was before my time. It had a great theme song, though: horns, piano... strong, cool jazz. Very noir, as I said."
All of that sounded right and fine to me. "Okay," I acknowledged. "In spite of all that, I can more easily accept that my name is Perry Mason — a hell of a lot more easily than Deeny Mason. Jeez! I'm *sure* that Deeny is wrong. It's not my name. Perry Mason sounds right."
As I spoke, Thistlewaite nearly squirmed in discomfort. "What's the matter?" I asked.
"Okay," he said. "I understand that you don't like the name Deeny. But if you're going to call yourself Perry Mason, people— well, people are going to, uh, react."
"React? React to what? Do you mean they'll laugh? Or they won't believe me? Because of the old-timey TV guy?"
He rolled his shoulders and tilted his head as a mushy affirmative.
"People will laugh?" I demanded, growing a little angry. "And if it's really my name? Fuck them! That's what I have to say: Fuck them!"
My fury stopped him cold. For once, he didn't know what to say.
"Look," I demanded, "Can I insist? What if I told you that I remember that it's my name? Do you realize that this is the first thing I actually remember?"
"Do you?" he queried cautiously. "Do you remember?"
"I don't know... I don't know!" I admitted, nettled, "I don't even know what remembering feels like, but THIS is the first thing that's felt right to me since this stupid amnesia thing began."
The two us shared an awkward silence.
"Okay," I asked, trying to calm myself. "What if I had no name at all? What if neither name came up? What if Amos hadn't said Deeny and I hadn't said Mason?"
"Do you mean, what would we call you, if you didn't remember your name at all?"
"Yes."
"Jane Doe," he replied as if the answer was obvious.
"Why?"
"That's what we call an unidentified female. Would you rather be called that? Jane Doe?"
"Why Jane Doe?"
He let out a breath. "Well, John Doe, Jane Doe..." he said it as if were somehow obvious.
"So?" I didn't get it.
"I don't know," he fumbled with his answers, as though I'd knocked him off balance. "I don't know how it started or where it comes from. It's a convention. It's what we call people when we don't know their names."
I thought for a moment. "What would you call a *second* unidentified female?"
He seemed surprised by the question. "She'd be Jane Doe number two."
"Oh." I was disappointed. "That's pretty prosaic. And then a third would be Jane Doe number three? I was hoping you'd have a list of names to choose from."
"No, nothing as clever as that. Besides, this way, if you say Jane Doe everyone knows it's not a real name."
The name Perry Mason drifted into the front part of my brain. It was so concrete I could almost feel it, see it. As I looked at the name in my mind, I drifted into a meditative silence. I gazed off into space. I didn't realize I had floated away... forgotten where I was... forgotten that the doctor was standing there.
Dr Thistlewaite watched me, let me muse a while, before he asked, "Where are you?"
"Robbins Memorial," I replied, waking back up to the present reality.
"No," he clarified, "I meant, what were you thinking about?"
"Perry," I said. "The more I think about it, the more sure I am."
He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped himself.
I covered my face with my hands for a moment, rubbing my eyes, my eyebrows. I was angry, a little angry... and frustrated, but just a little. I dropped my hands and looked at him. "Listen: I can see you're trying to convince me that I'm wrong, but you can't. I will fight you on this. I'll insist. I'm going to tell everyone who walks in here that my name is Perry Mason."
He took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, but I pre-empted him. "If I can't trust myself on this, how can I trust anything I remember?"
That stumped him. He made a gesture of surrender with his hands. "Okay," he said. "I don't want to rile you up or argue. I don't want to make you upset. I'm sorry." He looked down at himself, at his jacket, right and left. "Here, let me give you this, and then I'll get out of your hair."
He reached into one of the pockets in his long, white doctor coat, and extracted a small notebook. From his breast pocket he took a pen, a nice one, and he handed the book and pen to me.
I opened the book, fanned through the pages. It was blank, just like my mind.
"This might help," he explained. "You can write whatever you like in here. Things you remember, questions you have... anything at all."
It was a nice little book, bound in brown faux leather, pages lined with faint horizontal blue lines.
"Is this, like, homework?" I asked.
"No. This is just for you. No one else needs to see it, unless you want them to."
"What do I do? Write random shit in here?"
"Yes. Whatever happens to pop into your head."
As soon as he said pop into your head, a phrase did exactly that. So I said it out loud.
"Person woman man camera TV."
He looked surprised. Very surprised. His lips twitched as if he wanted to laugh.
"Does that mean anything?" I asked.
"Does it mean anything to you?" he countered.
"Oh Jesus!" I exclaimed. "Never mind! Why does everything have to be difficult?"
He gestured at my book and pen. "Just write it down," he suggested, a little lamely. "Just write it."
"Why?"
"Because one string pulls another. You've already remembered Perry Mason and this... you're going to keep remembering things. If you note each memory as it emerges, more will follow."
"Do you really think so?" I asked, doubtfully. "It sounds like BS to me."
"Do you have a better idea?" he asked, eyebrows raised. My resistance was getting him rattled. When I didn't answer, he said, "Well, all right then. I'll come see you in the morning. Okay?"
"Don't push the river," I called to him, as he was leaving. I meant it as a joke, but it sounded like an oblique fuck you.
"I'll try," he replied. He seemed a little offended, but that was fine with me.
"Don't block my river," I muttered, once he was out of earshot.
Now that I was alone, I opened the blank book, and wrote my name inside the front cover: Perry Mason. I opened to the first page, smoothed it with the back of my hand, and uncapped the pen.
"Assignment One," I announced aloud. "Random nonsense phrases, please."
I wrote down Person Woman Man Camera TV
I wrote Don't Push The River
I wrote Don't Block My River
I chewed the end of the pen for a moment and scribbled Asa Nisi Masa
"It popped into my head!" I explained (to no one), justifying. "If it doesn't mean anything, there's no harm."
Then: Better dead than wed — even I was taken aback by that one, but it popped into my head, so I wrote it down.
I closed the book and capped the pen. I looked up at the ceiling and one more phrase came to me. This one felt significant, like it had weight:
Charlotte had a boyfriend
"Who is Charlotte?" I asked aloud, and I wrote the question on a fresh page. Maybe Dr Thistlewaite would know. Maybe Jen, the nurse, would know. Maybe Charlotte was famous. Maybe it was an old saying. Maybe it didn't mean anything at all.
Then, something else came to me. A song. First as an echo, then bit by bit... The first line... chunks of the next lines. I half-sang it to myself silently, and recovered the next three lines. At first they were full of something-something and meaningless rhymes, but with effort and repetition, I unearthed the whole thing: a full-fledged, discrete chunk of an actual song.
Deep Space Nine, the cow said 'fine'
The monkey chewed tobacco on the railroad line
The line broke, the monkey got smoked
And they all went together in a little motor boat
I wrote it all down. It made no sense to me, but that didn't matter, did it? It wasn't about making sense, it was only about remembering. Maybe I had to clear my remembering pipes of a bunch of junk and trash, before I could remember any of the important stuff. All the nonsense that floated on the surface was meant to get skimmed off (like dead leaves in a swimming pool) and thrown into my little book.
Apparently, though, those four lines of song lyrics busted my recall pipes. Nothing more came to me, not even after I put the little book away.
About a half hour later, Jen Columbus came back to take my vitals and to babble about yet another amnesia-themed movie. This one starred Tom Berenger (whoever he was). "See — he had amnesia, from a car accident — like you! — and this woman convinced him that he was her husband. She even had plastic surgery done to him, so he looked like the guy!"
Once again, for Jen, it was only a story. A movie. Something she'd seen on TV: a little picture with dramatic music in the background.
To me, it was a vivid, existential threat. I sat up stiff and straight in bed and froze, still as a block of ice. My whole body went white with fear, I could feel it. My breathing was shallow and I found myself unable to swallow or blink.
It took a while for Jen to notice my state. She very nearly left the room without seeing the effect her recitation produced in me.
"What's wrong?" she asked, grasping my arm. "Are you alright? Are you in pain, are you in distress?"
She gave me some water, which I gratefully drank. "Should I call for a doctor?" she asked, gasping with concern.
"No," I said. "No. Just— talk to me."
"About movies?" she asked.
"No," I said firmly. "For God's sake, no. No more fucking movies."
It took maybe five minutes before I was calm enough to explain why I was frightened.
She couldn't relate to my fears. Not in the least. "You honestly believe someone would come in here, pretending to be your husband or your father or brother or whatever, and he'd carry you away?"
"Yes!"
"That couldn't happen," she assured me.
"Why couldn't it?"
"Well...," she began, but I could see she didn't know. She no idea whatsoever. Were there were any safeguards in place? If so, Jen Columbus was not aware of them. She could only give me assurances. She didn't have any answers. But after a few moments she said, "Well, they'd have to prove it, wouldn't they?"
"Would they?"
"Sure! And... and you'd remember, wouldn't you?"
"I hope so," I told her, feeling helpless, vulnerable. "So far, all I remember is Deep Space Nine."
"The TV series?"
"Is that what it is?" I asked. "I thought it was a song."
Jen gave me a strange look, shook her head, and left the room.
"Maybe it's the theme song," I hazarded, as if Jen was still there.
Nothing happened for a couple of hours. All I did was look out the window and try to deduce what I could about Robbins. There weren't many tall buildings. The only structure as tall or taller than the hospital was a brick chimney — a smokestack? — on the edge of town, off to my left. There were two steeples, neither of them very high: one of gray stone, the other of wood, painted green. The rest was a sea of roofs — rooves? No, 'rooves' was wrong: they were roofs. From my point of view, from six stories up, it looked as though a person could walk from one end of Robbins to the other, in any direction, simply stepping from one roof to the next. I was sure it couldn't be that simple in reality, but from this angle, I couldn't see the gaps. There were only a handful of streets that followed my line of sight to the horizon.
Spring-heeled Jack came to mind. I took my book and wrote it there. I didn't want to think about it; I didn't care what it meant. It was something I remembered; that's all. Writing it was enough. If I had to analyze every single thing, I'm sure I'd stop remembering entirely.
At some point I zoned out. I went on test pattern. I had the empty mind that Zen practicioners seek.
I picked up my little book and wrote Zen practicioners. By now I think I'd caught onto the trick. There wasn't any point in asking myself how I knew something or why I was able to remember it. The thing was remembering and nothing more. What and why didn't lead anyplace; only remembering: the action, the process, the wheels in motion.
Don't push the river. Don't ask where it comes from or where it's going. Just let it flow.
It was already dark outside. The only light in my room came from the hallway, from the door, which was both wide and high. There came the sound of a heavy cart, of metal doors, of food trays and cutlery. In moments it came into view: I knew it was called a food truck, although it was more like an a big steel box on wheels. It stood about five feet high, with louvered doors on the side, hiding shelves full of food trays for us patients. There was a large electric cord coiled and hung on the front. When plugged in, it would power the heating elements in the cart, to keep the food warm. Somehow I knew all this.
As big and heavy as it was, the juggernaut was pulled by a single, skinny girl with jet-black hair. She, like the nurses, was dressed in white, but with the addition of a blue apron and a blue paper cap that covered most of her hair. I liked her right away.
When she entered my room, she held her hand near the light switch. "Lights on? Lights off?"
"On, please," I replied, and she complied. Then she asked, "I don't have an order for you, so I brought all three choices: chicken, beef, and vegetarian. What'll it be?"
"Oh," I said. "I'm not sure..."
She paused for a minute, then a glimmer came into her eye. "You're the one with amnesia, right? Yeah, that must suck. Don't remember what kind of food you like?"
"I guess not."
"I'd go with the chicken," she suggested, and so I did.
She waited until I'd taken a taste and nodded before she turned to go.
But she stopped at the foot of my bed, her hand resting on the footboard. "How's it going?" she ventured, "If you don't mind my asking." She seemed genuinely interested. Sincere.
"No, I don't mind," I replied. "I'm okay. Physically, I'm fine. But I'm afraid that my memory won't come back at all, and I'll never know who I am."
She nodded. Made no comment.
"And I worry that somebody could come here and lie and pretend that I'm their family or wife or whatever, and the hospital will let them take me away."
She froze. Clearly she didn't expect that response, but she seemed to be the first person to understand the sense in what I was saying. She stood silent a moment, mouth slightly agape, blinking. She rubbed her eye, unsure of what to say.
Before she could comment — and expecting that she'd only tell me not to worry — I continued, "Most of all, I don't know where I'll go or what I'll do if the hospital lets me go before I get my memory back."
Her expression changed from alarmed and puzzled to simply uncomfortable. She shifted from one foot to the other... made some small gestures with her hands, and moved her lips as though she was about to speak.
I sighed.
"Hey, look, I'm sorry," I told her. "You were being nice, and I dumped all my angst on top of you. Sorry."
"No, no, it's fine," she assured me, with a half smile. "I asked. You answered. This was my first dose of — what was it? Angst? My first dose of angst today."
She stood at the foot of my bed for a few beats, tapping the footboard thoughtfully. She looked at me, nodding, not speaking. Then she turned her gaze to the window, as though an answer was out here, written in the sky. At last, she spoke and said, "Okay, listen. My name's Lucy. I'll be back for your tray in an hour, and we can talk then. No promises, but I might have, uh — a solution for you. Maybe. But mum's the word." She put her finger to her lips.
"Okay," I agreed, without knowing what exactly I was agreeing to.
"No promises, though!" she cautioned, pointing at me with a serious face.
"No promises," I repeated.
She turned to leave, then stopped with her hand on the door frame. Turning back, she told me, "Seriously, though: Don't tell anybody that I said anything, okay?"
I nodded, and she was gone.