Chapter 3
THREE
WHO AM I?
LUCY
Ithink I’m supposed to be dead.
Everything is black. I don’t know where I am, what happened to me…
who I am. There’s just this overwhelming certainty that I shouldn’t be alive, and that I might not be.
I’m floating, unable to make any sense of anything.
Memories and certainties slip from my grasp like the sands in a timer.
A fleeting touch and nothing more before it’s gone again, leaving me grasping for air.
Of all my senses, sound comes back first. One moment, I’m barely existing, and then my ears are back on-line.
I’m not hearing voices, though. If there are words, I can’t understand them.
Instead, there’s beeping. Hissing. Something mechanical, and stray squeaks here and there, all of it muffled slightly as though my poor ears are stuffed with cotton.
Once I have ears again, I have a body. I’m lying on my back, and my chest doesn’t feel right. There’s pressure. It’s heavy, like something is sitting on it, pressing down, making every breath feel like work.
I try to move the rest of me. My toes wiggle slightly, and so do my fingers. When I try to shift my arm, testing to see if I can lift it, it doesn’t cooperate with me. It’s stuck, and when panic slips in alongside the dull ache in my head, I feel something tugging at my skin as I yank.
That hurts, too.
Dropping my arm, I struggle to get my eyes open halfway.
As I emerge from the darkness, a brilliant light stabs into the narrow slit I created between my eyelids.
I get a glimpse of a white ceiling before my brain screams that it’s too bright.
I close my eyes again, the beeping surrounding me growing impossibly louder.
Someone says something near me.
“…coming around…”
The words drift in and out, like they’re trying to reach me while I’m underwater. I try to focus on what they could be and who might be saying them—but I can’t. I also can’t hold onto them long enough to understand what they mean.
And that’s when I notice that there’s something wrong with my throat.
It burns. I try to swallow, giving myself some relief, but I can’t do that either.
There’s something inside of my throat. Something plastic.
I gag, then choke, and risk opening my eyes to the brightness again to see what the hell is wrong with me.
I see blue. Pale blue scrubs and a white face as hands land on my shoulders, pinning me in place.
“It’s okay,” a voice says. It’s a female voice, impressively calm considering I can’t tell if I’m halfway dead or nearly all the way. “You’re intubated. Don’t fight it. You’ll be alright.”
Intubated? What? How?
Intubated… so I’m not dead, not yet, and I wish I could say that I was relieved to hear that, but I hurt and I’m scared and I can’t breathe with that thing in my throat and I…
I let myself go. I allow the darkness to swallow me up again, leading me to a place where I’m neither dead nor alive, but for the moment at least, I’m safe.
And that’s saying something because I don’t think I was before this happened to me.
The next time I wake up, the tube is gone, and I’m pretty sure I am alive so small victories, I guess.
I have to be alive. Death wouldn’t hurt this bad, and the first thing I notice is that my poor throat feels scraped raw. My chest still aches, too, but at least the weight is lighter than it was, like someone—maybe the woman in blue—moved whatever was crushing me a few inches over.
The room is quieter. The beeping hasn’t stopped, though it’s… calmer, maybe. I don’t know. It’s not as bright where I am, and that’s probably because there’s a curtain drawn around the bed that I’m lying in.
At the foot of it, a friendly-faced blond man is standing there, tapping the screen of the tablet in his hands.
He’s wearing blue scrubs, too, and a badge clipped to his chest. I can’t read the name, but the face on the badge belongs to the medical professional whose expression softens when he notices that I’m staring at him cluelessly.
Hi,” he says gently. “Can you tell me your name?”
Good question.
My name. What is my name?
I… I don’t know. Panic rises as my brain throws up a block. Who am I? I should know this. A name. I have one, but I have no idea what it can be.
My voice is cracked and thin as I admit, “I… don’t… I don’t remember.”
There’s the tiniest shift to his expression. Not surprise, though. It’s closer to resignation, like he expected that answer.
“That’s okay,” he tells me even as I want to scream that it’s not okay. Not knowing my name… definitely not okay. “Do you know where you are?”
I think back. My mind is blank, and I can’t say for sure how I got here.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take much to realize where I am.
A couple of furtive glances around me, spying the IV bag on its stand and the needle in my arm, the machines beeping sporadically, and the curtained-off bed…
I breathe in, the chemical cleaner irritating my raw throat.
“Hospital,” I whisper. “I’m in the hospital.”
He nods once, a hint of satisfaction reaching his deep brown eyes. “Good. My name is Dr. Nathan. I’m here to help. Now… can you tell me? Do you know what happened to you?”
What happened? What happened? I flutter my lashes, trying to remember. No one just wakes up in the hospital without some idea of what put them there. But as I force it, all that happens is I hear the echo of a scream in my ears, feel the wind against my face, the sensation that I’m falling—
My stomach flips violently as I slam the brakes on trying to remember. At the same time, my pulse spikes, my body going rigid with something like shock or fear. As if protecting me from further damage, the memory dissolves before I can hold onto it.
“No,” I say at last, breath hitching. Is it a lie? Could be. If I really fell, I’d have broken bones. Right? Not just an IV in my arm and a fuzzy head and the sensation that something is really wrong, but at least I’m in the hospital where they can fix me.
Where I can be safe…
“That’s alright,” Dr. Nathan repeats. “That’s to be expected.”
It is?
Before I can ask him what he means by that—or what he thinks happened to me—he asks more questions, inputting answers into his tablet. Can I move my fingers? My toes? Can I follow his penlight with my eyes? Do I know what year it is? Who are the last five presidents?
Some answers come easily. I wrinkle my nose when I tell him who our current president is, then go back until I’ve named the last six national leaders.
I know what year it is, and though my chest is so uncomfortable, it hurts to move any digits, I can move my fingers and toes.
Anytime he asks me about myself, though, it’s like I’ve been blocked.
I can breathe.
I can live.
I just don’t know a damn thing about who I was before I ended up in this hospital bed, and once he sees how agitated that makes me, he calls for a nurse to adjust the drip of my IV so that I can relax enough to fall back asleep.
I lose track of time. I don’t know how long I’ve been in the hospital, only that the stiffness in my entire body makes me think it’s been a while.
A nurse makes sure I eat, though I’m too nauseous to choke down much.
When she notices that I barely touch the plate, she mentions that I can return to the parenteral method of feeding or even use a NG tube now that I’m no longer intubated.
Do I know what any of that means? Not even a little. I guess that’s a sign that, whoever I am, I don’t have any sort of medical background because I’m so confused. Taking pity on me, she urges me to eat a little more before the doctors have to intervene again and help me eat.
Help me eat? I want to ask about that, but she’s gone before I can so that she can go and check on another patient, and when a dietary aide comes to take my empty tray, she’s different from the nurse and I don’t bother, well, bothering her about it.
Same with the countless doctors, techs, nurses, and porters who come in and out of my room now that I’m conscious.
I figured I was only asleep for a few hours after I found myself in the hospital.
Considering I came to with a tube down my throat, then woke up again without it, I should’ve guessed that it was longer than that.
However, it isn’t until another woman enters the room that I discover how wrong I was—and just what happened to me.
She takes a seat at the side of my bed, grabbing one of the visitor chairs and resting the clipboard she came in with on her lap.
At first, I’m not sure she’s part of the hospital.
She isn’t wearing scrubs or anything like the others, though I do notice the badge clipped to the bottom of her dark suit jacket.
Her hair is a rich brown streaked with gray, tied in a knot at the nape of her neck.
Kind hazel eyes peer out at me from behind a pair of thick glasses.
She’s wearing a careful smile that feels practiced, but isn’t necessarily fake. She clears her throat and folds her hands on top of the clipboard.
“My name is Carol,” she says, “and I’m your patient advocate. It’s my job to help patients and their families navigate the healthcare system. Do you feel up to talking with me?”
I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck, but if she’s here to help me, how can I refuse? Swallowing roughly, wincing at the continued pinch, I nod.
“You were admitted to St. Luke’s Hospital six days ago,” she continues in a soft, soothing voice.
“You seemed to have had a nasty fall, but you’re very fortunate in that nothing is broken.
The doctors did need to help you breathe for a few days, and you were in a medically-induced coma due to a pulmonary contusion, but you’re improving quickly in that regard. ”
I blink, trying to make sense of what Carol said.
Six days. Six days.