Chapter 3 #2
That number feels wrong. There’s no way I could’ve been unconscious for six days before I was allowed to wake up… is there? And from a fall? How hard did I fall? How high up was I? I… I don’t know.
I don’t remember.
“Unfortunately, your care team is under the impression that you don’t recall the incident.” She unlaces her fingers, glancing at the clipboard. “That you don’t recall your name.”
My chest tightens, and I’m not sure that has anything to do with my… what did she call it? Pulmonary contusion. “I don’t.”
“That’s part of the reason why I was called in.
Patients who present like you have usually come in to the ICU with a concussion or a TBI.
Traumatic brain injury,” she explains when she sees my lost look.
“Your doctors don’t think your skull is fractured, but between hitting your head and the trauma of falling from a great height, your tentative diagnosis is something they call dissociative amnesia. ”
Amnesia. I know that word. “I lost my memory?”
“Not all of it,” Carol says. “Dissociative amnesia is usually a trauma response. It leads to the patient losing autobiographical information… like your name and age and where you were before the accident… while maintaining basic skills like language and—”
“Knowing who the president is,” I mumble.
“That’s right. It’s not a permanent condition. Your doctors seem very confident that your memories will return in time. However, that does leave us with a bit of a problem.”
I almost want to laugh. A bit of a problem? I was in an accident that I don’t remember, I have no idea who I am, and they think I’ll remember who I am eventually. That’s a huge fucking issue, but she’s trying to keep me calm, so I do everything I can to stop myself from becoming hysterical.
Who knows? If I lose it, they might relocate me from this hospital room to the psych ward…
“Can I… can I help?” I ask, hating how weak I sound.
Carol gives me a motherly grin. “That depends. You see, when you were found after your fall, the paramedics didn’t discover any identification on you. No purse, either. You did, however, have a phone.”
Hope replaces enough of the panic that I start to sit up. The machines don’t like that. Neither do the wires attached to me. Carol leans forward, hand flying up to warn me against moving too fast, but that’s not necessary. As the room explodes in renewed beeps, I lay my head against the pillow.
“The phone was damaged in the fall,” she says, resuming her casual pose once the beeping slows again, “but it powers on. It’s locked, though. Now that you’re conscious, with your consent, we can see if the phone has the answer to some of our questions.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Please.”
Carol nods, then reaches beneath her. She lifts a black tote bag from under her chair.
Reaching inside of it, she pulls out a sealed plastic bag.
There’s a phone inside of it, and I only hope it’s mine; I don’t recognize the case or the model.
She shows me the front and I see that the screen is covered in spiderweb-thin cracks.
Just like she said, when she presses the side button, it lights up.
“I don’t expect you to know the passcode. Luckily for us, it appears to use facial recognition,” she tells me. “Would you be comfortable trying it?”
For a split second, I hesitate, almost as though a part of me is terrified to let someone dig through my device. But that’s ridiculous. That thing in her hand might be able to tell me who I am.
I nod.
Carol eases up from her seat, placing the clipboard on the chair behind her before she approaches the head of the hospital bed.
She holds it in front of me. The screen glows, scanning my features.
My stomach lurches as it hits me that I…
I don’t have any idea what I look like, either.
I’m a woman, obviously. I don’t have a huge chest, but there are boobs beneath my hospital gown, and though my voice is somewhat deep and definitely raspy, I sound feminine enough.
I have short, chin-length blonde hair that’s tangled from six days in this bed, but other than that, my appearance is as much of a blank as my history.
To make it worse, nothing happens right away. My fuzzy head whirs. Is it someone else’s phone? Does the face ID not work? What if—
It unlocks with a soft chiming sound, and I relax the tight fists my fingers had curled into.
I get a glimpse of the home screen before Carol shifts the phone so that she can search it.
There isn’t much to it. A handful of apps—phone, messages, browser, weather—with a stock standard wallpaper of a field of yellow flowers behind them.
It’s only a quick glance, but there’s no sign of any personality on the home screen at all.
But then Carol opens up the settings panel, clicking one of the options, and turns the phone to face me as a name appears at the top: LUCY WRIGHT.
The name lands softly, like it belongs to someone standing just outside my reach, but not necessarily me.
“Does that feel familiar?” Carol asks. “Are you Lucy?”
I wait for a sense of recognition as she uses that name. For understanding. For anything… but it doesn’t come. I feel as lost as ever, and even more pitiful that I have to disappoint my advocate.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Maybe.”
She nods, turning her attention back to the phone. Is she looking for a photo? A selfie album, maybe, some way to prove that I’m the mysterious Lucy, owner of the nearly smashed phone? What about emails? Texts? Is someone calling me?
Does someone know who I am?
“Hm. I don’t see any programmed contacts in here,” Carol says quietly, glancing up from the screen, “but you do have a recent call listed. Would you like me to try that?”
Considering my hands are trembling at the thought of dialing the number myself, I nod.
Carol taps the number before engaging speaker phone mode and holding the phone near her chest so that we can both hear it.
The phone rings once. Twice. Three times.
And then—
“Samuel E. Reynolds Building, administrative office,” a woman answers in a brisk yet professional tone.
Carol straightens slightly. “Hello, my name is Carol Boulanger. I’m a patient advocate at St. Luke’s Grandview.
I’m calling on behalf of a patient who has this number listed under her recent call records.
Lucy Wright. She was admitted after a fall.
I was hoping that you would know who she was trying to reach. ”
There’s a pause.
“Hold please,” the voice says.
My pulse pounds so loudly, I hear it thudding in my ears. I don’t know why. The name of the office building means nothing to me, and yet…
Another voice comes on the line. Another woman, as professional as the first if a touch friendlier.
“This is Loni. How can I help you?”
Carol lifts the phone up to her mouth as she repeats everything she told the first woman who answered.
Then, when she’s done, she says, “Ms. Wright is conscious, but due to her current condition, I am advocating on her behalf. We’re attempting to locate emergency contacts or next of kin.
This is the last number she called before her incident. We’re hoping you might know why.”
There’s another pause, even longer than before.
“Thank you for calling,” Loni says carefully. “I’ve taken the message down, and I’ll notify my boss and see if he knows anything about this. Is there a number where he can reach you if he knows your patient?”
Carol rattles off a number. “My name is Carol Boulanger. That’s B-O-U-L-A-N-G-E-R. I will be handling Ms. Wright’s case until she’s discharged.”
What happens then, I wonder. If I don’t know who I am or where I live…
what happens when the hospital lets me go?
How am I going to pay for so many days? I can’t imagine how much it’s costing me already, and if I had a job before I got hurt, I doubt I still do.
I’ve been in a coma for six days and it doesn’t look like anyone has tried to find me.
Do I have friends? Family?
There’s a simple gold band on the ring finger on my left hand. Is that a wedding ring? Am I married?
Is my husband out there, wondering what happened to me?
I don’t know. I don’t know a damn thing, and as the weight of the black hole that’s my memory threatens to swallow me whole, my eyes prickle with scalding tears.
Carol reaches down, patting the top of my hand. “It’ll be okay, Lucy,” she murmurs. “Someone will know who you are. I’m sure of it.”
Maybe. Maybe she’s right. Or maybe there isn’t anyone out there who cares that I’m missing—or hurt—at all.
Who am I?
I don’t know. Oh, I have a name. When the good samaritan who found me called 9-1-1, all I had with me were the clothes I was wearing, the ring on my finger, and the phone in the back pocket of my ruined blue jeans.
Thankfully, the phone survived the accident, and that’s how we eventually discovered that my name is Lucy.
At least, Carol assumed it was from the settings on the smashed phone.
With her help, I searched the device for some clue of how Lucy Wright really is.
But there aren’t any photos. No texts, either, or stored messages.
Even weirder, there’s not a single incoming phone call, as though no one ever bothers to call me—or, as I overheard one hospital tech murmuring to another outside my door, someone found a way to wipe the phone before my traumatic accident.
Or maybe it was a new phone. It could be.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything. They tell me I’ve been in this sterile room with its non-stop beeping and countless nurses and doctors and technicians coming in and out for almost a week, and now that I’m awake again, they thought I would recover quickly.
Not quiet. My contusion is doing okay and I’m breathing on my own, but when it comes to my amnesia, I’m not showing any signs of improvement.
Who am I?
Nothing.
No one.
I’m alone in a hospital of hundreds, with a memory that’s a black hole, and this constant ache that even the pain drip can’t dull.
Because while the medicine is helping with all of the other injuries, it can’t do anything to mend a broken heart.
Someone out there has to love me; after all, that ring means I had to have been married.
They have to care that I’m gone, that I nearly died.
But, so far, Carol is waiting for someone to claim me, and there hasn’t been a single call coming through to my phone, checking to make sure I’m okay.
To make sure I’m alive.
It’s like I’ve been abandoned while I was unconscious, and nearly a week into this new, terrifying reality, I’m beginning to believe that no one will come for me until—
“Dandelion.”