Chapter 27
CHAPTER
I ’m starting to look like my mother.
The thought stabs at my heart. I grab the concealer I’ve just put on and apply a second, thicker layer under my heavy-lidded eyes.
It cakes into the fine lines, emphasizing instead of hiding the creases.
I should’ve iced the swelling before attempting makeup, but I didn’t have the energy when I dragged myself out of bed after another sleepless night.
It’s been almost three days since I’ve slept anything more than a fifteen-minute catnap.
Every time I shut my eyes and start to drift off, memories flood back.
Bits and pieces. Flashes of moments. Like me kneeling in front of Mr. Sawyer in that room and him backhanding me across the face.
Hard. Not even the sleeping pills have helped.
Lord knows I’ve taken a handful over the last forty-eight hours.
I just can’t wrap my mind around so much.
I’ve written everything down in a notebook—trying to gather all the puzzle pieces before I can attempt to solve it.
The memories. The clues I’ve missed. All of which make sense now—how Jocelyn didn’t come up in a search, why my recollection of the details in that motel room were so vivid, Lucas telling me he hated how we’d lost touch in senior year. Yet nothing makes sense.
Except maybe my dating habits for the last twenty years—why I never wanted a man for more than sex, why I couldn’t bring myself to have a relationship with even the nicest guy.
I’d always been proud of my independence, never stopped to think why it was so important to me.
Now I question whether I was being strong and independent or if I was afraid —afraid to trust a man.
My cell rings from the other room, and I toss the makeup onto the bathroom counter and rush to grab it. I’m waiting for a call.
“Hello?”
“Hi. May I speak to Elizabeth Davis, please?”
“This is she.”
“This is Emma from Dr. Sterling’s office. I’m returning your call.”
“Yes, hi. Thank you.” I’m not sure what to say next, because I have no idea who this doctor is to me.
If she’s even someone to me. I pick up the appointment card lying on the counter, the one I found in the bottom of the box with the yearbook.
A date is scribbled in blue ink, the year nearly two decades ago.
The edges are tattered and worn, like it spent time in a wallet.
For all I know, the card belongs to someone else.
My name isn’t written on it, just a date and time and an office address here in the city.
“Did you . . . need to make an appointment?” the woman says after I’m quiet for too long.
“Oh. Yes, please.”
“Can you confirm the last four numbers of your Social Security number for me? I just want to make sure I have the right patient.”
“Sure. It’s five, four, six, four.”
“Great, thank you.” I hear some clacking on a keyboard, and then . . . “Has any of your information changed since the last time you were here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What’s your address and telephone number?”
I rattle off my information from twenty years ago and hold my breath, waiting.
“Great. Let me check what we have for the next available appointment.”
She found me. I am a patient.
My heart races. I’ve been to a psychiatrist. And I don’t remember.
“How is next Thursday at two?”
I can’t possibly wait that long. I’ll die of sleep deprivation. Is that even possible? Do people die of lack of sleep? It certainly feels like I could. “Is there any way I can come in sooner?”
“Are you in crisis?”
If this isn’t a crisis, I’m not sure what is. “Yes. I can’t sleep. Can’t eat . . .”
“Okay. How about tomorrow morning? I can add you to the schedule before Dr. Sterling’s day starts. She’s busy at the moment, but I know she won’t have a problem with that.”
I breathe out a sigh of relief. “That would be great. Thank you. The sooner the better.”
The following morning, I arrive at the address on the card at six thirty.
The building is nondescript, typical of many skyscrapers here in the city.
I can’t swear I’ve been here before. It doesn’t jostle anything inside of me.
Not a feeling. Not a memory. Since I’m early, I walk to a coffee shop a few doors down and grab a double espresso.
I slept a little last night—two hours in one shot.
But my body is dragging, even if my mind is spinning a million miles an hour.
At 6:50, I ride the elevator up to the eleventh floor and find suite 1111. Still, nothing rings a bell. But when I open the door and see the small waiting room, I’m certain I’ve been here. The woman at the window smiles warmly.
“Hi. Elizabeth?”
I nod.
She passes a clipboard with some papers through the small opening in the glass. “If you could, please fill these out. It’s been a while since we’ve seen you.”
“Of course.” I take a seat, fill in the blanks on the forms—insurance carrier, current medications, hospital admissions.
But between each question, my eyes dart around the office—I’m trying to remember something, anything , just being here even.
I’m on the last question when the door to my left opens.
“Elizabeth?”
I turn, and my heart stops. I remember her. A younger version, but I’ve definitely met this woman. A memory flashes in my head.
A locked room.
Me banging on the door.
A hospital?
A mental ward?
Was I locked in a mental ward?
The doctor lowers her voice. “Elizabeth? Are you okay?”
I swallow and stand. “Sorry, yes.”
It doesn’t look like she believes me. Why would she? I’m full of shit. I’m a fucking train wreck. But she smiles warmly and nods toward where she just came from. “Come on back.”
I follow her down the hall to an office.
It’s familiar, but I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been in here before or because it looks like something you might see in a movie.
There’s a long beige couch with a navy-and-beige armchair across from it.
Shelves are lined with books, and a coffee table displays magazines fanned out.
A box of tissues waits on the end table.
Dr. Sterling walks to the lone chair, motions to the couch. “Have a seat. Make yourself comfy.”
I sit, but I’m anything but comfortable. My eyes keep scanning the room, searching for something to spark another memory. The doctor gives me time to do whatever it is I need to do before she sits, crosses her legs, and begins.
“So, it’s been a while.” She smiles.
“How long?”
She picks up a file from the table next to her and opens it, lifts a few papers. “It looks like almost nineteen years. We had our older charts digitized a decade ago before destroying them, so I was able to review your records.”
“Do you remember me?”
“I do.”
I meet her eyes. “I don’t remember you. Well, I do. Your face is familiar. But I don’t remember being a patient.”
To her credit, the doctor’s face remains impassive. She’s good, been at this a long time.
“Is having difficulty with your memory a new problem?”
I take a deep breath and exhale, nod my head. “Have I ever been to this office? Been in this room?”
“Once. To be fair, it might look different. The office has been redecorated a few times since then.”
The image of the locked hospital room flashes in my head again. “Was this office the only place we met?”
Dr. Sterling’s face grows concerned. But she quickly slips her poker-faced mask back on. “We initially met when you were hospitalized.”
“Hospitalized for what?”
The doctor hesitates. Rightly so. I might be suffering from some sort of mental breakdown, but I haven’t lost my common sense.
I sound unhinged. Any decent psychiatrist would take one look at me—at the bags under my eyes, at the bruised bottom lip I’ve chewed to a pulp, at the erratic way I’m acting—and deem me fragile, want to take it slow.
But I can’t take the wait anymore. I need to know what the hell happened to me, and I need to know now.
So I sit up straight, attempt to look a little normal, and try to convince her I’m stronger than I am.
“I’m a full-time English professor at Pace University.
I’ve been there for twelve years now. I haven’t called in sick or missed a day of work until recently, when my mom was hospitalized.
I date. I go to the gym. I don’t do drugs or drink more than socially.
I swear, up until recently, I thought I was completely normal.
I might appear a little scary right now, but that’s because I haven’t been able to sleep for days, since random memories started coming back, things I’ve never been aware of, at least not in nearly two decades.
I need to know what happened to me. The unknown is eating me alive. ”
Dr. Sterling looks into my eyes. I can see the wheels in her head turning as she mulls over what to do. Eventually, she nods and opens her folder again. “You were brought to Creedmoor by a neighbor.” She flips a few pages and traces her fingers across typed words. “A Mr. Hank. Do you remember him?”
My heart races. Oh my God —what Mr. Hank said the other day about me being in the hospital, about how he’d spoken to my mother and she’d told him she loved me.
That might be true? I swallow a lump in my throat to respond.
“Yes. He’s my old landlord, who’s also a good friend. But why did he bring me in?”
“You suffered a break of some sort. I was your treating physician. You hadn’t slept or eaten in a week, and your neighbor was concerned for your well-being. When you arrived, you told us you were someone other than who you are.”
I swallow. “Jocelyn Burton?”
Dr. Sterling scans some more pages in her folder. Stops with her finger in the middle of some handwritten notes. “Yes, that was it.”
“What else did I say?”
“Not too much. You didn’t want to talk. Your neighbor told us that the week before there had been an altercation at your apartment.”
“What kind of an altercation?”
“It was never clear what exactly had occurred. Your neighbor heard yelling and found you in the hallway, screaming at a man. He chased him away with a baseball bat.”
I shake my head. God. I don’t remember that, either.
Dr. Sterling continues. “We gave you some benzodiazepines to help you sleep. The hospital kept you on a psychiatric hold for a few days. But once we determined you weren’t a threat to yourself or others, we had no legal basis to keep you.
You came to one follow-up appointment here at the office, but didn’t continue treatment after that. ”
“Did I tell you anything at the appointment?”
“You shared that you’d once had a relationship with an older man. And that he . . . used to make you kneel. Apparently, the night your neighbor intervened, you’d had a date who tried to make you . . . pleasure him from that position, and you got upset. It triggered you.”
An instant headache forms, and I rub at my temple. I told someone about Mr. Sawyer? “Did I say anything else about the older man?”
Dr. Sterling shakes her head. “I got the feeling there was more to that relationship than you cared to discuss. But you didn’t want to talk about it, or anything related to growing up in Louisiana, or your time in Florida before moving to New York.”
“My . . . time in Florida?”
She nods. “You said you’d spent a few weeks there before coming to the city.”
Jesus. A period of my life is blacked out. I guess that’s why I thought Jocelyn went to Florida. I suppose she did . . . I take a minute, trying to absorb everything—all the new pieces of the puzzle.
After a while, Dr. Sterling sets the file on her lap back on the table and leans forward. “Has something specific happened recently that brought you in today? Or have your memory issues just gotten worse?”
I’m torn on how to answer. I don’t want to reveal too much, but I also need to understand what’s going on in my head.
Vague is best here. “Recently I was reminded of something bad that happened to a friend of mine two decades ago. At least I thought it happened to her. Except now . . . I’m not sure the friend exists.
She never existed. I’m pretty sure it happened . . . to me.”
Dr. Sterling nods. “Our brains are very protective of us. After a trauma, we can sometimes suppress memories, or even create false ones. It’s called dissociative amnesia.”
She tries to get me to talk more about the traumatic event, but I keep redirecting and asking questions about what she’s called dissociative amnesia.
Will everything come back at some point?
Is there a way to speed that up? Does having it once mean it could happen again?
By the time the soft buzzer on the clock on the table between us goes off, I’m drained.
Not that I wasn’t before, but now it feels like I might not be able to get off this couch.
Dr. Sterling stops the alarm and lifts her notepad. “I know this was a lot to take in this morning. How are you feeling right now?”
“Like I wish I was a polar bear and could go into hibernation for a few months.”
She smiles. “I’d love to set up another appointment. I think we could work through some of the issues we’ve touched upon today.”
“Can I think about it?”
She nods and stands. “Of course.”
I extend my hand. “Thank you for making time to see me.”
“I will always see a patient in crisis. But I hope this isn’t goodbye, Elizabeth. I really do think I can help.”
I smile politely. I’m sure she could. The problem is, who would she help . . . Elizabeth or Jocelyn?