Ophelia
The knock comes soft, before the door swings open. A woman enters, she looks to be in her late forties, with defined cheekbones, cool grey eyes, and a neat bob that frames her face. The badge pinned to her coat reads Dr Whitmore.
I study her features carefully, searching for some flicker of recognition, but nothing comes.
I recall another doctor, a man, but perhaps there are several on staff. With so many students, it would hardly be surprising. Or it’s simply another lapse in my memory.
Two years gone already, and this is yet another piece missing.
To have lived two years of my life and remember nothing of them, no recollection, no trace left in my mind, feels like being cut adrift from myself.
I don’t know this version of me, the girl I must have been during those missing years. What sort of person did I become? Did I change?
How is my relationship with Octavia now, has it stayed the same, or altered beyond recognition?
And my father, what of him?
Did I go on the holiday we had planned?
Did I meet someone?
Was there a boyfriend?
A first kiss… or something more?
A sudden, stabbing pain seizes my temple, so fierce it makes me flinch and draw a hiss between my teeth. I squeeze my eyes shut, palms pressed to my head, as if I might will the agony away.
When I finally open my eyes, Octavia is watching me, concern written plainly across her face.
The doctor studies me in silence, her gaze intent. If she has questions, she keeps them to herself.
Instead, she schools her features into a polite smile, opens the chart in her hands, and addresses me directly.
“Let’s have a look at that head first. Any dizziness? Nausea? Blurred vision?”
“All of the above,” I murmur, trying to sit straighter.
“Mm.” She moves closer, flicking a small penlight across each of my pupils. “Follow the light for me. Good. Now press your tongue to the roof of your mouth…thank you.”
She steps back, gives a small nod, first to herself and then to the nurse I hadn’t even noticed slip into the room.
“Let’s have her booked for a CT,” she instructs evenly. “Given the blunt trauma to the head, we ought to rule out any bleeding or swelling.”
“I don’t remember anything,” I blurt, the words spilling before I can stop them. My own voice sounds unfamiliar, even to my ears. “Not for the past two years, or so I’ve gathered.”
The doctor regards me properly this time, but she doesn’t say anything. Her grey eyes narrowing, before she flicks a glance toward the nurse, who slips from the room without a word.
I’m eased back onto the bed, the paper beneath me rustling under my weight. The doctor leans in, her hands cool against my skin as she examines the cut at my hairline.
“This will need stitching,” she says, her tone brisk but not unkind. “It’s started to clot, but the skin’s split. We’ll clean it properly first, you’ll feel a bit of pressure.”
I incline my head in the faintest of nods, forcing myself to remain still.
When at last she finishes with my forehead, she sets the instruments aside and reaches for a roll of gauze.
“Are you experiencing any other pain, before we move on with the scan?” she asks.
“My ribs feel… tight. Bruised, perhaps. And my feet sting.”
“Let’s have a look, then,” she replies, stripping off her gloves and pulling on a fresh pair.
Without asking, she lifts the hem of my hoodie. Her hands pause when she sees the deep violet spreading across my side.
“That wasn’t there before,” I mutter, frowning at the sight.
“Quite usual,” she answers. “Bruising develops as the hours pass. It often appears far graver before it begins to fade.”
Her gaze drops to my feet. I shift back on the bed and pull off my trainers, letting them fall with a dull thud. The socks follow, and I steel myself as she kneels to undo the bandages I’d wound myself.
The gauze tugs against the raw skin, catching where the cuts have begun to scab. I hiss through my teeth.
The doctor studies my feet, her expression betraying almost nothing. When her eyes meet mine, I catch the questions she holds back.
She cleans the cuts, replaces the dressings, and from there the sequence of events begins to lose its edges.
I’m taken into another room by the nurse for the scan, then brought back here, left only with the waiting.
When the doctor returns, the report is in her hand.
“There’s no internal bleeding,” she begins.
“No swelling either. That is, in truth, the best outcome we could have asked for.” She places the chart on the desk and fixes me with an assessing look.
“You do, however, have a concussion. Moderate in severity, enough to explain the headache, the dizziness, the nausea.”
I nod faintly, already knowing. The pounding behind my eyes makes it impossible to forget.
“You’ll feel foggy,” she continues evenly. “Your thoughts won’t come as quickly as you’d like, your balance may falter, and the headaches will linger. Rest is paramount, no exertion, no late nights, no alcohol, and certainly no further knocks to the head.”
She pauses, if only for a second, before continuing.
“And given your diabetes, you must be particularly cautious. A concussion can disguise or even worsen the signs of a hypoglycaemic episode. Keep your levels checked more often than usual, and do not let yourself run low. The two together could prove dangerous.”
“And the memory?” The words slip out quieter than I mean them to.
She exhales slowly. “Retrograde amnesia,” she says eventually.
“It isn’t uncommon with trauma like this.
Memories near the event are the first to go, and sometimes the loss can stretch further back.
In most cases, recollection returns gradually, though there are instances where it never does.
I can’t give you certainty, only time will tell. ”
My chest tightens, though I do my best to keep my expression even.
“As for your feet,” she adds, with a glance at them, “the nurse will change the dressings daily. They’ll heal, though you must avoid strain wherever possible. You may walk, but don’t overdo it.”
“And my ribs?” I press.
“Bruised, not broken,” she says. “They’ll settle with rest. I’ll give you something for the pain, but beyond that it’s a matter of allowing the body to repair itself.”
She gathers the chart once more.
“We’ll start you on a mild course of antibiotics for the cuts, and give you something light for the concussion and the rib pain. Keep the wounds clean, and take care of yourself. Head injuries are delicate things.”
She hands me a slip of paper and two small bottles of pills. “The instructions are on the slip,” she says.
I nod, still reeling. My mind whirls with questions, but I’m grateful she doesn’t ask her own. No demands for a report, no formal write up. I suspect I owe that silence to my name.
Bellanti.
My sister and I come from Florence, from a mafia family—respected in its legal ventures, feared in the ones that never make it to paper.
As I’ve said before, St Monarche Institute is no ordinary university.
It is a fortress dressed as an academy, a finishing school for the heirs of corruption.
Mafia bloodlines, corporate royalty, children born into dynasties meant to outlast empires.
We are here to be shaped into whatever version of power our families demand.
Which is precisely why my father must never know. The thought of him alone chills me. If word of this reached him, if the doctor so much as whispered the state I came in, he would make certain I paid, whether for embarrassing him or for some other excuse he chose to invent.
I tell myself I’ll keep this from him, that he must never know. But the resolve falters the moment we step out of the infirmary. Faces turn, phones lift. My heart drops.
He will find out.
Of course he will.
Octavia’s gaze flicks sideways. The instant she catches the students staring, she takes a step toward them, tension rolling off her in waves.
I catch her wrist before she can go further. “Leave it,” I murmur. There’s no point. They’re too many.
Her jaw flexes, but she lets me hold her back, eyes still locked on the group until they drop their gazes.
“You still look pale,” she says after a moment, her brows tightening. “Let’s get some food in you.” She turns toward the dining hall, and I follow.
My sister is twenty-two, older than me by a year.
She repeated a class just to stay by my side.
She claims it’s because of my condition, because someone needs to look out for me.
But I know it’s more than that. She’s always had this need to protect me, my friends did too.
And no matter how many times I tell them I can take care of myself, they never listen.
Octavia has always carried the weight for both of us. She calls it instinct. I call it martyrdom. And while I’m grateful for her fierce loyalty, there are moments, like now, when I wish she’d let go of the idea that I need protecting.
I glance at her profile, unable to shake the thought that she looks different, haunted, even. I can’t tell if it was always there, buried in her eyes while I was too wrapped up in myself to see it, or if it took root in the years I’ve lost, in the time I can’t remember.
The dining hall is nearly empty when we walk in. A few students linger at scattered tables, murmuring over breakfast.
Our circle has always been small, just the five of us, though even then appearances had to be kept.
Most of the time it was only Adelaide, Octavia, and me in public. Piper and Eleanor sat apart, playing their part, pretending we weren’t close.
Our families tolerated one another, but they were hardly allies, and open attachment would have looked like weakness, an invitation for betrayal.
We had acquaintances at the academy, of course, faces you nod to in passing, people you might share a table with at an event, but they were never friends.
We cross the hall and settle into what must be our usual spot.