At last I have a name.
This thought soothed me less than I'd anticipated. I paced the length of a private waiting room on the second floor of the labyrinth known as North Bluff General Hospital. The bland cream and green décor and cramped, cell-like confines fueled my restlessness. The solitary small window overlooking the parking lot offered a preview of the outside world I was terrified to face.
Arms folded, head down, I continued pushing my sneaker-clad feet across the carpet. The shoes, given to me to replace my ruined Jimmy Choo pumps with the broken heel, felt heavy and strange. Not the type of footwear I was used to wearing, I assumed. After a battery of tests, the psychiatrist, Dr. Kittridge, who struck me as a kind but impatient man, decreed my amnesia, although rare, had been caused by shock rather than any blow to the head and was, most likely, temporary.
So the good news was my head had not been bashed in. The bad news was because I had experienced some horror too terrible to recall I now lived inside a black fog no pill could snap me out of.
"Once you're home and with your family, you'll begin to feel better," the good doctor had predicted. "Don't press for memories. Let them come in their own time."
What if they never do? I worried but thanked him for his care and assurances. How could I not seek clues to regain the essence of my being? He had told me amnesia is almost never permanent. Obviously, the stipulation "almost" triggered concern I was loath to dwell upon.
Now, I paused in front of the window, glimpsing in the glass a reflection of Eliana Zwick, Eliana being me, so I am told. A sullen woman with copper-colored hair, wavy and parted to one side with a windswept look, glared back at me, dark blue eyes burning with determination and defiance. I had expected her, or me as it were, to look as fragile and vulnerable as I felt inside, not so tough. I wish I could describe her as beautiful, but this was not a fairyland awakening where wishes come true. Wearing a more cheerful expression, I might have been considered attractive in a sassy sort of way. Pressing fingers to my cheek, I wondered should I have asked to borrow makeup from one of the nurses. My husband was en route to fetch me, and until this moment I'd given no thought to my appearance.
But with the sick and suffering to tend, the staff had left me here on my own, and I had no idea whether I regularly wore makeup. My quandary melted into insignificance as I studied the translucent woman in the glass. Was she kind and honest or some vile wretch even my brain had rejected?
Finally, I looked past the reflection down at the slow-moving cars and scurrying people scattered across the wet pavement. The autumn afternoon was overcast and drizzly, red and gold leaves splotches of watercolor against a gray backdrop.
A French vanilla-white Mercedes turned into the lot and wove between the rows before pulling into a vacant parking space. The license tag caught my attention, personalized to read "C ZWICK." I watched as a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man in a blue suit got out, closed the door, and opened a black umbrella. The black circle bobbed toward the main entrance.
My husband? I couldn't know.
A day and a half ago I'd walked into the Spruce City police station wearing a torn dress and carrying nothing but a broken shoe in my hand. When I'd opened my mouth to deliver an urgent message, I'd been dumbstruck. I had no clue what I'd intended to say.
How had I arrived at the police station in such a bedraggled condition?
My brain had shut down, buried that answer.
I saw two possibilities.
Either I was demented and prone to blacking out and wandering off, or I had run from danger too terrifying to face. Was the threat the very home my husband would be returning me to? Worse, was he dangerous?
Poor lost soul that I was, I couldn't refuse to accompany him. I had no basis to accuse him of anything. And I had nowhere else to stay.
"Is it safe?" I had asked Dr. Kittridge, my voice a strangled whisper. "Is it safe to go home?"
Looking puzzled by such a question, he'd paused. "You weren't injured," he finally replied.
We both knew that alone proved nothing. But I realized the poor man had no alternative but to send me back to my family. I had no alternative but to go.
I stared out the window, overcome by an impulse to flee. I longed to breathe fresh air, to escape the cloying hospital smells. The door was not locked. Technically, I was free to leave. But running away for no specific reason to go nowhere would be crazy. I was fairly certain I was sane, and to prove it, I remained in the room. As Dr. Kittridge promised, the truth would come out in its own time.
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