“Did you burn yourself?” a doctor asks, bending down to stare at my wrist.

         The kid across the hall yells, ¡Ayúdame!  I lift my arm and turn it toward my face and stare at the round, blistered area about the size of a quarter.

         “Tell me how this happened, Chelsea,” he insists, clamping his fingers like my arm belongs to him, not to me.

         A nurse on the opposite side of the narrow bed  lifts the sheet, and stares at my abdomen, pressing and poking.  She  makes a comment about the bandage on my belly, and I feel her pull at some tape, and hear how she whispers ‘whoa,’ under her breath. She’s calling the doctor, showing him the little red bumps around the edges, and they agree it must’ve been inked on very recently.  A tattoo?   I raise my head above the pillow and gaze at my belly, and there it is. 

S I D, dark green and tiny; about an inch above my navel.                                                            

         The nurse carefully replaces the bandage with a new one and pulls up the sheet.  She rests her index finger on my chin.  “Is Sid your boyfriend, honey?”

         The strangest thing  .  .  .  how normal it feels when I can’t remember who he is.   

               
                            *  *  *

         Two days go by.  Everything is gone.  My life has vanished, like a drained pool, where the only thing left is cracked cement.  Dry.  Vacant.  They do tests and scans, they ask a million questions. They bring in experts.  It doesn’t matter who tries to get inside my brain.  I mean, if someone were to enter my hospital room and point a gun toward my head and tell me to remember my life or else they’d shoot my brains out, I guess I’d have to die.       

         “You need to tell the truth,” Dr. Wang demands, strolling to the other side of my bed so I’ll have to look at her.  “Do you want to know what I’m going to write on your file?”

         My head moves, not up or down or from side to side, just away from Dr. Wang.

         “I’m going to write a comment that you are intentionally withholding information, not only from the hospital personnel, but also from the police.  It’s a form of control, Chelsea, and you are well aware of that fact.”  Dr. Wang sighs and sits on the edge of my bed.  “The police need information.  You have information.  Now, why don’t you cooperate and tell them what they need to know?”

         I’m thinking about Dr. Wang’s pen, and how it should be a gun, and how she should threaten to shoot me if I don’t give her all the facts.

         “Okay.  Obviously, you’re not going to cooperate.”  My mattress bounces when she stands.  “Maybe Dr. Ryan will have more luck with you.”                                                                      

         When she marches away, I can’t help smiling just a little, but it fades when I notice two police officers in the hallway, arms moving in animated conversation, and how Dr. Wang shakes her head repeatedly.  Just then, Dr. Ryan, an old guy with glasses, hurries inside my room. 

         “Don’t let her get to you, kid,” he says, glancing over his shoulder with a grin.  “I don’t like her either.  But here’s the scoop.  Your test results are perfect.  No head injuries.  Nothing to indicate physical trauma to your brain.”

         I look through him, beyond his shoulder, to a place where he becomes a blur, a place where my self-preservation message can focus: 

Do Not Talk

         Inside the ambulance, which is exactly the point where  my memories begin, I made an oath of silence.  Communication on my end will indicate my willingness to know what happened.  The ‘experts’ will then describe the terrible and gory event that made me forget my life, even though I’m not positive there was a terrible and gory event.  Whatever went down, don’t tell me.  Please.  I don’t want to know.

         “Chelsea, I realize you’re probably worn out from the silly questions everyone’s been asking,” Dr. Ryan says, glancing toward the hallway where Dr. Wang is still engaged with the officers.

He drags a chair from the wall to the bed, sits on it, and stares.  His glasses reflect light from the windows.  I can’t see his eyes. 

“I need to know if you can remember your past, and without using your voice, I’ve come up with a different way for you to answer questions. I thought you might agree to take a multiple choice quiz. All you have to do is point to the right answer.  It’s pretty straightforward.”                     Dr. Ryan hands me a paper from his clipboard.

I read number one silently. 

1.      Which address is yours? 

            Of the five choices, labeled A through E, I guess one must be my home, but none of the numbers, street names, or cities look familiar.  Does this mean I have a home?  Or is it a trick question, because I don’t have one?  Tears come, and I squash the quiz inside my fist and launch it across the room.  I want to leap out of bed, run down the hall, over to the elevator, and then I’ll escape.  Escape.  To where?

Dr. Ryan  reaches over to pat my shoulder.  “Don’t you worry about a thing,” he mumbles.

He spins around like someone on a dance floor, and when his footsteps reach the hall, I climb out of bed to tiptoe toward the door, because he’s whispering to someone out there. 

“I think we’d better take it easy with Chelsea Sifuentes.  Dissociative amnesia, if that’s what she has, is very anxiety-provoking.  She’ll show us when she’s ready to remember.  You let Sergeant  Ridley know about the diagnosis, okay?  I don’t want her questioned by the police or anyone else, not for any reason. They’ll have to wait for her statement until I give the medical okay.” 

Whoever he’s speaking to says something I can’t make out, and I hurry back to my bed.  Before I get settled, a nurse rushes in. 

“They’re serving snacks in the playroom, honey.  Chocolate pudding today!  You don’t want to miss that, do you?”

Hey, I’m fifteen, not five, something I learned from the birth date on my hospital bracelet.  The fact bubbles in my throat, tempting me to tell this nurse person my age, but then Dr. Wang would win.  At least on the talking issue.

“You do love chocolate pudding, don’t you?”  The nurse grins. Her teeth have been whitened to an unnatural, blinding shade.

I follow her out the door and realize the hospital gown is open in the back, so I’m trying to tie the strings and walk at the same time, and also think about what it’s like to be me.  It’s fascinating to realize I can remember things like chocolate pudding, yet other people had to tell me my own name.   I have this useful info, stuff I know about.  Like, my hands are called hands.  A book is a book.  Books are filled with words, and I can read.  But I have no idea what state I was born in.  Or if I have a best friend.  Or where I go to school.  Or if I go to school.  Could be, I’m homeless.  Maybe I live on the street.  With Sid. 

The nurse leads me down the hall.  We step inside the playroom, an eerily quiet area except for a cartoony voice coming from a DVD, and she hands me a chocolate pudding cup and plastic spoon.  My paper slippers shuffle when I walk around two kids in wheelchairs to sit on the floor beside this pale, skinny girl who has no hair.  She looks very sad.  Like maybe she’s lost.

My fingers reach toward hers, and she takes my hand and squeezes, and I squeeze back.  Without using words, without even looking at each other, I feel this message flow between us.  She’s saying how lucky I am to be alive. Don’t worry, be strong, she says.  I answer from my hand to hers, trying to communicate that maybe she’s right, but I’m not sure about it, and no matter what, I feel sorry for her, and for myself too.  I try to tell her to get better.  Hang in there, girl!  You have a lot to live for.  But there’s this other thing gnawing at my mind like an orphaned rat trapped inside a tiny, metal cage, completely isolated, without family or friends or anybody around to help. 

What are they going to do with me?