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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 tospark 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. Ineed to knowwhat 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 PaceUniversity. 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. Ineedto 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 shelovedme. 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?”