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CHAPTER SEVEN

T he Emperor holds the door open. Fire and fury burn in his eyes as he stares into mine from across the room. My stomach drops.

The doctor’s face and his glasses are clean and shiny, and he has wet patches on his nice white shirt as he hurries toward me.

“Be careful with her,” the Emperor’s voice booms.

The doctor mutters back. “I am a doctor. I’m not going to break her.”

The Emperor’s eyebrows narrow as his eyes move back to mine.

His voice is softer. “I thought we might have lost you.”

Frowning, I look back at him.

His chin flattens as he says, “You don’t recognize me.”

The doctor comes close. “How are we feeling?” He pulls back my eyelid and flickers a small flashlight back and forth in my eyes.

Over his shoulder, he says, “Maybe it will all come back in the next day or two. It often happens with a head trauma.” I wish he would stop talking about head injuries.

The Emperor snarls, “And if it doesn’t?”

“Why don’t we wait and see?”

With two fingers held up, he mouths, How many? I lift two fingers and mouth, Two. His smile is reassuring and encouraging as he nods. He raises four fingers. I do the same and mouth Four .

He nods again, smiling and mouths, Good girl. Disappointment makes my stomach sag. I blink slowly.

Quietly, to no-one in particular, he says, “Let’s take it one step at a time, shall we?” He moves me to sit on the side of the bed and taps my knee with a rubber disc on the end of a stick. Then he scrapes the sole of my foot with the stick. He takes my elbow and taps my forearm.

As he performs his little tests, he asks me questions in a very quiet voice.

“Do you know what day it is?” I shake my head. “Do you know the date?” No. “ The month?” I think. No. “ The year?” I shake my head again.

He nods with his reassuring smile each time. “Where you are?” Shake. “Your name?” Shake. “Your date of birth?” Shake. “The names of anyone here?” Shake.

He smiles and nods. “That’s good.”

I tell him, “I don’t think it is.”

He smiles again and says, “I’m the doctor.”

He watches me as he waves a sweet-smelling thing under my nose. Then a thing with a bad smell.

He wraps an inflating sleeve around my arm. As he connects a clip to my finger he says, “You’re awake now and you’re conscious. You’re lucid and articulate.” He smiles. “After a shock, the mind sometimes shuts down some or all of the memory while it pulls itself back to health. Like it needs a vacation.”

The Emperor tells him, “We don’t have time for a vacation.”

After a slow blink the doctor says, “The more space and time we can give her to heal and come back, the quicker and, more important, the more completely she will recover.”

He puts a device against my ear. I think that’s for taking my temperature. He turns my hand over and holds my wrist as he looks at his very nice, expensive watch. Then he starts writing on a clipboard.

I say, “I thought the thing you clipped on my finger took my pulse.”

He looks up and smiles. “It does. And also your blood oxygen level. I like to take the heart-rate the old fashioned way, though. It gives me a feel for the rhythm and regularity of your heartbeat.”

“Are you a heart doctor?”

“No. I’m a brain doctor.”

“How is my brain?”

“It looks great as far as I can see.”

“Even if it can’t remember anything?”

His smile deepens. “Your brain is good for a lot more than party tricks.”

The Mastermind has returned to the room. When he sees me, the look in his eyes makes me judder and shake. He steps in to join the Emperor and they both move toward the bed.

Where is my warrior?

He was here, but now I don’t see him.

The Emperor says, “Don’t you think we should try talking about familiar things, remind her of who she is? Use her name? Use all of our names?”

The Mastermind tells him, “You know what the doc says. She’s processing a big shock. The best thing for her is to allow her to come back to recognition and recollection at her own pace.”

The doctor looks back at the Mastermind, as the Emperor says, “Yeah. That’s part of the whole, ‘The mind is strange and it can be unpredictable.’ talk.”

The doctor takes a long breath. “Dissociative amnesia is complicated. It can have many causes. If you drop random facts or memories into a disassociated mind, you can’t know the effect it’s going to have on the patient. The brain is best left to choose its own path to recovery. Especially at first. We should wait for her to recognize things. People. Places.”

“So you say.” There’s an edge in the Mastermind’s voice.

Patiently, the doctor goes on. “We should avoid giving her jogs or jolts. As much as possible we aim for the conscious to recover organically.”

The Emperor’s eyes tighten. “Okay, only two things bother me about that. One is, it sounds like it would be torture.”

The Mastermind looks at me. “It really does. How does it sound to you, little lost kitten?”

“What the fuck do I know? I mean, literally. I know nothing.”

The doctor says, “It’s a natural process. Whatever we want, however we feel about it, it will take the time it takes, and it will not be hurried. All that we’re looking for is her best and most complete recovery.”

Mastermind’s eyes are still on mine as he nods. “That’s what the man says.”

“Only, that’s the other thing,” the Emperor say, “We may not have for fucking ever.” My whole insides tighten. His voice is hard. “We need to get things moving along.”

I shudder.

The Mastermind asks the doctor, “How long are we talking?”

“There’s no way to know. Nothing whatever is guaranteed.”

The Emperor asks him, “And you can’t do anything at all to speed things up?”

“Some practitioners will prescribe psychoactive drug therapies. Personally, I believe that they risk damaging the psyche.”

“Are you serious?” the Mastermind’s laugh is like a grenade. “I didn’t think doctors even talked about a ‘psyche’ anymore.”

“Okay, doc,” the Emperor says, “We’ll get you back home now.”

As the Emperor steers the doctor to the door, I call out to apologize for puking in his face.

“No problem,” he smiles from the door. “It’s all part of the joy of doctoring.”

Nothing about the room seems familiar but, apart from the hospital bed I’m lying in and a mass of medical machines and drips, it looks like somebody’s bedroom. A woman’s.

A stool sits under what I expect would be a dressing table nook in the wall of closets. There’s a small table with a pretty wicker chair. Is any of this mine?

Did I choose the patterned wall covering and the thick, blue tapestry rug? Even though I have no idea what my taste is, it doesn’t seem like this would be it.

The covers over all the closet doors are lovely, expensive silk print scarves, draped and fastened together into pairs and hung from the ceiling to the floor. I like them. I can appreciate how gorgeous they are, but would I have picked any of these bright, floral prints?

The Mastermind pulls the chair up to sit by the bed. He makes me nervous, watching me.

When the lights came on, when I could finally move, I was sure that everything would come flooding back into my mind. The pressure of it all, the sheer weight, I can feel it. Pressing like it’s there, ready to burst. But I don’t remember anything.

I feel like weeping.

The Mastermind sees it. He leans forward to take my hand.

Now his kindness really makes me want to cry.

But I know this much. Whoever I am, whoever inhabits this body, I don’t do that. No crying. No show of weakness.

I tell him, “I need some clothes.”

He showed me one of the closets with clothes hanging inside. I get up and stretch.

He says, “You’ve been getting nutrition from the drips. I bet you must be starving.”

“You know what, I probably am.”

“I’ll get you some food and give you a chance to freshen up. How does fruit, cheese, toast and yogurt sound?”

“Sounds great. And some coffee?”

“The doc said on the first day, you should only have things that are easy on your stomach, so I’ll make green tea. But I’ll bring fresh coffee, too, in case you do feel up to it.”

He gives me a long look before he leaves. “It’s good to have you back.” Those eyes make my knees weak, and I’m not even standing up.

As he leaves, I feel a mixture of longing and lust, with a brimming feeling of sentimentality.

I’m still unsteady, making my way to the bathroom. As I take a shower, I need to lean on the tiled walls a couple of times. While I towel off, I take another stab at moving the cover from the mirror.

Either I’m still pathetically weak or there’s some trick that I’m just not seeing.

It feels strange to be cleaning my teeth without a mirror. I don’t even know what I’m doing, dragging a brush through my hair.

Back in the room, I find some underwear — cotton. Definitely not my taste. I pull on loose pants and a big tee-shirt.

I remember some yoga stretches. Even the easy ones take all the concentration I can muster. My arms and legs are weak. I have to rest in between stretch poses and I can’t hold many of them for more than about half a minute.

After a break, I try some squats — my balance is hopeless, some push-ups — my arms feel like jello, and some sit-ups — I manage five, and for the last one, I’m finally glad there’s not a mirror in sight.

After I take a break, sitting on the floor for a minute or two, I cross the room to the curtains and I pull one back to peer outside.

The whole wall is glass and the glass is black.