Secret Sister (4 page)

The two doctors left my room. I was glad they were gone. I didn’t want to do an “interview” now, or ever, for that matter. What the hell did all this mean anyway? They were going to interview me, and if I really had amnesia, would they keep me in the hospital until I remembered enough? What was enough?

What if I never remembered anything?

My heartbeat sped up and the machine beeped. I squinted through the glass wall and saw Carin listening intently to some kind of instructions Dr. Badu was giving her.

Suddenly I thought of an old, black-and-white television show on the Nickelodeon channel.
Hogan’s Heroes
, about POWs in a funny concentration camp. I might not recall my own life, but I was sure I could repeat verbatim episodes of this TV show. Even though I found myself thinking I hated the concept. Black humor notwithstanding, there was simply nothing funny about the Nazis with the possible exception of their marching style. ‘Goose-stepping,’ it was called. A giggle tickled my throat.

I was straying.
Okay, concentrate. So, does my memory of ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ mean I’m German
?
Or a soldier?

I fought against the return of hysteria. I love apple strudel. I wished I had one. But I couldn’t remember anything about who I was. Not a name, age, not the teaching thing, not the name ‘Roxanne.’ I sat up straighter in bed and pictured Michael, the hot guy from earlier. My body didn’t react when I thought of him. I imagined having sex with him, but I didn’t know what he might look like naked. Had we slept together?

I needed information. Especially certain information, such as how one cured amnesia. Because I urgently wanted to remember everything. Anything.

The image of that other man I had thought of earlier shimmered in my mind like a mirage. I couldn’t see his face, only his back and shoulders. He was lying in bed, facing away from me, and I longed to touch those broad, smooth shoulders. I looked at my hand. No ring. So, could I be married?
Not sure
.

But I knew I liked apple strudel. Laughter rolled out from me in waves. Oh, God.

Do I believe in God?

I squirmed and put my hand over my mouth and after a moment, my laughter stopped. I listened to the quiet room, and the noisy hospital outside. I heard metal carts and footfalls and people talking. Lots of them. And voices over loudspeakers. And chiming elevators.

I was hot, yet shivered. My hands shook uncontrollably and I stuck them under the covers. I began to wonder if I was dreaming. Or if I was not real. Maybe I was on television.

I stared hard at the corridor where I could see Carin working behind the counter. I didn’t see any cameras. I closed my eyes.

“I’ve got your ice cream,” Carin announced from the doorway.

I opened my eyes. “Goody.”

Carin tilted her chin at that remark, like a hen sensing a fox lurking nearby. She settled herself beside my bed, unwrapped the ice cream, fussed with napkins and utensils, and watched while I ate. She chatted about her brother, Jacey, who was graduating from med school next month, and about how proud everyone in the family was of him.

I kept picturing her with the
Hogan’s Heroes
men. Someone named “Klink.” A stupid bad guy. And a nice black guy. And “Hogan” himself, all smirky cute.

I switched off the TV show in my brain and concentrated on gulping bites of ice cream as I planned my next move. Dabbing at my mouth with a napkin, I met Carin’s gaze with what I hoped was a sane expression. “Can I ask you a couple of things, Carin?”

“Sure.” Her blue eyes widened. “Anything.”

“Did someone die in the car accident I was in?”

Neither of us knew where this question came from, but I hid my surprise better than she did.

Her mouth fell wide open, as if hinged at her chin. “Oh.”

“Is that a yes?”

She jumped to her feet. Her arm hit the dinner tray across my bed, sending stuff careening in the air. Ice cream, tissues, a brush and my carton of apple juice went flying. Carin scrambled to pick things up, apologizing.

I kept my eyes on her. “Who was it, Carin? Who died in the accident?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to you about that.” Carin clutched the ice cream trash against her nurse’s uniform, which had teddy bears and crescent moons patterned on it.

“Why not?”

“Why don’t I go get Dr. Badu?”

I grabbed her wrist and squeezed. “Did I kill someone? Is that what’s going on here? Who did I kill?”

Dr. Badu appeared at the door like a genie. “Carin, why don’t you clean up this stuff and leave Roxanne and me alone for a few minutes.”

I let Carin go. I felt like I was going to vomit. And then I did. The nurse grabbed for the pink vomit catcher, and managed to get some of it in the plastic container. She wiped my mouth with a wet washcloth.

“I hope you feel better, honey.” She hurried out, streaks of vanilla ice cream gunk and vomit across her uniform, water in her eyes.

I felt horrible then, about everything. Especially about Carin. And the guys in
Hogan’s Heroes
.

I started to chortle again, much to my own and Dr. Badu’s alarm. When I looked at her I imagined a green-tinged aura around her.

“So, who did I kill?” I demanded.

I was sure Dr. Badu was going to say ‘your mother,’ or ‘three orphan babies,’ or ‘a dozen nuns,’ but instead she gave me a steadying look.

She clasped my hand. “A week ago last Saturday you were driving a car. A truck struck you head-on, from across the median. The driver was drunk. He was not injured badly. He’s in jail. Your friend, Cathy Chance, was sitting beside you in the front seat.”

Roaring filled my head, as if I was being swallowed by the ocean.
Chance. Cathy. Cathy Chance
. The names pinged against my brain, but bounced off. “Where were we going?”

Dr. Badu thought for a second. “Lunch. And a doctor’s appointment of some kind, I think your family said.”

My head and heart pounded in unison. I lay back on the pillows. Grief stabbed in my stomach as I considered how upset, how frightened, the people who were in my room earlier must have been. Worrying about me. And this Cathy person. “Who were the people in here earlier? The women?”

“One is your mother, Betty Haverty. The other is your grandmother, Ruth. Ruth is Betty’s mother.”

“My mother has a different name than I do?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“But my name is Ruiz?”

“Yes. Your mother said she and your father were divorced when you were an infant.”

“Where’s Ruiz? My father?”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Badu replied. She watched me for a few moments. “The man who was with them is Michael Cimino. He’s your friend.”

I frowned. “Boyfriend?”

“I’m not sure. I think he may be an ex-boyfriend. Your mother said something to that effect.”

“That woman is not my mother.” The words jumped out of my mouth.

“You don’t remember her?” Dr. Badu cocked her head to the side.

Panic returned, swelling into a bubble that enveloped me. My tongue stuck to my teeth. “No, no I don’t. The guy, Michael, is very good-looking.”

“Yes, I’d say he is.”

“But I don’t like him much.”

She nodded. “That may be why he’s an ‘ex.’”

I blinked away more tears and felt sadness, though I didn’t know why, and then fear.

“Is Cathy, is my friend, is she okay?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

I knew she was going to say that, but I trembled with shock at her words. The greenish tint I’d imagined surrounding Dr. Badu darkened to lavender, like a light bulb about to burn out. I saw rainbows in the space around her. I spoke louder, but I couldn’t hear my own voice clearly. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s dead, Roxanne. I’m very sorry. But Cathy Chance was killed in the accident. She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt.”

I stared out the window as the room around me disappeared. Far away I heard a siren, felt the wind hot and dusty in my face, saw clouds and blue sky. But not a pretty one, not a summer sky above the beach. It was a sky above a forest fire. Dark and sooty clouds, full of ash, the blue a frantic pool of heat.

I panted, struggling to stay conscious. “She’s not dead,” I said. “She’s not dead.”

“I’m sorry, but she is,” Dr. Badu said gently. “She was pronounced dead at the scene.”

The roar in my brain overwhelmed all other sound and the room started a lazy spin. I broke into a sweat and pushed the blankets and sheets away; tried to stand.

But I collapsed on the cold floor and vomited again, a lot of fluid. My throat felt scalded as the injury to my ribs moved front and center in the pain parade. I could hardly move. Dr. Badu was on the floor beside me, holding me by the shoulders. Another person in a uniform came in to help.

My skull hurt so bad I thought it would crack open like a raw egg.

Dr. Badu ordered the nurse to put something in my IV bag, a sedative and something for nausea. She explained the drugs I’d been taking were causing the vomiting and the head pain.

She was wrong about that. I thought it was something else, something more ominous.

I thought I was dying.

Dr. Badu and the nurse helped me back into bed. She wrote several things on my medical chart and asked if I had been hallucinating.

“A little.”

“A little?”

“Uh huh.”

She crossed her arms. “What did you see?”

“POWs from an old TV show. Outside in the corridor, flirting with Carin.” I shifted my eyes toward the exit.

The doctor’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Carin’s pretty professional. I don’t think she flirts with anyone. If you told her that, I’m sure she’d think it was funny.”

I turned away and willed myself to go unconscious and fell into blackness dark and deep as a well.

Hours later, my eyes flew open and I sat up to ask Dr. Badu a question that seemed very significant, but of course she was gone. And, of course, I couldn’t remember the question.

I was alone and it was night. The hospital noises had subsided, except for the elevator. It seemed to ping every ten seconds or so, as if the Invisible Man was pranking the staff.

I lay there and replayed the last conversation I had with my doctor.
Your friend died in the accident.

I looked around. There was a different nurse, not Carin, sitting at the desk outside. The air was free of rainbows. Somewhere a radio was on and Gotye was mourning somebody he used to know
.

My mouth tasted sour, but I was too weak to ring the buzzer by my bed, or to pour myself any water.

Cathy
. Cathy Chance was dead. At the scene.

Though I didn’t remember her, I closed my eyes and sobbed myself to sleep.

Chapter 4

Thursday, July 21, 10:30 a.m.

Dr. Patel’s Office

“
Roxanne, if you’ll wait here, Dr. Patel will be with you as soon as he’s off the phone.”

I smiled at the secretary and took a seat in the empty waiting alcove outside Dr. Patel’s office, my third appointment with the psychiatrist in the last three days.

Our first meeting was short and established that I did not remember anything about my identity, where I lived, or the accident.

The second confirmed that, although I didn’t know my name or my past, I seemed to know stuff about class scheduling, elementary school lesson plans and art, particularly the French Impressionist painters. Which seemed to prove to everyone that I was, indeed, Roxanne Ruiz, and that I would soon remember this fact.

Today’s visit was to discuss a discharge treatment plan. The officials in the hospital were ready to let me go out into the world, even though I could remember nothing about my place in it. I kept fighting the urge to say to the hospital staff, “Are you guys crazy?” But frankly, what were they going to do with someone like me?

“Roxanne, you’re looking very well. Not so pale.” Dr. Patel glanced at me appraisingly.

I was finding the way men looked at me unsettling. The doctors and interns and Michael Cimino all had open admiration in their expressions. And sometimes, expectation. It unnerved me, as if I were a specimen of something on display. I wondered if this had bothered me before the accident.

“How are your ribs?” he asked.

I touched them gingerly. “Good. Not too sore.”

He motioned toward the chair opposite his desk. “Please have a seat.”

I sat and folded my hands in my lap. My skin felt dry.  So did my eyes. I blinked and smiled. “How’s it going?”

Dr. Patel met my glance, his face impassive. “Very well. So, tell me, how is it going for you today?”

“Good. You know, okay. Like I’ve been in a crack-up.”

Dr. Patel blinked, and a giggle vibrated in the bottom of my throat. Saying ‘like a crack-up’ sounded sarcastic. “I still don’t remember anything, if that’s what you’re asking,” I blurted out.

He nodded.

I waited. Somewhere behind me in his tiny, cluttered space, a clock ticked. I thought this was out of character for a psychiatrist’s office. As was the clutter. I’d seen plenty of shrinks’ offices on TV and the one thing they had in common was tidiness. Probably based on some therapeutic notion of ‘uncluttered space, uncluttered mind.’

Dr. Patel cleared his throat. “I ran into your mother this morning. I didn’t realize she is a psychologist.”

“Neither did I.”

“Excuse me?”

I crossed my legs. “Sorry, I was making a joke. I meant I’ve learned in the past couple of days that Betty Haverty is a psychologist. She told me.”

“How’s that going?”

“What?”

“Your talks with Betty.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“She’s your mother. Mother-daughter relationships can be challenging.”

I raised my eyebrows. “She’s fine.”

“Is Betty pressuring you to remember?”

I thought of the redhead. She was nice, very bright, if a little cold. She struck me as someone who was unhappy at having to alter the course of her life because of something that happened to her daughter. She acted impatient about my insistence that I couldn’t remember my past, almost as if she suspected I was doing it to spite her. However, I saw no reason to share this opinion with Patel.

For some reason, I didn’t trust Dr. Patel as one should trust a therapist. He seemed to be looking for some reason to keep me in the hospital, and while I was nervous about being released, I was more afraid he wouldn’t. I wanted to be alone, go somewhere quiet and work out what to do.

My plan, made slowly over the last two days, was to go home, visit where I worked and talk to people, see my friend Cathy’s husband, Nick, and ask him questions.

I put that thought on hold. I couldn’t imagine what I would say to Nick. Every time I considered it, my brain froze.

How can I comfort a man I don’t know, about a woman I don’t remember?

“Roxanne?” Dr. Patel was staring hard. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Yes. And no, I wouldn’t say Betty is pressuring me in any way. I’m sure she’s just worried I may never remember.”

“Why would that worry her?”

“Because she doesn’t want to lose her daughter.”

“I don’t understand what you mean. You survived the accident. It was Cathy who was lost.”

I laced my fingers together. “If a person doesn’t remember the past, doesn’t remember a relationship, then it’s gone.”

“I see.”

“You do?” I asked. “So you agree with me?”

The clock ticked four beats. “Are you worried you won’t ever remember, Roxanne?”

“Not worried. Impatient, maybe. Anxious.”

“Do you think you’re depressed?” he asked gently.

“No.”

“You were depressed, according to your doctors, before the accident. It would be understandable, normal really, if you were still suffering from this illness. The chemical imbalance that existed in your brain before the accident is still likely to exist, even if your memories are repressed.”

Betty Haverty had told me about my previous treatment for depression. Currently I was taking nothing but antibiotics and pain meds, and I was feeling much more lucid than the day I woke up from the coma. But, how would I ever know if I was this thing called ‘depressed?’

What did depressed feel like? Sad? Angry? “Do I act depressed?”

“Do you feel depressed?”

“No. I feel confused, and worried. But not sad, or lethargic, or manic. Maybe the car accident fixed my chemical imbalance. From what I’ve heard, I was thrown around a lot, like being in a blender. Maybe my chemicals are now in the
right
balance.”

“You’re very witty.”

Patel didn’t mean ‘witty.’ I’m sure he meant ‘sarcastic.’

He wrote something on his pad. “Let’s move on, Roxanne. I told you the prognosis is that your memory will return fairly soon. The concussion was severe, but there is no sign of intracranial bleeding, and the swelling has gone down significantly. Your procedural memory is fully intact, and we expect your declarative memory to restore itself. But you’ve suffered a great trauma, and it will take time.”

His calm voice did little to take the edge off the tension that had built over our last exchange. “Procedural is how to do things, right?” I asked.

“Correct. Tie your shoes. Drive a car. Use the DVD player.”

“I might be in trouble there. I tried to use the one in my room when Betty brought me a DVD, but I couldn’t figure it out. She had to help me.”

“A DVD?”

“Of graduation from college. Pepperdine University.  Betty thought seeing it might bring back some of the personal, ‘declarative’ you call them, memories.”

“How’d it go?” He kept his eyes on me.

“It didn’t work.”

He nodded and wrote something again. I felt like I was failing a test I hadn’t been warned to study for. “You said my condition is called retrograde amnesia. That I’ve lost my memory from right before the accident. But I read some articles on the internet last night that say this type of amnesia usually blots out a period of time of a person’s memory, like a few months. But I don’t remember
anything
about Roxanne Ruiz. Why can’t I remember anything, such as my childhood, that happened before the car accident?”

Patel shrugged. “Head trauma commonly is accompanied by sudden and even persistent memory loss of varying degrees. Yours is unusual, as you’ve discovered. But not unknown. The combination of striking the right temple, the fearfulness of the accident, the loss of your friend, these are all exacerbating circumstances. I expect the symptoms to disappear when the swelling goes away.”

“And then what? I wake up and remember everything? Everyone?” My heart raced. “Will I remember the actual accident?”

“Possibly. But you may not ever recall that day, or even those few weeks of your life.”

“Is that my brain’s way of protecting me from the truth that I’m responsible for someone’s death?”

His eyes were serious. “Do you think you are responsible for your friend’s death, Roxanne?”

“I was driving the car.”

“Yes, you were. But a drunk driver was behind the wheel of the truck that caused the incident.”

I wanted to slap him for saying ‘incident’ to describe a woman’s death. “Well, I feel responsible.”

“Your friend wasn’t wearing her seatbelt.”

“She didn’t deserve to die because of it.”

Patel took a deep breath. “Did Dr. Badu mention that the police want to talk with you?”

“Yes. But she told them I don’t remember anything. She didn’t think they’d want to talk to me at all.”

“She’s wrong. They need to hear from you, that you don’t remember anything. A detective, Henry Morales, called today and asked when they could talk with you. If you like, I can ask him to interview you here in my office. Maybe sometime in the next week or so?”

Something in his voice made me tense. “Why would I meet them here, Dr. Patel?”

“So I would be available to explain that the drugs you were taking for depression should not have impaired your driving skills. And that your toxicology reports actually show only traces of them. So there’s no reason to question your ability to drive.”

“Are you saying the police would put me at fault in the accident? Because of my medication?”

“No one has said that to me, Roxanne. But I’m concerned they might think you had the accident because you
weren’t
taking your medication. As I confirmed, the toxicology report shows trace amounts. It’s my opinion you hadn’t been taking your meds for a week or longer.”

After a moment, I realized what he was implying. “So I wasn’t taking my medication. Which means the police could think I caused the accident because I wasn’t treating my depression?”

“You have a history of serious depression. And yes, you weren’t taking your medication as prescribed.” Dr. Patel leaned forward. “That shows a lack of caring for yourself. And your mother said you had recently broken off a long-term relationship with your boyfriend. I don’t want the police to run away with those facts and imagine they mean something that they don’t.”

“Like what? Like the accident was a suicide attempt?”

He seemed impressed I’d made the connection. “Very good. But there are no facts to lead the police, or anyone else, to believe that. At my request, your mother searched your house and found no note. And I spoke to your psychiatrist, and to Dr. Seth, your psychologist. Neither indicated to me that a suicide attempt was something they were anticipating.”

I felt dizzy. It was clear Dr. Patel had considered the possibility that I attempted suicide by car accident. Enough of a possibility that he’d taken aggressive steps to rule it out. I put my hands to my cheeks, feeling embarrassed and ashamed.
Could I have done such a thing?

I stood. “I don’t need you to talk to the police with me. I don’t remember the accident, and that’s all I can tell them.”

“I see.” He waved his hand at the chair. “Please sit down again, Roxanne. I’ve obviously upset you. That wasn’t my intent.”

“I wouldn’t hurt someone I loved, Dr. Patel. I might not remember the details of my life, but no one would hurt their best friend if they had decided to kill themselves in a car crash. Right? Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

“It would be unusual. Generally this scenario only plays out with mothers or fathers killing their children to keep them from the other parent.”

His look remained steady. But ‘unusual’ didn’t mean ‘unheard of.’ I crossed my arms. “So what, in your opinion, is the bottom line about my current mental state?”

“Please sit. Then we’ll discuss it.”

I perched on the edge of the chair, the frame nipping at my bruised bottom.

Patel seemed visibly rattled. “Well, let me first say you have perfect semantic recall about your profession as a teacher, as well as prospective memory
about events in the future, such as you mentioned you know school starts on September 2 this year. It’s your episodic memory about a particular time, or place or person, such as your sixteenth birthday party, or your college graduation that you are missing. But I am confident this is a temporary condition.”

“I’m glad you’re confident.”

“You’re not?”

“Why would I be? I feel like a freak.” I squeezed my arms against my breasts, which I had decided were ridiculously large for someone my size. The curves of my body were still as unfamiliar to me as my past. “It’s a terrible feeling, not to remember anyone.”

“I’m sure it is.” Dr. Patel nodded. “Have you heard from your friends?”

“A few. A woman named Jen called. And a man named Bradley. Some guy named Freddy, a tennis coach, called to say ‘get well.’ And Michael Cimino has been around every day.”

“How is that going?”

“What do you mean?”

“He was your boyfriend for years, I understand. Do you feel anything for him when you see him?”

“Anything? You mean sexual?”

“Anything that would remind you of a personal history with the man.”

“No.” But that wasn’t totally true. Michael was very compelling. Sexy and glib, the sound of his voice touched something in me. I’d kept him at arm’s length, however. “He’s trying hard to be nice. But he’s nervous. I think he thinks I’m crazy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He stares at me as if he doesn’t believe someone could get amnesia and not remember him.” I cleared my throat, aware of the damnation in that observation. “I mean, he seems baffled by my condition. Maybe he thinks I crashed the car on purpose, too.”