When I Was Jane
When I
Was Jane
By Theresa Mieczkowski
Edited by Margo Navage Padala
Two Touch Press
New York
Copyright© 2015 by Two Touch Press
All rights reserved.
is a trademark of Two Touch Press
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form whatsoever
without written permission by the publisher.
For information visit our website at twotouchpress.com.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are creations of the author's imagination. Any resemblance
to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental and not subject to interpretation.
Library of Congress Control Number 2014922183
Two Touch Press, New York
ISBN: 978-0-9862540-1-7
Cover image by Theresa Mieczkowski
All rights reserved.
For Kristin, as promised.
Long, long ago.
∞
We don’t see things as they are,
We see them as we are.
~Anaïs Nin
When I Was Jane
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Acknowledgements
Further Thought on When I Was Jane
~1~
“Stay with us.”
Distant sounds break through the silence.
Sirens.
Radios.
Voices.
“Took you guys long enough. She’s a goner.”
“Ma’am, can you hear me? Can you tell us your name?”
Doors slam. Flickering bursts of red and blue pierce the darkness.
“We’ve got you, ma’am.”
An arm slides behind my back.
“Try to keep still.” A woman's voice. “We're going to move you.”
Hands grab and lift. Too many hands. Too much force.
“Look what I found. She's been drinking. Perfectly good waste of a Mercedes.”
“When will these people ever learn?”
Flying weightless, tight cocoon. Jarring, pulsing pressure.
“Touching down in four. Page the on call.”
We drop slowly. Wheels scrape concrete.
“What’ve we got?”
“Female, DUI…head trauma…femoral injury…”
“Trauma room four. Prep for surgery—”
“Wait.”
Hair is pushed from my eyes. Breath on my face. Peppermints, coffee.
“She looks like…”
“We’re running out of time, Charles.”
My hand is lifted, dropped.
“Oh my God, do you know who this is? Audrey. Oh God. Is there another one coming? Is there a little—”
“We gotta move her now.”
“Right. Page Dr. Gilbert. Tox comes to me only. You hear me? Go. Move. Move!”
And then we’re flying. His voice above me breathless, begging.
“Audrey, for the love of Christ, stay with me. Jason's coming.”
In my dream, the day is cold and raw. Red and blue lights reflect off the surface of the dark water onto something bobbing up and down. A bottle. I dive in after it, but it is carried out of my reach.
Someone cries out from the boat. “No! Come back.”
I turn to see him drift into the fog.
His pleas blow in on the wind. “Don’t go!”
I swim for the bottle, my limbs becoming heavier and heavier. When I can no longer stay afloat, I let myself sink into the darkness below.
“Breathe!” His voice echoes in my ears.
I know better than to breathe underwater, but I’m afraid to ignore his command. Even though I don’t understand why he’d want me to, I do as he asks.
I take a breath.
“Look again, Patel,” a man says harshly. “Run her through one more time.”
A heavily accented voice replies. “Keep calm, Dr. Gilbert. We have to treat her like any other patient.”
“She isn’t any other patient.”
“You know it is too early to determine the—”
“Did you see that? She blinked.”
My eyelid is pried open. Bright light shines in my face. Blurred figures sway in front of me.
“Audrey, it's me. Can you see me?”
“For God’s sake, Gilbert, give her a moment.”
I see only blinding white.
“Audrey! Audrey!” Rubber soles drag across a polished floor. “Let me go, damn it. She was awake. Let me go!”
He’s back on the boat, floating away.
~2~
I wake to the sun on my face. The sky is blue and bright behind the window, so bright I have to blink a few times to adjust my sight. A silver heart-shaped balloon waves in the air, blown by a fan. It dances about, bumping against the glass as if trying to get out and fly. I follow the string down to a shelf overflowing with flowers, cards, and stuffed bears. They sit crowded together, staring.
“Welcome back.” A man stands smiling next to my bed. A doctor, judging by the long white coat he wears over his dress pants and shirt. Above his ears, tufts of greying hair frame his bald brown head. “We have been worried about you. Do you remember anything?”
I try to place his accent…Indian, I think.
He raises his eyebrows and waits for me to answer. I shake my head.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks.
I glance at the name tag pinned to his white coat and nod.
“Try to answer,” he says.
“Dr. Patel,” I whisper, hoping I've pronounced it right. My throat feels like it’s been scraped out with sand.
“See? She remembers you,” someone says from the other side of the room. “The damage isn't—”
Dr. Patel looks over his shoulder. “Please let me do my job. I don’t want to have to remove you again.”
He carefully holds a cup of water to my mouth and guides my head forward so I can take a sip. “Do you know my first name?” he asks.
I look up at him, wondering why I’d know that. I shake my head.
“Do you know your name? Do you know where you are?”
I remember pieces of things, flashes of time. I remember being pulled from a car. I remember flying in a helicopter. I remember voices. Female, car accident, multiple injuries.
“What is your name?” he asks again.
I remember what they called me. “Jane?”
“Tell me what you remember.”
I strain to speak. “Jane Doe, possible DUI. Head trauma, femoral damage. She didn't kill anyone at least.”
He closes his eyes and nods. “She is echoing what she heard when she arrived,” he says over his shoulder. “Charles will concur.”
The person behind him sighs. “Elliot, please.”
Dr. Patel hesitates and reluctantly steps to the side, revealing a much younger doctor sl
ouched in a chair. Unlike Dr. Patel, he’s dressed entirely in scrubs. He looks strung out, eyes glazed and bloodshot, jaw darkened by stubble. One of his legs bounces anxiously.
“Do you know this man?” Dr. Patel asks.
I study the younger doctor’s face. He stares back at me like the stuffed bears from the shelf. Frozen, waiting.
“Do you know who this is?” the older man asks, more forcefully this time.
“Yes?” I say with uncertainty, hoping they’ll let me go back to sleep.
The younger man jumps from the chair and starts towards my bed. “Let me talk to her privately for a minute.”
Dr. Patel puts his arm out to stop him from coming any closer. “Tell me his name,” he says, covering the younger doctor's badge.
I struggle to swallow. I whisper the only name that comes to me. “Wyatt?”
The young doctor’s eyes harden. “No.”
I force myself to raise my drooping eyelids. “Your voice is…familiar, I think.”
He again asks Dr. Patel to give us a moment alone, but the older man ignores him, so he turns to me. “You remember my voice? What do you remember me saying?”
I try to concentrate, but there are only pieces of thoughts, sounds of words that slip from my grasp the moment I try to settle on them.
“I think I dreamt you said…come back. You told me to keep breathing.” The voice I hear when I talk sounds foreign to me. “I’m sorry, that’s it.”
Dr. Patel puts a hand on the younger doctor’s arm. “She’s recalling incidents that occurred after the accident. She subconsciously heard you yelling out to her. Enough questions, she needs to rest.”
He shakes the older man off. “Do you remember your age? Where you live? Anything?”
I realize for the first time that I don’t know anything at all. My mind is a blank page where thoughts appear and erase themselves before I can see what they are.
The younger doctor snatches the clipboard hanging off the edge of my bed and flips through the papers. “I told them to decrease the Dilaudid—it's going to throw off her mental clarity.”
Dr. Patel lowers his voice. “Gilbert, you are not her doctor.”
“And what am I supposed to tell Daisy?”
The older man takes the clipboard from him. “We can discuss that later. She’s had enough. Go get some sleep; you need it.”
“Who’s Daisy?” I hear myself ask.
Dr. Patel puts his hand up to stop his colleague from answering, but it’s no use.
“Your daughter,” Dr. Gilbert says. “Don't you remember her? She's been crying for her mother for the last six days.”
The room begins to spin. “I have a daughter?”
“We.” He grips the rail at the bottom of my bed. “We have a daughter.”
~3~
“Blink if you understand me,” Dr. Patel says, staring down at me over his glasses. His eyebrows look like fuzzy white caterpillars resting on his forehead. I watch them, waiting to see if they get up and crawl away.
Next to him, Dr. Gilbert stays motionless, a sickened expression distorting his face. “Blink, Audrey.”
I blink up at them as I’m told.
The older man puts a hand to my face. “You’ve had a seizure. It’s not uncommon with head injuries like yours. It will take a little time to come out of it.”
Dr. Gilbert takes a penlight from his pocket and holds it up to my eyes. His colleague grabs his arm.
“Jason, you were warned,” Dr. Patel says, pressing a button by the side of my bed.
Two men dressed in white enter the room and wait by the door with their arms folded.
Dr. Gilbert flares his nostrils. “You can’t be serious.”
I grasp the corner of Dr. Patel’s coat to get his attention but can only manage a garbled please.
“Try to keep calm,” he says, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. “It will take a moment before you can speak. You may feel a little adrenaline rush in a minute or two. That will wake you up a bit.” He looks towards the men at the door. “Please take Dr. Gilbert for a walk.”
“I can go myself!” he says as they put their hands on his shoulders. He shakes them off and darts to the side of my bed. I notice remnants of a fading black eye and a swollen, bruised lump of skin near the corner of his mouth. “Don’t tell them anything, Audrey,” he whispers before he’s pulled from the room. Metal pans crash to the ground in the hallway. “Don’t touch me!” he says over muffled arguing. “She's my wife!”
Dr. Patel closes his eyes and sighs. “I’m sorry about that.”
I look down at my left hand. There’s a broad line of paler skin around my ring finger.
“They removed your jewelry when you got here. We have it in a safe.”
I shake my head slowly.
“Try to speak.”
“Are you sure I’m…” I gesture towards the door.
He smiles. “Yes, I am sure. You are married to him. Believe it or not, I have known you for years. Everyone here cares about you. I know you must feel scared, but you need to trust us.”
I stare up at the ceiling. His words are sounds and nothing more.
“So who am I?” I speak slowly, concentrating on getting each word out. “And where am I?”
Dr. Patel covers my hand with his. “Your name is Audrey Gilbert. That was Jason Gilbert, a heart surgeon here at the hospital. He is your husband.”
“My husband.”
“And you are in New York.”
“City?”
“State. At St. Genevieve, a large teaching hospital about forty miles from the city. You and your husband live in the next town over from here.”
“My husband,” I say again, waiting for it to sink in.
“To be fair, he’s normally much calmer than that. He's been through a lot. It hasn’t been easy for him. You were flown in after a terrible car accident. You weren't expected to make it.”
“I wasn't drunk driving. I know they said DUI, but that’s not right.”
“And you remember this?”
“No. But I just know I wouldn't. I mean, I don't think I would.” I realize how stupid I sound. “Never mind.”
“Well according to your blood tests, you are right,” he says. “But I am not allowed to talk to you about anything other than your injuries and the specific information I need to make my diagnosis.”
“Because of the police?”
“Because of your husband.”
I want to say I don't have a husband, but it seems useless. This entire conversation is surreal. They could be lying to me. I could have been kidnapped by the CIA and had my memory erased. They could be aliens in human doctor form for all I know. Anything is possible.
“Was he in the car too?” I ask. “His face—”
“No, you were alone. His face looks that way because, like many of our younger staff, Jason belongs to the Jiu Jitsu club down the street. It’s how he gets out the stress of having such an intense job.”
It looks to me like someone got their stress out on him.
I glance down and survey my body. My left leg is in a cast, and my wrist is splinted and bandaged. The skin on my arms looks like the canvas from a splatter painting; cuts and gashes crisscross bruises of various size and color. I noticed earlier that the side of my face was numb when I tried to talk, and I now realize there are bandages around my head that cover one of my eyes. I touch my face with my good hand. It feels wrong. Lumpy, bruised.
“May I have a mirror?” I ask.
“Not yet.” Dr. Patel pats my leg before standing up.
I reach for him. “Wait…can you tell me anything else?”
He sighs. “I promised your husband that he would be present when we discuss personal things. It can be overwhelming to learn your history all at once, and we need to let you rest so your body can handle the stress.”
“But—”
“You have very serious injuries, my dear, including minor brain trauma. There may be some damage, but we wi
ll need to do more tests before we know conclusively. You may experience periods of extreme fatigue, dizziness, blackouts. And there is the possibility of another seizure, so we cannot risk doing too much for now. Your medications will help you sleep a lot of it off.”
I take a deep breath to speak, but a spasm grips my side, and my breath catches painfully in my chest.
Dr. Patel listens to my lungs with a stethoscope. “Give it time. You’re alive, and that is all that matters right now. It’s very early and you need your rest, but soon we can begin some tests. It may take time, but you’re going to be OK, Audrey.”
I turn the name around in my head. Audrey. AUD-rey. Au-DREE. It doesn't feel right. “That’s not my name.”
Dr. Patel leans down and smiles at me the way someone might if they were speaking to a small child. I can see he believes I’m confused. He doesn’t seem to understand that they’re the ones who are confused. “What shall I call you then?” he asks.
I give him the only name that sounds right. “Jane.”
I have moments of awareness and then gaps of nothing. At times the sky behind the window is black and others it’s bright blue, which is the only way I can tell that days are passing. Nurses scurry in to check my pain; aides sit on the bed bending my limbs. They talk to me, and sometimes I respond. The doctor who thinks he’s my husband paces around my room, quietly observing everything that goes on. He wants to speak to me alone, but Dr. Patel warns him about tense interactions. Instead, he watches me closely when I talk.
One morning when the husband-doctor is gone, Dr. Patel walks into my room and announces that we’re ready for more tests.
“What do you mean more?”
“We tried a few days ago. Do you remember?”
“No. Maybe. I thought I dreamt that.”
“You are much stronger now. I admit we were a little over anxious to get you up and running again. You’re one of our own, after all.”
I certainly don’t feel like one of them. “How long have I been here?”
“Almost two weeks.” He sits on the edge of my bed and adjusts his glasses. “I would like to tell you about the different types of memory. Within your conscious mind, there is a vital distinction between knowing something and remembering it. Semantic memory is common knowledge of facts, general information acquired over a lifetime. State capitals, for example. Episodic memory, which we will be testing now, employs recollection, which is retrieving information as experienced by you specifically. It is completely autobiographical; a summation of your very own thoughts, feelings, and actions. Your semantic memory tells you what a kite is, but your episodic memory holds sensations associated with what it is like to fly one.” He looks at me pointedly. “So I’m sure you can understand how episodic memory is a vital part of our identity.”
When I Was Jane Page 1
