When I Was Jane

by Theresa Mieczkowski

  “You have something to do,” Jason says coldly. “It's called get better.”

  Dr. Patel listens to my chest and nods at Jason. “It's healing. No damage done. She doesn’t need a ventilator yet.”

  Thomas bounds in breathless. “What’s going on? I heard the page for Patel.”

  Jason hands him the crumpled page from his fist. “She's been reading the newspaper and had an anxiety attack.”

  “Oh, Audrey,” Thomas says, shaking his head. “Reading that garbage will only make you anxious, plus you know the small print can induce an epileptic episode. You have a concussion, remember?” He plops himself down on the edge of the bed and throws a peppermint into his mouth. “Dottie, we may need you to babysit this one round-the-clock.”

  I look from Thomas to Jason and can’t decide who to ask. “Did one of you fake the results of my blood test?”

  “Oh, Lord. I told her not to worry about that.” Dottie hurries over to the papers strewn on the floor and starts to collect them. “I'm gonna take these to the trash where they belong.”

  I know she won't be leaving before I get my answers. It’s just too good not to stay and listen; she is a soap opera fan after all.

  Jason looks at me with contempt. “Of course not.”

  “I probably would have,” Thomas says, “but I didn't need to. It was clean, I promise. That article is bullshit.”

  “You would have done no such thing,” Dr. Patel says. “We are men of our oath, might I remind you, Charles.”

  “I’m just saying it could’ve been tempting. If she’d been drinking, that is.” Thomas looks at me squarely. “But you weren't. I got the tox screen myself. I can have the lab tech tell you if you don't believe me.”

  “Then why did the newspaper—”

  “Because there are a lot of people who’d like to see my father embarrassed,” Jason says. “And I didn't want you worrying about any of that. It would be just like you to worry about what everyone else thinks and not put any energy into getting better, Aud—” He rolls his eyes. “Jane.”

  Thomas leans over Jason's shoulder. “Who's Jane?”

  “She doesn’t know herself as Audrey, remember? She heard herself referred to as Jane Doe on the chopper. Thank him.” Jason nods towards Dr. Patel. “He seems to think it’s a healthy expression for her.”

  Thomas laughs and stuffs another candy into his mouth. “Well, I'm not calling her Jane. That's just creepy. We'll end up with a regular schizoid on our hands.”

  Dr. Patel looks at Thomas sharply. “She should rest now. And nobody is to enter this room with newspapers again.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “I understand you have a special visitor coming later…unless your husband agrees now that it is too soon. Otherwise we need to make sure this doesn't happen again while she's here.”

  “No,” Jason says. “Daisy's been waiting for a week. She needs to see her mother. We can order a mild sedative before I bring her if we have to.”

  “That could help,” Thomas says. “And I can stay to distract Daisy. If anything happens, I'll take her down for ice cream.”

  Dr. Patel leans down towards me. “I’ll let it be your husband’s call on this one, but if this should happen again, just push the call button for the nurse and she’ll help with the oxygen. Charles can deal with the child. Agreed?”

  I nod up at him though I’m completely unsure. All I know is if I try to speak I will end up crying. For everything I think I want to know, there’s even more that I don’t.

  ~7~

  I hear her before I see her. I can hear her all the way down the hallway. Jason scheduled Daisy to come in after dinner so she can stay until her bedtime and then go home with his parents. Since she’s having trouble sleeping, he wants me to be fresh in her mind when her head hits the pillow.

  “Can I kiss Mommy? Can I hug her if I don't squeeze too hard? Do all of her boo-boos hurt? Should I show her my wiggly tooth or have her guess which one it is?”

  I hear the clacking of her tap shoes against the hard hospital floors. Jason said she hasn’t taken them off since the accident to preserve the kiss Audrey had placed on each lace when she tied them for Daisy’s dance lesson. She’s even slept with them on. I sit up straight in my bed and wait anxiously, worried that I’m not a good enough actor to pull this off.

  There’s a knock at the door. “Special delivery for Audrey Gilbert,” Jason announces as Daisy hides behind him giggling.

  “Why that's me. I wonder what it could be,” I say using the exact words we rehearsed.

  “Well, here you go, ma'am!” He picks her up and flies her over to me as Thomas follows behind making airplane sounds.

  Daisy kicks her feet in the air and shrieks when she sees me. “Mommy!”

  Jason drops her down on the bed. He’d shown her pictures of my injuries so she wouldn’t be scared by the bandages or the bruises. “Don't forget Mommy is really sore, OK?”

  “Hi, pumpkin,” I say, just like he told me Audrey would have said. It feels so strange to see her in person after studying photos for days.

  “Mommy, I missed you so much.” She crawls onto my lap and throws her arms around my neck.

  I feel a pang of disappointment for not remembering her; not her voice or her smell or her curls against my face. I’d secretly hoped that seeing her would be the key to jogging my memory. I remind myself to hug her back and ignore the guilt I feel about lying to a child.

  She burrows into me, her little hand slowly patting my back. I imagine Audrey holding her as a baby, patting her softly, and Daisy believing that’s what they were supposed to do while hugging. Her soft cheek brushes against mine as she nuzzles closer. Her little body shakes, and I sense that she’s trying not to cry. “I want you to come home, Mommy,” she whispers into my neck.

  And then it happens. An awakening. Her little voice echoes through me, calling out an instinctual ache hidden deep within. An emptiness I never knew existed until the cure for it was right in front of me. The response is primal. My heart remembers her heart, though I know nothing of her. My body remembers her body. My arms rejoice in holding her, as if they knew all along what was missing. I know in my bones that she’s mine, even without a single memory of giving birth to her. I fold her into an embrace, burying my face in her hair, and try to hold back the sobs that tighten my throat.

  “Are you OK?” She’s snuggled in so tight her voice sounds muffled.

  All I can do is nod my head before it all breaks free and I begin to cry. I feel like a mommy, a really good one. And for some reason this makes me cry even harder.

  “It's OK, Mommy,” she whispers. “Don't be sad.”

  I tighten my embrace, rocking her back and forth in my arms. I spent the hours before her visit obsessing over the things I didn't remember, but I no longer care about the missing years, about not knowing what she was like as a baby, about not knowing what her favorite songs or stories are. I just want to hold her in this moment and revel in the fact that our bond is stronger than the force that deprived me of my memories.

  I look up at Jason and open my arms in invitation with Daisy still clinging to my neck. He kneels on the bed and embraces us. We sit like this for a long time, clinging to one another until finally Daisy peers out from under Jason’s arm. “Uncle Thomas, too! Family hug!”

  As Thomas joins us, Dottie sniffles to herself and mumbles a prayer to Jesus under her breath.

  After a while, Jason stands up and wipes his face with his sleeve. “Time to give Mommy her presents.”

  Daisy untangles herself from my grasp, leaving my arms cold and wanting in her absence. She reaches in her dance bag and produces a stack of pictures which she proudly hands to me. The top one reads Mommy and me and shows two stick figures holding hands surrounded by flowers. She pulls another from the pile. “I drew this one because Daddy said you flew to the hospital. I drew you flying because I don't know how to draw a hello-chopter.”

  “Just what I need to cheer me up. I love them.”


  She beams back at me, her little cheeks pushed as far up to her eyes as they can go.

  Jason pulls a roll of tape from his pocket and hands it to Daisy. “Art therapy,” he whispers to me as she skips around the room hanging her creations. “I had her meet with the hospital social worker the day after the accident, and she suggested this to help her with the stress.”

  “Now you can see us every second until you come home,” Daisy says.

  I’m mesmerized by her every move and sound. It’s love at first sight, only so much more. It’s the feeling that I’ve known this little soul in another life—which, of course, I have. I imagine this is how mothers feel when their babies are born. In this case, I’m the one who has been reborn, and it’s wondrous to me.

  Every so often Daisy returns to my bed and gently touches my wounds, asking if they hurt. She needs to keep hearing over and over again they don’t. “When can you take that thing off her eye?” she asks Jason. “I want to see her whole face.”

  “Should be any day now. Don’t worry, Mommy will be good as new.” Jason looks down at his phone. “Mom and Dad are waiting for Daisy downstairs. They can't wait to see you. They’re coming in a day or two when things settle down.”

  My stomach lurches. No sooner am I grieving the idea of Daisy going than I’m dreading the idea of the Gilberts coming. My husband’s parents. My very famous and powerful in-laws. It makes me wonder what Audrey's relationship with them was like and how I can ever live up to it.

  “It's going to be fine. They already love you,” Jason whispers, as if reading my mind.

  He’s changed again somehow; different from the furious man I saw throwing newspapers earlier, different from the unpredictable guy who brought me flowers. He’s calm and peaceful and confident. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell which one is really him.

  Jason and Thomas go out to the hall to discuss their schedules, giving Daisy and me some time alone. I pull her in close, memorizing the smell of her skin and the feeling of her hand in mine, grateful to have an actual memory to recall whenever I want.

  Daisy’s giant eyes peer up at me. “Are you glad that Dr. Patel is a brain man, Mommy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You say it's too bad Daddy’s a heart guy when you really need somebody to fix your brain.” She wriggles away and twirls around. “Now that you have a hurt head, you get to have a brain doctor.”

  “When do I say that?”

  “You know, silly. When you cry,” she says.

  “I don't remember crying. There are a few things I forgot since I got a bump on my head. Can you tell me why I cry?”

  She shrugs. “Because you're sad.”

  “And what did I say was wrong with my brain?”

  “You said you wish you didn't know some stuff. But I want you to still know me. And Daddy and Uncle Thomas and Otis,” she says. Otis, I remember from the photos, is their English bulldog.

  “What kind of stuff?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. It's a secret,” she whispers, looking towards the door. “And we can't ever tell Daddy because you said that would make him very sad.”

  I nod my head and run my hand along her cheek. “Thank you for reminding me, sweetheart.”

  Jason comes in and scoops her up, promising another visit soon. She doesn't want to go, but Thomas cleverly entices her with an elevator race.

  On his way out, Jason turns to me and smiles. “I'll be back up soon. It went really well, don't you think?”

  I nod my head. “She’s wonderful. I can't wait to see her again. Thank you, Jason.”

  Daisy’s voice trails down the hallway against the clicking of her tap shoes. I’m left unnerved by what she told me. As soon as I’m sure they’ve gone, I page Dottie to bring me the oxygen.

  Jason returns after an hour or so. By then, I’m so exhausted I can barely hold my head up.

  “I’ve been waiting for you. I thought you were going to give Daisy to your parents and come right back up. Did she say anything about the visit?”

  “Thomas and I stopped in the cafeteria for a bite. He needed to discuss a patient with me. I’ve been thinking…now that you’re doing better, maybe I should get back to working more.”

  “Oh…of course. I’m sure you have a lot of things waiting for you,” I say. It’s going to be a long and awkward road for us if my memory doesn’t come back soon. I can’t imagine what it would be like to go home with him and pretend that I’m really his wife.

  Jason walks to the window and looks out at the night. “I thought seeing her would jog something for you.” He can’t hide the frustration in his voice.

  “Me too.”

  “I guess if holding your own daughter in your arms isn’t enough to bring back a memory, then maybe nothing will.”

  My stomach tightens at the implication that I’m less of a mother because I wasn’t able to remember her. “I did instinctively feel that she’s mine, Jason. I wasn’t pretending. This is hard for me, too. It’s not as if I wanted to forget my entire life.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” he says. His hateful expression reflects in the window, and I begin to wonder if he has multiple personalities. One minute he’s charming and sweet, the next he seems furious with me. No wonder Dr. Patel doesn’t want us to have emotional interactions. A body cannot heal with an uneasy mind holding it back.

  “Jason, maybe we should talk about the future—”

  There’s a knock on the open door, and Leslie leans in. “Dr. Gilbert, you forgot your phone,” she says as she pushes a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “Hi there, Mrs. Gilbert. How’re you feeling?”

  “Fine, thank you.” I force myself to sound friendly.

  She glides into the room towards Jason who is frantically patting his pockets. “Your husband is so forgetful,” she says. “All us nurses tease him endlessly that he’d forget his own name if we didn’t remind him.”

  My cheeks burn. Her comment is a bit rude considering I’ve just forgotten my entire life. Jason glares at her, but Leslie doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Well, would ya look at all these presents!” She moves slowly around the room, reaching to touch gifts and smell flowers like she’s posing for a photo shoot. She’s built like a Playboy bunny, and I have a feeling that’s the whole point of this friendly visit. “You sure must have a lot of friends,” she says.

  As soon as the words drop from her pretty mouth it hits me; I have no idea if I do. It hadn’t occurred to me until now. As one of my nurses, Leslie would be well aware that none have visited.

  “I’m sure they’re all just dying to see you,” she says in a sweet tone, though I can tell it’s anything but. “I know my girlfriends would be chomping at the bit to see me if I was in a wreck.”

  “I’m not sure,” I say. I study her perfectly made up face and her gorgeous blonde hair pinned in a messy bun, and I touch my own hair self-consciously.

  “Leslie!” Jason grits his teeth. “If there’s nothing else…”

  “Yes, Doctor.” She gives me a little wave and bounces towards the door.

  “It was nice of you to deliver the phone all the way from the cafeteria,” I say, taking the bait to see where it leads me.

  Leslie stops and spins around, grinning. “The cafeteria? Oh right, sure. Where he left it. Well g’night, y’all.”

  When I’m sure she’s gone, I turn my attention back to Jason. “I may have had my head cracked open, but I’m not a complete idiot.”

  “And that means what, exactly?” He looks exhausted. Ready for surrender.

  “Are you messing around with that girl?” Not that I care one way or another if he is. “Honestly, it would be better to find out now before I get my memory back and start feeling anything for you.”

  Jason exhales sharply as though he’s been punched. “Wow, that’s really nice, Audrey.”

  “I’m not Audrey.”

  “No, you certainly are not.”

  “And since I’m not her, I can te
ll you objectively if you are messing around with that girl, you’d better decide what you’re going to do with her because she sashayed all the way in here to make sure I either know it or think it.”

  He steps back in surprise. “You got all of that from three minutes with her?”

  “Of course. Tell me you honestly don’t know these things about women.”

  He shrugs. “I honestly don’t know these things about women. I’ve always had you to translate people for me. You always said I’m not very observant. But I am innocent. To tell you the truth, Thomas is the one who’s been screwing around with her. Maybe she’s jealous of all of the time he spends with you.”

  Things would be much easier for me to understand if I had some reliable connections. Friends. Preferably women. “Do I have any female friends, Jason?”

  “Don’t let what Leslie said bother you.”

  “You said I don’t have much family other than you and Daisy, but you never mentioned friends.”

  “You’re normally very shy, Aud—” He stops before finishing her name this time. “When we moved here you kept to yourself. You like to volunteer with senior citizens, and I’m sure you consider them your friends. But no, you don’t have a lot of female relationships.”

  “But what about the wives of your colleagues? Aren’t I friends with them?”

  “Not really. You tend to shy away from all that.”

  “Friends from school? Did I go to college?”

  “No. You came with me to medical school. You worked right out of high school.”

  “OK, how about high school friends? Do I still have any of those?”

  “No.”

  My breath catches in my chest. I can’t figure out why this is bothering me so much. It isn’t as if I could miss these people anyway. “Tell me about my family then. Anything. I just want to know if there’s anyone who can help me fill in the blank pieces of my life.”