“Alexis,” Alexis’s father declared, his brow furrowed. “You were in a car accident on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. You must have dreamed about the shooting. That . . . gunshot business was probably a scene from a movie you were watching earlier that night.”
“You’re seventeen, sweetie,” Alexis’s mother said. “You’re a junior at Albany Central High School.”
Alexis’s mother started rifling through her purse and pulled out a compact mirror. “Here, sweetie. Look and see. You’re still the same, beautiful Alexis as ever. Your hair’s already growing back from the surgery.”
The reflection staring back at Ellie bore no resemblance to Ellie. This girl had dark-brown hair in a pixie cut, large brown eyes, and high cheek bones.
Ellie grimaced. So did her image. She screamed and dropped the mirror. “This can’t be happening to me!”
“Calm down,” the female nurse said.
Ignoring the pain, Ellie ripped off the tape on her arm that was holding the various tubes and wires in place. She sat up and tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed.
“Ellie,” Steve said firmly, blocking her path, “don’t. Your muscles will have atrophied. You’re not going to be able to stand up.”
She had to get her hands on a computer and a cellphone. She needed to talk to her mom and to Liz.
“Please help me!” she said, staring one by one into the eyes of the five people surrounding her bedside. “I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to find my mom. Someone broke into our house and killed my dad!”
The doctor looked at her as if she was spouting so much gibberish. “I’m going to have the nurse give you a sedative.”
“No!” Ellie tried to stand up. A searing pain shot up both legs, as if molten spikes were being hammered into both of her heels. She cried out as Steve caught her. He and Dr. Vander lifted her back onto the bed as if she was light as a rag doll. Which, to look at her body now, wasn’t far from the truth.
“Don’t, sweetie!” Alexis’s mother cried in anguish. “Please stop! You’re going to hurt yourself. Do something, Brian!”
“Let the doctor help you!” Alexis’s dad shouted at her. He turned to Dr. Vander. “Something’s scrambled in my daughter’s brain. Is she going to need surgery? Or medication?”
“Coma patients are always disoriented. Usually they can barely speak at first. Alexis is exceptional.” He gave her a little smile.
“I’m sure she is,” Ellie said through gritted teeth. “But I’m Elony Montgomery! Just look me up on the Internet! Someone’s got to have posted a news story by now. My father’s name was Richard Montgomery. My name is spelled E-l-o-n-y, but it rhymes with ‘Melanie’.”
Everyone was staring at her again as if she was babbling.
“Your patient was in a coma when my dad and I were shot,” she pleaded. “Alexis couldn’t possibly have heard about it. That will prove that I really am Ellie Montgomery!”
“You’re remarkably lucid and articulate . . . Ellie,” Dr. Vander said. “There is just so much we don’t know about the effect of concussions and trauma on the human brain. Right now, your job is to get better, and mine is to help you. Will you do that? Will you let me help you heal?”
“You’re patronizing me! I woke up in a strange girl’s body, and you’re patting me on the head and saying, ‘There, there!’”
“Don’t you see what’s happening?” Alexis’s mother asked her husband. “She’s snapped! It was all just too much for her!”
“Nurse, where’s that sedative I asked for?” Dr. Vander demanded.
“I don’t want a sedative!” Ellie shouted again as the female nurse neared her, syringe in hand.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bixby,” Steve said, gesturing toward the door, “come with me. Your daughter needs to have some time to adjust.”
“No!” she cried again, trying to squirm away from the syringe. Dr. Vander pinned her arms. The nurse jabbed her shoulder. “I don’t want to sleep! I’m in someone else’s body!”
Already she was being pulled into the well. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. Her senses were dimming. “I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can, Alexis.”
“Ellie,” she murmured as she sank to the bottom of the dark well.
Chapter 3
Ellie awoke with a start. In her dream, she’d been reliving the terror of the gunman climbing the stairs after her. Yet now, as she took in her surroundings, she remembered all too quickly where she was—a hospital room in Albany, New York.
She glanced at the windows and could tell that it was nighttime; there was an unnatural yellowish tinge to the sliver of light between the slits in the blinds. Unnatural. Just like her.
Her eyes filled with tears. Why is this happening to me? “Why couldn’t I have just died with my dad?” she asked aloud in a soft whisper.
She balled her fists. Give yourself five minutes to cry your eyes out. Then look at something that makes you happy. That’s what her father always told her to do when she was in despair. At age six or seven, she’d retorted: Why don’t I ever see you crying your eyes out for five minutes? He’d replied: Because it makes me so happy whenever I look at you. She’d dried her eyes and told him, That is so corny, Daddy! He’d laughed heartily.
That one memory had never failed to bolster her spirits. Until now. She lay in her bed and sobbed as quietly as she could manage. She was all alone. Her mother was probably sitting by her bedside at Chestnut Hill Hospital right this very minute.
After what felt like her allotted five minutes of self-pity, Ellie drew in a couple of slow, steadying breaths, but she didn’t have anything to look at that made her happy; even the flowers and get-well cards belonged to someone else.
Her parents—and especially her father—had raised her to be strong-willed, to stand up for herself and never shrink from a challenge. One way or another, she was going to have to figure this out. For starters, she was going to have to be able to walk.
She threw off her covers and sat up at the edge of the bed. She disconnected the tubing and wires, relieved to see that her IV line into her arm wasn’t currently connected to anything.
“Good heavens!” a nurse cried, dashing into the room. She was a thin, athletic-looking African-American. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To the bathroom.” Ellie was trying to ease weight onto her feet, but intense pain was shooting up her legs again.
“Not on my watch, you’re not! Get back in that bed. I’ll get you a pan.”
“No. I’ve gotten this far.” She hadn’t gotten far at all. She was half sitting and half standing, but she said through gritted teeth, “I might as well keep going.”
The nurse stood directly in front of Ellie, blocking her path. “So that you can fall down again and bash your head one more time? You want to put yourself right back into another coma?”
“Why not? Maybe when I wake up from my next coma, I’ll be a fairy princess.” Despite the agony, she stood up and tried to shuffle one foot forward. Her knees buckled. She had to lean back against the bed to remain upright.
“Well, princess, do you expect me to carry you to your throne?” She stepped to Ellie’s side and started to hoist her back into the bed.
“Stop.” Ellie fought to breathe without crying out in pain, but couldn’t manage the feat. “My last memory was getting shot in the back,” she said, ignoring the grunts of pain that punctuated her every third word, “seconds after seeing my dad get murdered. Right now I just want to go sit on the freaking toilet!”
The nurse’s expression softened. “I’ll get you to the toilet, hon.” She grabbed Ellie securely around the waist. “For a minute there, I forgot that you’re our Christmas miracle.”
While putting her arm around the nurse’s shoulders, Ellie had to battle tears once again from the indescribable pain.
Satan must be performing miracles now, she thought.
#
By mid-morning, Ellie had undergone a CAT scan and an
MRI, and she’d been examined and quizzed by at least a half dozen doctors, one after the other. None of them would listen when she tried to tell them she was in someone else’s body. She began to formulate a theory that, although far-fetched, was more logical than any other explanation she could come up with.
“Is that ring of welts still there?” Ellie asked the elderly Indian doctor who was examining the skin at the base of her skull. “I could feel it with my fingertips yesterday.”
“Tiny abrasions,” he replied in his sing-song voice. He turned off his magnifier. “Barely noticeable.”
“But how did I get them?” Ellie asked. “If they were from my car accident, they’d have been obvious when they cut my hair off, right? Wouldn’t a doctor have noted them on my chart? And how could they have lasted for a full month?”
“This is very minor, Miss Alexis. A nurse perhaps had a tiny mishap. Your visitation policy has been very lax for two weeks now. We cannot be held responsible for every little blemish.”
She glanced at the name tag on his white jacket. “The thing is, Dr. Singh, I remember getting abrasions in the very same spot when I was in my real body. The gunman pushed something into the back of my head. Maybe it was a device that took my brain patterns. Then he could have used the same device to inject them into Alexis Bixby’s comatose body.”
He peered at her with a this-is-just-her-brain-injury-talking expression on his face. “And why do you suppose anyone would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know who did it or why. And I know it sounds crazy. But it’s an explanation, at least, for what’s happened to me.”
“That is not a viable explanation, Miss Alexis. Such a thing is impossible. The encoding of information stored in a brain is far more complex than a binary code . . . than the mere on-or-off pulses used by data storage devices. The brain’s storage-and-retrieval system could never be replicated by a computer.”
“A hundred years ago, the equipment you’ve been using in this morning’s examinations would also have been deemed impossible.”
“That is true. In the twenty-second century, it might be possible to transfer the contents from one person’s head into another’s. But it is not possible in this century.” He gave her a pleasant smile. “I’ll check in on you tomorrow, Miss Alexis.”
She overheard him tell the nurse that she could receive visitors now. A minute later, Alexis’s parents entered. They both wore such hopeful expressions that it pained Ellie, knowing she would only hurt and disappoint them. Alexis’s mom prattled on for a while about the weather, then told Ellie that someone named “Fiona” was “so ecstatic” to hear that she’d awakened.
“Is Fiona my sister?” Ellie asked.
Both of Alexis’s parents’ faces fell. After a brief silence, Alexis’s mother continued, “Fiona says that all of your friends at Albany Central are just beside themselves. Apparently she’s been texting non-stop. She’s probably wearing her fingertips to the bone by now.”
Ellie forced a smile and nodded. Fiona must be Alexis’s best friend.
They once again fell into an awkward silence, and Alexis’s mom said, “Well. I’ve just been gabbing away and have hardly let your father get a word in edgewise.”
She looked at her husband hopefully. He winced and looked at Ellie. “Do you remember us yet?”
As awful as this situation is for me, it must be just as painful for them. “I remember you from yesterday. That’s all. I’m sorry.”
The Bixbys exchanged gut-wrenchingly sad gazes at each other. Thankfully, Dr. Vander returned to her room just then. He instructed the nurse to bring a third chair into the room, which surprised and impressed Ellie. Instead of engaging her in an actual conversation, however, he told Alexis’s parents that all of the tests on her brain, including its wave patterns, were “absolutely perfect.” He declared that he had never seen such a rapid recovery of function and motor skills.
“Then how come she doesn’t remember her own parents?” Alexis’s father asked.
“Amnesia is a common occurrence in cases of brain trauma. As are delusions.” He gave Ellie a knowing smirk that made her want to rip his face off. “The good news is that, judging by Alexis’s extraordinary recovery, she will most likely regain her memory at a similar rate. Even if she doesn’t, your daughter’s level of cognitive abilities this soon after emerging from a coma is an excellent sign. She’s capable of relearning virtually anything she’s forgotten to date.”
“Relearn?” Alexis’s mom repeated in a quavering voice. “She’d have to relearn who she was for the first seventeen years of her life?”
Dr. Vander leaned toward her, and for a moment, Ellie expected him to pat the poor woman’s knee. “As I told you a moment ago, our hope is that her memory will return. And whatever doesn’t return, she can relearn.”
Seemingly for the sole purpose of looking down at her, the doctor rose. “Alexis, you need to let go of these false recollections. Things that your fertile imagination concocted while you were comatose.”
He gave her a nod and started to head toward the door. Both parents got to their feet as well.
“Did you try looking me up on the Internet? If you research my name online, and nothing’s been written about my dad and me being shot, I’ll believe you. That will prove to me that I’m truly Alexis Bixby. I want to believe you.”
He faced her. His placid expression faltered slightly. She got the distinct impression that he had researched her claim and discovered that she was telling the truth. He shifted his attention to Alexis’s parents. “I’ve called in a psych consult. We’ll continue to work with her in rehab till she’s fully regained her faculties.”
He gave Ellie a practiced smile. “I’ll check in on you later.” He pivoted and started to leave the room.
“You already verified my story on the Internet, didn’t you?” Ellie didn’t bother to try to hide her anger. “How can you even pretend to believe that my ‘fertile imagination’ concocted a story about something that actually took place?! Alexis Bixby was comatose in this hospital eleven days ago, while I was shot in the back!”
“What she’s suggesting isn’t possible, is it?” Alexis’s mother asked Dr. Vander, her voice thick with emotion. “She can’t really be . . . this other girl, can she, Doctor?”
“No, Ms. Bixby.” He folded his arms over his chest yet remained a respectful distance from Ellie’s bed. “My guess is that one of Ellie’s friends told her about Elony Montgomery’s news story during a hospital visit. People talk about all kinds of random subjects when they’re visiting someone who’s in a coma. It’s an immensely uncomfortable social situation. In any case, her unconscious mind latched onto the story. She built a fictive world for herself to inhabit.”
This jerk is never going to believe me! I’ve got to get out of this hospital!
Alexis’s mom sank back into a chair and hid her face in her hands. Her father muttered, “Thanks, Dr. Vander,” as the doctor left the room.
“If only we’d taken her car keys,” Alexis’s mother said under her breath.
“Was I drunk-driving?” Ellie asked. She caught herself the moment the words had left her lips. Was Alexis drunk, she’d meant to ask. It wasn’t me. Dr. Vander’s wrong!
“You’d just gotten so . . . reckless. It’s because of your sister, Sarah, honey.” Alexis’s mother sighed. “She was only fifteen months older than you, and a year ahead in school. You two were inseparable.”
“Your mom called you girls ‘Saralexis.’” Alexis’s father stared at the wall behind Ellie’s head, as if eye contact would just be too painful. “‘Dinner’s ready, Saralexis,’ she would call.”
“Six months ago,” Alexis’s mom continued, “Sarah had an aneurism and died. After that, you were just . . . .”
“Not the same,” Alexis’s father completed for her.
“You were going through the motions, is all. We tried taking you to see somebody.”
“You wouldn’t go. When the three of us tried g
oing as a . . . as a family, you’d just sit there and not say a word.”
Alexis’s mother touched her hand. “We’ll get reacquainted with one another,” she said. “Till your memory returns.” She held Ellie’s gaze and forced a small smile. “They say that teenagers often get alienated from their parents. This will be . . . a little extreme is all. But we’ll manage.”
“Do you have questions you’d like to ask us?” her father asked.
No! I want you to leave me alone! I want to get out of this hospital and go see my mom!
She studied the two of them, truly wanting to be kind to them. From yesterday’s glimpse of her own reflection, Ellie knew that, facially, Alexis looked a lot like a younger version of her mother—pretty, with delicate features, and those big, dark eyes. Alexis had inherited her long, thin frame from her dad. “Tell me about Alexis.”
“You just turned seventeen. While you were in the hospital. You were born on December third.” She sighed. “You missed both your birthday and Christmas while you were unconscious.”
That was grim. Not to mention hard on Alexis’s parents. “And my only sibling died?”
Her mother nodded. “We had no idea there was a thing wrong with her. It happened so fast. She just collapsed in her room. You found her. The next morning. When she didn’t get up for breakfast.”
A petite girl with porcelain skin and dyed, jet black hair leaned into the doorway. “Can I come in now?” she asked.
“Fiona!” Alexis’s mother said. “I’m so glad you came!”
“Of course I did. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.” She grinned at Ellie. “It’s about time you woke up, slacker.”
Ellie felt an instant rapport with Fiona. “Forgot to set my alarm clock, I guess.”
“Can I hug you, or is that going to hurt you?”
She shrank back a little on her bed. “Not physically, but . . . .”
“She still doesn’t remember us,” Alexis’s father explained. “She thinks she’s someone else.”
The Body Shifters (Book 1 Body Shifters Trilogy): A Novel (The Body Shifters Trilogy) Page 2
