by Sheila Lowe
She glanced at him under her lashes but he was busy pouring and seemed not to notice her latest mental departure.
She took the mug he handed her. “This feels good. It never did warm up very much today.”
“So, aside from the flu, how have you been, Jenna?”
“Uh—Um....”
Dangerous territory.
He waited and when she failed to respond he said, “I was concerned after you left so abruptly last time, and then you cancelled our appointments.”
His amber eyes probed, but she had no answer to give him. What had made her leave her last appointment abruptly? Cancel appointments? Why had she been stupid enough to think she could come here and pretend she could just pick up from where they had left off, when she hadn’t the vaguest clue where that was?
Tell the truth whenever possible.
“I don’t know what to say.”
Dr. Gold steepled his fingers under his chin. She could tell that he was not a man given to rash pronouncements, but his expression was serious enough that Jenna’s heart started pounding, fearful of what he was about to say. She wrapped her arms around herself in a hug, as if that might protect her from anything too awful.
Maybe she should just get up and leave now, as abruptly as he said she had before. But she had waited too long. His next words kept her riveted to her chair.
“I’d like to hear why you think someone wants to kill you.”
She felt her eyes widen in shock. “What?” Tea splashed onto her Levi’s and she set the mug on the table with a trembling hand.
“You talked about someone wanting to kill you, Jenna. Please tell me about that. Who are you in danger from?”
“Dr. Gold, I—don’t know how to....”
Could she trust him? What if he didn’t believe her? What were the chances he would have her committed to a psychiatric hospital if she told him the truth? Was that even an option? She had no idea.
As if he could read her thoughts, the psychologist caught her gaze and held it. “Jenna, remember what I told you on your first visit? Anything you say here is confidential unless you tell me that you have definite plans to hurt yourself or somebody else. Do you have any plans like that?”
“No! I don’t have any plans. I—”
“Confidential. You’re my client. I’m not going to reveal anything you say to anyone without your express permission.”
Everything about him invited confidence, but she could not stop herself from picturing herself in a straitjacket, locked up in a psych ward. The volume of the buzzing intensified in her ear until she could no longer hear her own thoughts. She spoke over the sound, hoping her voice wasn’t too loud. “Do you remember what else I said about—about—what you just said?”
There was a slight pause before he answered, as if he were reluctant to repeat it. “You said that you were a danger to a powerful person.”
Even in her distress, she supposed it was his therapist training that despite the jarring words, he could keep his face neutral.
“Danger to a powerful person,” she echoed.
Why would a powerful person want to kill her? Had that person already made a failed attempt, leaving her with amnesia?
Having no answers made her want to scream at the emptiness where memories and important information—like who wanted to kill her—should have been.
Dr. Gold’s quiet voice nudged its way into her thoughts. “Has someone told you that they wanted to hurt you?”
She cleared her throat, digging deep for courage.
She would need all the courage she could muster to tell him the truth. Finally, she asked, “What do you know about me, Dr. Gold?”?
He gave her a measured look. “We haven’t had enough time together for me to know anything about you, but as I explained to you before, if you are in any danger, I have a legal obligation—”
The letdown was like a bucket of ice water thrown in her face. The psychologist did not hold the key to her condition after all. He was not going to be able to help her. A dark cloud of hopelessness descended. “All I told you was that someone powerful wanted to kill me? I must have said more than that! Tell me what else I said, please tell me...”
“Jenna, I can see you’re distressed...”
“Distressed? Distressed doesn’t begin to cover what I am.”
Now what was she supposed to do? The Buddha had ignored her prayer and she was shit out of luck. She picked up her mug and pretended to sip tea while trying to rearrange the puzzle pieces in her head.
“What word fits better?” Dr. Gold asked with what sounded like genuine interest.
“What?”
“What word fits better than ‘distressed?’”
Jenna set her mug on the table with a shaky hand. “Amnesia.”
“Amnesia?”
She puffed a long sigh through pursed lips. “The truth is, Dr. Gold, I don’t remember coming here before. The whole truth is, I don’t remember anything. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who I am.”
Then she blurted it all out, everything she’d experienced since arriving at the Amtrak station in Ventura less than twenty-four hours ago. It didn’t take long; there was precious little to tell.
He listened without interruption and she had the impression that it was far from the most unusual story he had heard in his practice. When she fell silent, he asked, “You’re not aware of anything that might have triggered the amnesia?”
“Like what?”
“A bump on the head, an illness?”
“No, I don’t remember anything.”
“Have you checked for any lumps or bumps up there?” He tapped his head.
“I checked my whole body. There’s noth—” She broke off. Stupid!
Last night, she had examined most of her body, but she had not checked the most important part.
Touching her fingers to the top of her head, she began to rake them through her hair. Below the crown, roughly parallel to her left ear, where she experienced the buzzing sound, she detected a slight ridge, an irregularity in the skin.
“There’s something here.”
Her eyes locked onto the psychologist’s as if he were offering her back the lifeline she had earlier watched floating away. “There’s something...would you look and tell me what it is? Please? Please?”
When he hesitated, it crossed her mind that he might view it as inappropriate to put his hands on a client in such an intimate way, but she couldn’t care less what was appropriate or not. She needed to believe that Dr. Gold understood the urgency that drove her.
Without giving him time to refuse, she left her chair and crossed the two steps to where he sat. She knelt on the reed mat at his feet, bent her head and parted her hair where she felt the ridge. She clutched his hand and guided it to the ridge.
For a large man, Dr. Gold’s hands were remarkably gentle as they palpated the spot on her skull.
“There’s a contusion of some sort, a scar, maybe.” He said, gesturing for her to return to her chair. “Does it hurt?”
“No, it’s kind of numb.” The knowledge that there might be a concrete explanation for the buzzing, a physical cause for her memory loss, released the pressure valve a little bit.
“It seems to be healed, so I doubt it’s terribly recent,” said Dr. Gold.
The pressure valve screwed tighter again. “You’re saying I could have been walking around like this—not knowing who I am—for weeks? Months? I’m a ghost. I don’t exist!”
He put his hands up in a calming gesture. “I know it must be tremendously difficult for you, Jen, but we’re going to work through this together.”
“How can you help me if you don’t know anything more about me than I do?”
“You’re not alone. I’m going to find a way to help you.”
“Maybe I was attacked! If someone was trying to kill me, maybe they hit me over the head. That could make me lose my memory.”
It doesn’t explain why I’m not dead.
> “That’s one of several possibilities,” Dr. Gold allowed. “Or it could be a surgical scar. Or the scar might have nothing at all to do with your amnesia. Amnesia can be caused by many different things.”
“Maybe I had surgery for a brain tumor and after I left the hospital...”
Some dark thing came flying at her—a vision, an impression—and with it a crushing dread that permeated every part of her. What was it?
If she could just identify...the edges of her vision softened, dimmed. The whistling overtook the buzzing. She groaned, anticipating what was coming.
“Jenna?” Dr. Gold’s voice came from far away. “Jenna, put your head down. Put your head between your knees.”
She could tell that he had risen from his chair because she felt pressure on her shoulders as he told her again to lower her head.
Gone.
n i n e
She came back slumped in her chair, a damp hand towel draped across her forehead, humiliated because she didn’t know how it had got there. She searched for Dr. Gold with her eyes and found him pouring a glass of water at a small sink across the room.
He brought it to her and bent to help her drink from it. “How are you feeling?” His voice was full of concern.
She removed the towel and handed it to him. “Kind of weak. How long was I out?” Something in his expression alerted her. “What? What happened?”
“Well, sweetie, you went somewhere, but you weren’t exactly ‘out.’ Do you remember anything?”
“No. Everything went black. What—what did I do?”
“You never lost consciousness. You were mumbling something, like talking in your sleep. It wasn’t lucid enough that I could tell what you were saying.”
“Is this what my life is going to be like?” Jenna cried, pressing her hands to her face. “How can I ever go anywhere, do anything, if I keep blanking out?”
“We’ve just started; don’t give up yet,” Dr. Gold said, lowering himself into his chair. “Having said that, I’d like to call paramedics to check you out.”
“No!” Paramedics meant the hospital. The prospect of going to a hospital was as upsetting to her the way the policeman had the night before.
An image flashed of herself in a hospital gown, begging to go home. Was it her imagination?
A memory? She wanted to tear her head open, reach inside and shake up her brain, pull out the missing pieces and put them together like a puzzle.
She was certain Dr. Gold could see right through her, but she sat up straight, her chin jutting in defiance. “I’m fine. Truly, I am. I’m fine.”
He frowned, leaning toward her. “Jenna, you can’t drive like this.”
“I just need a minute. If you have another appointment, I can go sit in my car.”
“I don’t have another appointment, but you need a full work up. It’s important to rule out that a neurological disorder might be causing your symptoms.”
“If you call the paramedics, I’m leaving now.” Jenna started to rise from the chair, but a wave of giddiness dropped her back. “No paramedics. No hospital.” She knew her voice sounded weak, but she was unwavering in her resolve to follow through on her threat.
Dr. Gold looked unhappy but he showed her his palms, giving up the argument before it could get started. “Okay. Okay. You didn’t lose consciousness, so you have the right to refuse treatment. And I’m still bound by confidentiality if you’re sure you don’t know who was threatening you. But I’d like to perform a mental status exam to—”
“I’m not crazy!”
Are you serious? You’re batshit crazy.
“I know you’re not crazy, Jenna, it’s just to help me determine the extent of your memory loss. I promise, it’s quick and easy.” He reassured her with a smile. “And if you don’t want me to call the paramedics...”
If it would keep her away from the hospital, she would do anything he asked.
As he had promised, the questions were easy and she aced most of them: Where are you right now? What’s today’s date? Who is the president of the United States? What’s your name?
“How can I know the president’s name but not my own? I only know what the driver’s license says it is. And there are two of those.”
“Don’t give up, Jenna. Are you ready for the next series of questions? Tell me the months of the year in reverse order.”
Easy.
“Can you tell me your favorite movie?”
Blank.
“Tell me what you’re doing here.”
“I found an appointment card in my purse. I assumed it meant I had an appointment for therapy, so here I am.”
“Okay, good. Now, can you tell me what you think just happened a few minutes ago?”
She thought back to what they had been discussing just before her latest episode, as she’d begun to think of these blank periods. “We were talking about what might have caused my memory loss,” she said slowly. “I thought I passed out, but you said I didn’t. Then I came back.”
His eyes creased at the corners when he smiled, and it felt as though she had earned a merit badge. “You did very well, Jenna. There doesn’t seem to be any major cognitive impairment—you understand where you are in space and time. It’s the factual information about your life that seems to be inaccessible. And that’s why a neurological exam would be helpful, to provide a baseline.”
“Dr. Gold, I don’t know why, but I don’t want to go to a hospital.”
“I understand that you’re afraid of hospitals and police. But realistically, we need to contact the police. We have your name, your address.” He corrected himself. “Names. Both of them.”
“I bet I’m a criminal,” she said miserably. “I have two different names, two driver’s licenses. That doesn’t look good, does it? It implies something shady.”
“You don’t know that. There could be another explanation.”
Wrapped in her escalating fear, she barely heard him. “Wouldn’t that be just great. I go to the cops and they lock me up for something I can’t even remember doing. What if I did something so awful that I wanted to forget it? Maybe I should just leave it alone.”
“Whatever we find, we can work this through, Jenna.”
“Or Jessica.” She looked away, afraid to meet the questions she was certain must be in his eyes. “Why do I have an alias if I haven’t done anything wrong? Maybe there are more names and addresses that I haven’t found yet. Maybe that’s why I’m afraid of the police.”
Gold held up one finger, halting the rapid flow of words. “I have an idea. Do you remember Claudia Rose, the woman who referred you to me?” He made a wry face. “Forgive me, of course you don’t. She’s a handwriting analyst you met at a medical convention a few months ago in San Diego.”
“A handwriting analyst?”
He told her what Claudia Rose had been doing at the pharmaceutical company’s booth and that Jenna had confided to her that she needed help with a serious problem.
He said, “It seems that the problem was you believed you were in danger.”
“I must have been living in Marina del Rey then,” Jenna mused, visualizing the address on the driver’s license she had found in the zebra purse. “I wonder how long ago I moved to Ventura. There are some boxes in my apartment that were never unpacked.”
“When you came to see me last time, you were living in the Marina. That’s where I mailed the appointment card. It must have been forwarded by the post office.”
“Maybe I moved to get away from the person who wanted to kill me.”
“Another excellent reason to talk to the police.”
“But I have no idea who the person is. For all I know, it could be you.” She could tell he was dissatisfied with her response, but he let it go and changed the subject.
“I mentioned Claudia because she’s connected to a detective at LAPD who I think could help. With your permission I’ll ask if he can make some informal inquiries. You would have to sign a waiver that allows me to t
alk to Claudia about you.”
“But if I did commit a crime and he finds out, he’d have to turn me in. Are you sure that’s what I ought to do? Maybe I should leave it all alone. And what about the ‘powerful person’ who wants to kill me? Or do you believe that? Do you think it’s just a fantasy, part of the reason I have amnesia?”
“If we’re going to find out what happened to you, we have to start somewhere.” His voice was soothing, but she noticed he hadn’t given her a direct answer.
She released a long sigh. “I know, but, the police...”
“There is one thing we could try first.”
“What?”
“It’s sometimes possible to recover lost memories with hypnosis.”
“Would you hypnotize me?”
“Yes. Have you ever been hypnotized?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so. How would it work?”
“If your memory loss is connected to a traumatic event or events, the memories still exist in your brain, but you’ve blocked them out—in effect, buried them. It’s called dissociative amnesia. That’s different from the type of amnesia caused by organic brain disease or physical trauma, where the information is lost. In that case, hypnosis wouldn’t help.”
“The scar on my head proves something physical happened to me.”
“That’s true, but that scar may or may not be related to the amnesia. Look, there are no guarantees that hypnosis will work, but we can try it if you like. It may help you remember what happened.”
“Can we do it right now?”
“You’re my last appointment this afternoon, so if you feel ready, yes, we can.”
“I’m afraid, Dr. Gold. What if—”
“When you go under, it will be like watching a movie, not as if you’re experiencing the events again. First, I’ll help you to relax and give you a safe place to recall those memories into your conscious mind. If you feel uncomfortable, you can indicate it to me and I’ll bring you right back to full consciousness. You will be in complete control at all times.”
“Okay. What do I have to do?”
