Forgotten: a truly gripping psychological thriller

by Heleyne Hammersley

  With her I can play the knight in shining armour. Just some passing stranger who took pity on an accident victim. What a hero! I can be her friend, look after her, train her. And I could have her all to myself. If I can get her away from the hospital we could go anywhere together.

  I was surprisingly tense when I went back to the hospital. I wasn’t really sure what to expect but I was ready to do a runner if there were any problems – not that I expected there to be: I’m far too well prepared.

  At first she didn’t know I was there. I just stood watching her, nervous, excited and wanting her at the same time. She hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen her, except for the cuts and bruises which were yellowing and starting to heal. She looked pale but pretty much okay considering she’d come so close to death. I wasn’t sure she knew just how close she had come.

  Her arrogance amazed me. I’d expected her to be nervous, shaken by her experience but instead she was snappy and irritable. As soon as she saw me standing there she’d scowled at me and said, ‘It’s polite to knock.’

  Yeah, knock your fucking brains out, I’d thought, but I played the game, polite and friendly. No point in letting her wind me up. This is going to be a long game. This will take planning and finesse. I need a strategy.

  I took a good look around the room before I sat down. Not looking for anything specific, but I didn’t want to miss anything, an opportunity. The room was nicer than I’d expected, better than the one they’d first put her in. But there was nothing of any interest in there. It was just a hospital room with a bathroom and a locked window and a buzzer next to the bed. I decided I’d be better off spending my time trying to convince her to come out with me. If I can get her away from there she won’t have any support and she’ll have to rely on me. She’ll have to learn to trust me.

  She threw me off balance when she started asking me questions. I’d nearly forgotten the script for a minute because I was so busy studying her. I told her I was living in Chiang Mai, bloody stupid, but I think I covered it up. She probably thought I was overcome by her beauty or something and just wasn’t listening. God, I was struck by her looks, but I can’t allow myself to become distracted by the physical. There will be plenty of time for that later.

  After that first slip I tightened my control and the rest of the morning was a breeze. She totally fell for the teacher thing and my story about thinking she was somebody that I knew. I even led her on a bit, pretending that I was trying to help her. I gave her a list of towns that she might be from, every northern town I could think of. It was funny in a pathetic way. She concentrated so hard on each word, really trying to remember and all the time I’d known it was hopeless, I was just playing with her. She’d believed me straight away when I’d said that she sounded northern. Why wouldn’t she?

  Christ, I deserve an Oscar for that performance! I even held her hands, comforting her, telling her I could help, get her out of there. For a second, though, I’d thought I’d blown it. She pulled away from me with fear in her eyes – she obviously didn’t want me to touch her. I laughed it off and promised to get her out of there as soon as I could. God, the gratitude on her face was pathetic, what a fucking mess. So much to work with.

  I sweet-talked the doctor for all of two minutes – no problem there – I can take her out whenever I want. Just turn on the charm. Works every time. I’m going to have to play this carefully though, she has people looking out for her and the police know about her. Still, it might be entertaining just to string her along for a while until I can get her away from everybody. And then the real fun can begin.

  V

  Ekachai hadn’t said which would come first, the trip outside or the hypnotherapy but his grim expression that afternoon confirmed Kai’s darkest suspicions. He pretended to check her chart again, keeping his back to her as he spoke.

  ‘I have spoken with my friend who would like to see you in the morning if you are willing.’

  ‘Do you think it’ll help?’

  He turned to face her, his expression still grave and she could see that he was trying to work out an appropriate answer. Eventually he shook his head and sat wearily in his customary seat gripping the arms of the chair as though he needed some contact with the real and rational.

  ‘I have no way to know. I have heard that therapy of this kind can be almost miraculous but there are always those who have doubts. Some say it’s dangerous to put more pressure on a troubled mind but I really do not think so.’

  He was telling her the truth, at least the truth as he saw it, and he obviously felt uncomfortable with the whole thing. Kai had the feeling that he was a dedicated doctor and a kind man but he seemed out of his depth with her and his false joviality was starting to crack.

  ‘If I change my mind will you still agree to let me out with Mark?’

  He smiled sadly and held his hands in a praying gesture under his chin. ‘I am not your keeper, nor am I a monster. Keeping you in this room is only of limited use to both of us. I want you to remember who you are and it is my job to help you to do so – in any way I can.’

  ‘So I can still go,’ she stated with relief.

  He bowed his head in acquiescence and she let out a deep breath that she hadn’t realised she’d been holding, embarrassed by her earlier suspicions of blackmail. She didn’t have to agree to anything she was uncomfortable with. But what was the alternative? A pale, slow dawn of consciousness? Endless darkness? A life of anonymity? Surely any chance was better than no chance at all?

  Mustering up a bright smile that felt much more tentative than she’d intended she said, ‘Okay, I’ll give it a go. But there’s one other thing.’

  Ekachai raised his eyebrows urging her to continue.

  ‘You have to be there and stay there. I don’t want to be left alone with this colleague of yours. I want to know that if something bad happens you’ll be there to take care of me.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s settled then, tomorrow it is. Do I finally get to leave this room?’

  ‘As you wish. I can bring my colleague here or you can go upstairs. Whichever you prefer.’

  Kai considered for a few seconds looking round at her surroundings – everything in its place, everything the same as it always was. How would it feel to leave the safety and familiarity of her room, her sanctuary? But she couldn’t hide forever.

  ‘Let’s go there. Everything’s too familiar here, a change of scenery might help.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Ekachai repeated, ‘I’ll collect you after breakfast and we’ll go together.’

  ‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘I just hope it helps. I really need to move forward, to have some sort of hope for the future.’ She stopped, suddenly visualising the days and years ahead as a blank, not a darkness like the coma but a milky whiteness. Not threatening, not frightening, not welcoming, nothing. She could feel the increasing pressure of the blood coursing round her body, focussing in her head, resonating, reverberating.

  ‘What happens if it doesn’t work?’ she asked the doctor, fixing his eyes with her own, allowing him no escape from the truth. ‘What will happen to me if I don’t get my memory back? Will I have to stay here?’

  Ekachai smiled. ‘I doubt that will happen. As I have told you there is no physical reason for your condition. You have made excellent progress in the past week and, if it was not for the amnesia, I would be thinking about discharging you.’

  ‘But?’ Kai prompted.

  He looked away briefly as though considering whether to reveal something to her. ‘But, there are practical things to consider.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Medical treatment in Thailand is not cheap. Western patients usually have travel insurance to cover their expenses. At the moment we are thinking that you too have such insurance. As your memory is still trying to hide from us all and as no-one has come forward with a positive identification we must start to consider contacting the embassies in Bangkok. If you ar
e unable to tell us your identity we will try other means.’

  ‘So I’m a liability to the hospital if you don’t know who I am? Why not just let me go?’

  ‘Because the hospital took you in and now has a commitment to helping you. I have a commitment to helping you. We will continue to treat you like any other patient.’

  ‘But you won’t let me go until my bill has been paid?’

  ‘I cannot keep you here against your will.’ His expression was evasive. ‘But, as you have nowhere to go, it is in all our best interests if you stay and continue your treatment.’

  He was studying her face as though assessing whether he’d said too much. Kai considered the implications of his words. One way or another she was going to discover her true identity. She tried to imagine being told her real name by someone else, some official from her own country. It would be meaningless. He could tell her all about herself, her past, her family and it would mean nothing if she couldn’t remember it for herself. Hypnotherapy was beginning to seem much less daunting.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ she said to Ekachai with a weak smile. ‘Let’s hope it does some good.’

  ***

  For the first time since she’d woken up in the hospital bed Kai could remember a dream. Or at least the shapes from a dream. There had been a man, tall and fair-haired, and a boat trip in the sun. He was somehow familiar and strange at the same time, like a mix of two people. All she could fix on firmly was his smile and the gentle lapping of water on the side of the boat. It was all very hazy but she woke with an unfamiliar feeling of well-being and pleasant anticipation. Suddenly she had high hopes for the hypnotherapy as though, now she’d re-established contact with her subconscious, grabbing it by the throat and shaking it was well within her capabilities.

  Ekachai kept his word and arrived just after her breakfast things had been cleared by an ever-smiling nurse. She had showered and dressed before breakfast but he waited patiently while she combed her hair. The mirror still told her that she looked a little vacant but she was buoyant on fresh hope, fuelled by the fact that the scar above her eye wasn’t as sore-looking as last time she’d examined her reflection this closely. She was healing, slowly but, with a sudden shiver, she remembered the word ‘damaged’ in the journal – was she beyond repair?

  Ekachai smiled up at her as she re-entered the room as though he approved of her appearance. He stood up, allowing her to pass, letting her take the lead and take her time – no pressure. Kai took two steps towards the door and paused. Could she really do this? This room was all that she knew and leaving it was surprisingly difficult despite her excitement and anticipation. She had a sudden urge to grab the door frame and stay with the familiar and the comfortable. Desperately she scanned the room looking for an excuse to procrastinate, a chair out of position or a crease in the bed cover. Nothing seemed out of place so she began rehearsing excuses in her mind, many small reasons why this was suddenly such a bad idea. It was too soon. It wouldn’t work. She was frightened.

  Ekachai was a model of tolerance. He stepped through the door and then paused, leaning his back against the wall of the corridor and smiling his encouragement. She could sense him willing her on and finally she broke out of the room like a swimmer surfacing after a length under water – even her breathing sounded like she’d just performed some amazing physical feat. She grinned back at the doctor and a silent understanding passed between them. She’d just taken an important step towards her recovery. She willed herself not to look back at her bed.

  Despite her anticipation, she had to admit to herself that the world outside her room was a disappointment. The grey corridor seemed to run the length of the building with doors off at regular intervals like an art student’s first attempt at perspective. The paintwork was scuffed and chipped and the dark line where the walls met the floor was grimy and greasy looking. Obviously, whoever mopped the floor only managed a cursory lick of damp cloth in the difficult-to-reach, and difficult-to-complain about, areas. They walked in silence and Kai became aware of other people around her, other patients. From one open door she heard a radio, a song that sounded vaguely familiar; through another she saw an old man lying motionless on top of his bed covers. She tried to absorb both, to add them to her paltry collection of memories, just so that she had something to think about that was outside her room.

  Halfway along the corridor Ekachai stopped at the double metal doors of a lift. Kai’s heartbeat picked up as Ekachai stabbed the call button with an authoritative thrust of his index finger and her tension grew as the numbers above the doors crawled down towards them. She counted in her head, six, five, four… There was no way she was going to be able to get in the lift – the idea was horrifying to her but she had no idea why that should be. She’d expected to feel only relief when she left the confines of her room. The indicator light was on three, only one more floor to go. She could hear her breath rasping as she fought for air, each inhalation more laboured than the last.

  ‘Can we take the stairs please?’ she asked, hoping Ekachi wouldn’t notice the panic in her voice as she silently begged him to say yes.

  He studied her expression. ‘Are you frightened of small places?’ he asked, his voice warm with concern.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I just don’t want to get in there.’

  She saw him consider for a few seconds then he filed the information away in his head and took her arm just above the elbow.

  ‘This way.’

  Her relief was disproportionate to the event. As they continued along the corridor she felt sweat cooling on her face and neck and her breathing steadied to a normal rate. Ekachai was still holding her arm and she gently eased herself away so that she was walking unaided. He glanced at her curiously and she knew he’d file that one away too. Kai started to listen to the faint whispers of doubt tickling her newly regained sub-conscious, whispers that hinted at uncertainty and fear. Somehow they knew that she was dealing with more than amnesia and that her reactions had some deeper cause but her subconscious was not about to fill her in on the details. She knew that information would only be gained through hard work.

  Climbing the stairs turned out to be hard enough. On reaching the first landing she had to stop for breath, legs shaking, a heavy pulse pounding in her temples.

  ‘Take your time,’ Ekachai said kindly as she leaned against the wall. ‘You have been inactive for some time now.’

  ‘I feel like a bloody cripple,’ Kai spat back at him and forced herself up the next flight of stairs without using the handrail, hating her unresponsive body. She was relieved when, instead of continuing upwards, Ekachai led her through a door at the top of the stairs into a corridor that was totally different from the one below. Instead of grimy tiles she found herself walking on carpet, thin and scuffed but still carpet, and the walls were not pale, dull grey but a soothing lemon shade.

  ‘As you can see,’ Ekachai began sounding like a tour guide beginning a lecture, ‘We like to create a pleasant atmosphere for our more… troubled patients.’

  Kai heard ‘damaged’ in his hesitation and smiled at his attempt at tact.

  ‘You mean you want to keep the psychos calm?’

  ‘I mean that we want the people who come here to feel that they are comfortable,’ he chided and she detected irritation in his voice. Again she thought he’s out of his depth here and promised herself that she would try to co-operate – he was only trying to help her.

  Ekachai paused in front of a plain wooden door with no name plate to hint at the nature of the occupant of the room. A single knock brought the invitation ‘Come in’ and Ekachai propelled her forward with a gentle hand in the small of her back, allowing her no room to turn and run.

  Kai almost laughed in surprise when she saw the owner of the voice. Instead of the older, male doctor of her imagination a young woman was smiling a welcome. More surprising still, the woman wasn’t Thai, well, not completely. Her short hair wa
s dark but not black and her skin was golden but it looked tanned rather than naturally dark.

  ‘You look surprised.’ Her American accent threw Kai further off balance. ‘Not quite what you were expecting? Sorry. I get this reaction a lot.’

  Disarmed by the woman’s smile Kai didn’t know how to respond until Ekachai rescued her.

  ‘Doctor Thomas is American. She wished to spend time in our country after qualifying in the United States.’

  ‘My mom’s Thai,’ the woman added, ‘and it’s Ellen.’ She held out her hand and Kai took it uncertainly, still feeling a little cheated. If Ekachai had told her that the doctor was a woman she would probably have been more willing and less frightened, but she couldn’t work out why that should be the case.

  ‘Shall we sit down?’ the doctor gestured to an armchair which looked about fifty times more comfortable than the one in Kai’s room and pulled her own chair closer as Kai sat down.

  ‘I don’t know what Doctor Ekachai has told you but I’m here to try to help you recover some of your memories. There’s no need to be worried because you’ll be in total control the whole time. Nothing will happen that you don’t want. Okay?’

  Kai shrugged and shook her head. ‘Sorry if I seem a bit out of it. I don’t know what to expect. And, yes, I am a bit nervous.’ Terrified more like, she thought.

  Ellen’s deep brown eyes studied her own, flicking backwards and forwards as though she were able to read Kai’s thoughts. Kai didn’t enjoy the scrutiny but she sensed that to look away would be like admitting defeat before she’d even started.

  ‘Okay,’ the doctor sighed, ‘can I ask you a few questions before we get started?’

  Kai smiled. ‘You can try but I can’t be sure that I’ll know the answers. I’m not very good with answers at the moment.’

  ‘How old are you?’