by Helen Wells
Dr. Hope was inclined to believe Bob had had some military service but was actively forgetting it. Cherry reminded him that the detective, who had fingerprinted Bob, would check on that.
“Good. What else? Bob said he knew that he ought to feel concerned and responsible about something. And that ‘something’ is the crux of his present difficulty.”
“Present difficulty—an injury rooted probably in his childhood?” Cherry asked, “Did I notice correctly that Bob remembered only the recent past in this interview? Didn’t remember his far past at all?”
“Right! Bob remembered that he’d had odd jobs around here. As we’d expect. Now, if we or that detective fellow could locate his employers—”
Cherry made a suggestion, and Dr. Hope approved it. Their uncharted search was under way.
CHAPTER IV
Detective Work
THE NEXT DAY WAS SUNDAY. CHERRY’S MOTHER PROTESTED when she rose from the dinner table to make a special visit to Hilton Hospital.
“On Sunday afternoon, dear? I thought you were coming with Dad and me on the Garden Club’s autumn tour.”
“Please excuse me, Mother, Dad. I’d like to visit your friends’ gardens with you this afternoon, and I hope everyone will admire your dahlias. But I—”
She hated to refuse, especially when Charlie was absent, too. This weekend he was driving some neighbors home from Lake Michigan with their young children and all their vacation gear. Mr. Lane had dislocated his ankle, Mrs. Lane was not a very good driver, and the Lane children were already late for the opening of school. Cherry thought for a moment how solidly all the people around her were rooted in family and neighborly ties. Imagine being Bob Smith, who had no one and belonged nowhere! Or at least so far as he knew.… Cherry looked at her parents and around the familiar, comfortable house. She felt a rush of gratitude.
In what rooms had Bob Smith grown up? Who were his parents, and did he perhaps have sisters and brothers? When his memory vanished, what house had he wandered away from?
“We must find that place and some of those people,” Cherry told herself as she walked toward the hospital.
On her way she passed Hilton Clinic, a fairly new building downtown. Dr. Fortune, her old and good friend, was a senior staff member here. Dr. Fortune was enthusiastic about the Clinic and its group practice. Cherry had once worked there and liked it, too. Hilton Hospital, where she worked now, was an older and more extensive medical institution, located at a quiet end of town. Cherry walked on out there. This afternoon a great many visitors’ cars were parked around the hospital’s landscaped grounds. No visitors for Bob Smith, though, unless Cherry could count herself.
He was glad to see her. The relief nurse assigned to Orthopedics on Sundays was too busy to have much time for the young man in the solitary room. Glimpses of the other patients’ visitors had made Bob feel forlorn and rather upset. Cherry talked to him, a little, very gently. Then she said:
“I’d like to take your picture, Bob.”
“To help identify me? It’s a good idea.”
She had borrowed a camera from another nurse on this floor. The camera was capable of developing its own snapshots, without extra equipment, in a matter of two or three minutes. Yesterday she had devised this plan, won Dr. Hope’s permission, and borrowed the camera.
“Smile,” Cherry said jokingly to Bob. But he could not. She took three snapshots of him, and waited in silence while the camera developed them. “Have a look at them, Bob. Which one is most like you?”
“Is that me?” He was appalled. “Looks like a ghost. I’ve grown so thin. Malnutrition? I’d say, Miss Cherry, that none of them look much like me. Unless I can’t remember my own face.”
Nevertheless, Cherry took the snapshots downtown to the newspaper office. The editor was busy but willing to see her, and listened while Cherry told Bob’s brief story.
“All right, I’ll print his photo and story,” he said. “But it’s a long chance that someone who knows him will see it.”
Cherry thanked the editor and left one of Bob’s snapshots with him. She planned to give another one to the detective, and a third one to the hospital’s social worker.
“I wish Sunday were over,” Cherry thought as she walked back home. She was impatient for the next uncovering interview.
She reached her porch at the same time their postman, Mr. Marker, did. He handed her a special-delivery letter, postmarked New York. Cherry recognized the exuberant handwriting as Gwen Jones’s.
Ever since she and several former classmates from Spencer Nursing School had leased the apartment in Greenwich Village, they had managed to stay close together—at intervals—in spite of nursing assignments that took them all over the country. This time, Gwen wrote indignantly, the Spencer Club members had been scattered for too long. She and Mai Lee were tired of living all by themselves at No. 9, and herewith called a reunion.
“Can you come for Thanksgiving Day? Can you come any weekend soon? Or can you come any old time? We’ll be awfully glad to see you!”
Cherry wrote back at once. “I miss you, too. Have an urgent case, and don’t know when I can come, but I will be there. Save your choicest nursing news for me. I have an extraordinary case to tell you about.”
Bob had had a long sleep, induced by narcosis therapy, and awoke refreshed on Monday morning. When Dr. Hope came in for a talk with him and learned this, he was encouraged. Sleep often released memories in dreams and aided recall, he told Cherry.
“We’re going to give him Pentothal again for today’s interview,” said Dr. Hope.
Today he explained a little more to Cherry about how Pentothal could help Bob “reach further” into his memories than without the drug. It is a relaxing drug that eases a patient’s tensions and helps him to express freely his thoughts and feelings to the psychiatrist. It often helped the doctor to arrive at a diagnosis.
Dr. Hope prepared Bob for the midafternoon interview, and then asked Cherry to come in.
Leaving the active ward and stepping into Bob’s hushed, shadowy room was like entering another world. The lamp glowed beside his bed. Bob had a trustful, drowsy smile as Cherry and Dr. Hope sat down with him. His face was in shadow, so that he was apart from them in a way.
“Let’s start,” Dr. Hope suggested, “with what you recalled last time. The large white house, and your family, remember?”
“Yes, I remember.” A pause. “What did I say about working around here?”
They were surprised but prompted him, and after a short time Bob began to remember by himself. He talked at random, some of it disconnected or unclear, then his recall came into focus. He spoke as if half asleep, slowly.
“I found myself getting off a bus and walking on a road. Felt puzzled. Where was I? Who was I? Something was wrong, but what was it? Something extraordinary must have happened to me, I realized. I felt as though I might wake up at any minute and find the whole thing was a dream.
“I was on a country road, and there was a church nearby. I went into the churchyard and sat down to think. I found a letter and a calendar in my pocket. They didn’t seem to belong to me. I remember trying to understand why I was hungry and dirty and unshaven, and didn’t recognize the road—but I must have given up.”
He stopped, and Dr. Hope asked, “Was this the first time you came to consciousness?”
“I think so. I’m not sure. The next thing I knew I was standing near the edge of a town. I had no idea where I was, or who I was. I began to be frightened. Then I saw how absurd my situation was, and I laughed—for a moment. I wondered if I’d died and was a ghost, if there are such things as ghosts. But I threw a shadow and my feet were sore and people stared at me curiously. I was shy of speaking to anyone. Afraid my voice might be odd, too.
“I saw a man with a newspaper and waited until he threw it away. I rescued it, and read the date on it, and learned of news events I hadn’t heard of. None of it meant much to me, not even the date. I looked through the newspaper for ne
ws of a missing man, hoping it’d be myself, but there wasn’t any.”
Bob’s voice trembled and died away. Dr. Hope let him rest. Cherry was careful not to speak or move, not to break the spell of memory. Bob sighed and went on:
“What was I to do? I had no money, no possessions, and I had to live. Had to get work of some kind, any kind, though I wasn’t hungry or thirsty. Couldn’t understand that. Besides”—Bob abruptly shifted to another subject—“I began to wonder whether my odd condition affected any people who knew me. Any family or friends or employers—though I couldn’t remember a single person. I supposed that if I had anyone, they’d notify the police and make a search for me. But no one seemed to be on the lookout for me.”
“So you assumed,” Dr. Hope said, “that you had no family.”
“I can’t remember them, and apparently no one has searched for me. What would you think in my place?” Bob asked reasonably.
“You mustn’t assume anything,” Dr. Hope said. “There may be a search going on for you right this minute, but you’ve probably changed in appearance and you’ve probably kept moving around, making it hard to locate you.”
“That’s true,” Bob admitted. “On the other hand there may actually be no family and no search.”
Dr. Hope did not answer, cautiously, Cherry thought. It occurred to her that Bob might not want to remember his family. If he had one.
“So far, so good,” Dr. Hope said, to encourage the bewildered young man on the bed. They talked a little more, but Bob was hazy and spotty in his recall. He remembered having had odd jobs—“I must have”—but was unable to tell Dr. Hope and Cherry where he had been going on the bus or when and where he had boarded the bus.
“Well, that’s enough for today,” Dr. Hope said. “I think we made important progress, Bob.”
“You do?” He sounded listless, not interested. “I wish I could do better. Do I sound awfully—awfully odd to you?”
Dr. Hope shook his head and Cherry said, “You sound as if you’ve been trying your very best to pull out of this difficulty.”
“I have, but I can’t do it without help—your help, I mean.” Bob’s eyes closed in fatigue.
They left him to rest, and again held a brief summing up in the corridor. Dr. Hope explained to Cherry why today’s recall was progress: at least some memories were coming clearly. Bob’s inner barriers were beginning to dissolve.
During the next days, Dr. Hope worked again with Bob Smith. Bob tried hard, but on Tuesday he could remember nothing and on Wednesday he recalled only what he had already told them. Cherry felt as if they were up against a stone wall. It was a week since Bob had been brought to Hilton Hospital. She was glad when Mr. Clark, the visiting chaplain, came to sit with Bob for a while and comfort him. He needed all the love the hospital people could give him.
On her way home from the hospital late Thursday afternoon, walking as usual, she met Hal Treadway on Vermilion Street. The detective hailed her first.
“Glad to bump into you, Miss Ames. A little news. I’ve gotten a little way—not very far yet—by tracing the dry cleaner’s mark on Bob Smith’s suit.”
“So there was a mark on his garments.”
“Yes, an ‘invisible’ mark. The ultraviolet light showed it up. Have you a minute for a coke and a talk?”
“Have I!” Cherry knew the detective would report eventually to Dr. Hope at the hospital, but if she could bring his report sooner to Dr. Hope, so much the better for Bob.
Mr. Treadway had gotten to work immediately, once he discovered the mark and tallied it with the police Laundry Mark file. The mark led him to a wholesale dry cleaner, then to a retail dry cleaner, and then to the customer who had brought Bob’s suit to be cleaned. She was a Mrs. Cook, living in Hilton. The detective visited her, but Mrs. Cook had never heard of Bob Smith.
According to her, this was an old suit of her husband’s that she had contributed, after having it dry cleaned, to a friend in the next town, Glen Rock. This woman had asked for clothing to give to some of the poor men who worked for her husband occasionally at his restaurants, as dishwashers, window washers, bus boys. The restaurant owner’s name was Field; he had three short-order places in Glen Rock. The detective reached him by telephone, and Mr. Field had agreed to drive over to Hilton and the hospital as soon as he could, to see if he could identify the amnesia patient.
“I’ll report all this to Dr. Hope and Dr. Watson,” Cherry said to the detective. “How soon do you think Mr. Field can come?”
“Can that young fellow stand seeing a visitor now?”
Cherry thought he could. They made tentative arrangements for early next week, depending on Mr. Field’s convenience.
“But don’t get your hopes up,” the detective cautioned her. “Chances are that Mr. Field doesn’t know any too much about his transient help.”
“I understand. Thank you very much.”
CHAPTER V
A Lead Turns Up
ANOTHER STEP WAS GAINED THE NEXT DAY. WITH THE aid, again, of Pentothal and sympathetic conversation, Dr. Hope was able to draw out from Bob a connected, lucid account of his recent past life. Bob was still slightly dazed, but his slowed movements were now nearly at normal speed and, best of all, he spoke with ease. In answer to Dr. Hope’s questions, and a few by Cherry, he rapidly said:
That he had attended Oberlin College, majored in the sciences, and had been graduated from there in a certain year. That his home was in Ohio. That only last week, before the accident to his leg, he had been working temporarily in Hilton for a traveling circus as a roustabout. Bob even named the circus, the Sells-Zotos Circus, and said, “They’re almost through with their summer tour. Right now, they’re probably winding up the season at St. Louis.”
All of this rang true. He was a changed man! Cherry felt so happy and excited at his new, sure recall that it took all of her self-control to sit there quietly during the interview.
Dr. Hope’s face as usual was a friendly mask. But he must feel encouraged, too. As they were about to leave their patient, Bob said:
“Would you do something for me? You’re investigating about me, aren’t you?” They nodded. “Then would you try to find out what it is—what I—why I—feel so anxious?” He tried not to stammer. “I know I have something urgent—difficult—to attend to—On my conscience. But I can’t remember what.”
Dr. Hope reassured him that the three of them together would discover that, too.
Dr. Hope led the way into an unoccupied room where he and Cherry could talk. “Poor fellow. It’s bad enough to have to face a known danger. But it’s the unknown that really terrifies and overwhelms. Well, we’ll check on these new statements of his as quickly as we can. We need facts.”
“Yes, Dr. Hope,” said Cherry. She had already reported to him the gist of her meeting with the detective. “What can I do now to help?”
“See the hospital social worker and ask her to write—no, wire or telephone Oberlin College. What can we do to check with the circus?”
“St. Louis isn’t so far away,” Cherry said eagerly. “My friends and I could drive over there this weekend.”
“That’s great!”
As soon as she finished her nursing duties on the ward, she went to see Mrs. Leona Ball in the social worker’s sunny, plant-filled office with its open door. Mrs. Ball admitted Cherry ahead of others when Cherry sent in a note: “Amnesia patient—sort of an emergency.”
“Oberlin College.” Leona Ball wrote this down. “But how are we going to ask the college to trace its records for a man whose right name we can’t tell them?”
A description of Bob; a snapshot; science major; year of graduation; these things the hospital could give the college. Leona Ball promised Cherry that she’d try to get an answer by Monday. She’d explain the urgency of the case and ask the college to wire collect.
That weekend Cherry and Sue and Bill Pritchard drove to St. Louis. At the city’s outskirts they located the Sells-Zotos Circus, which
had played Hilton. The circus manager looked at them in disbelief when they showed him Bob’s snapshot and inquired about a man who had worked as a roustabout.
“Look, kids,” he said, “I’ve never seen this man in my life. Who told you such a tall tale?”
“But the circus was in Hilton a week or two ago?” Cherry asked.
“Yeah, but we haven’t hired any outside men this whole year. Naw, I never saw any fellow like the one you’re looking for.”
Cherry was stunned. Was Bob lying? Cherry didn’t like to think so. From the very beginning, Bob had impressed her as a serious, responsible young man, despite his present state. Still—
On Monday morning the social worker brought in the reply Oberlin College had wired her. The college had no trace of a former student or graduate who fit Bob’s statements and description.
“Of course,” Mrs. Ball said, “with such scanty information, and the snapshot not like his earlier appearance, Oberlin may not have been able—”
“Don’t blame the college,” said Cherry. “The circus never heard of him, either.”
When Dr. Hope arrived, Cherry reported these two failures. The psychiatrist was more interested than surprised.
“No, Miss Cherry, I don’t think Bob told us lies. Not lies, but fantasy. There’s one species of amnesia which is falsification of memory, and it generally occurs early in treatment. The patient weaves together things which actually happened—such as Bob’s noticing the circus was here in Hilton—with things he only imagines happened. Or—correction—events which possibly did happen in his past. For example, Bob probably attented a college, though it wasn’t Oberlin. Part of his memory disturbance.”
