Читать книгу Becoming Amy - Julia Solovieva - Страница 2

I wake up and open my eyes. There is a bright light above me, so bright that I have to close my eyes again. Where am I? The surface I am lying on feels hard and my head feels empty. I wonder if it is supposed to feel like that. I try to remember how I got here, wherever it is, but I get nothing. I try to open my eyes again, unsuccessfully – the light is too bright.

– Amy? – I hear a voice somewhere close to me, a female voice. It is pleasant and soft. – Amy, are you awake?

I wonder if she is talking to me. “Amy” does not feel like my name at all. However, I have no idea what my name is, so it might as well be Amy.

– Yes, I am, – I respond. – The light is too bright, I cannot open my eyes.

– It’s all right. Wait a moment. – I hear a switch click. – You can open your eyes now.

I do that. The lamp right above me is turned off, but there is still some light, only dimmer now. I want to sit up and look at the woman with the pleasant voice, but I cannot. Suddenly I realize that I am strapped to whatever I am lying on. I wonder how I have not noticed that before.

– It’s all right, – says the pleasant voice again. – It was done only for your safety.

She walks up to me and I hear heels click on the floor. I turn my head to look at the woman. She seems rather tall, at least from the angle I am looking at her, and she has long blond hair of a very nice warm color, like honey. Strange how I can remember the color of honey and can come up with such a comparison, but cannot remember how I got here, where I am and, to think of it, even who I am.

The woman unstraps me and helps me to sit up. I look around the room. It looks very much like a hospital room, with white walls and whitish everything. I am sitting on some kind of a gurney or hospital bed and in the corner there is a table and some equipment, blinking with red and green lights. The woman with the pleasant voice is wearing a white coat. Is she a doctor? A visitor? She could be my mom and I would not remember that. Is this amnesia? What happened to me? The woman smiles.

– It is good to see you up, Amy. We have been worried about you.

Amy still does not feel like my name, and I decide to tell her that.

– You keep calling me Amy… – Talking is hard. Not physically hard, but I need to make some effort searching for words. – But it doesn’t feel like my name. Is it? Is my name Amy?

The smile on the woman’s face fades.

– You don’t remember? – it sounds like a statement, but it seems to me, or maybe I am just imagining, that there is a question, even a hope in her eyes that I am pulling her leg. But I cannot justify her hope.

– No, – I shake my head. – I don’t remember anything. My head feels empty. What has happened to me?

– I… I… – the woman stutters. – Wait a moment, I’ll bring someone to talk to you.

She rushes out of the door, leaving it ajar. Outside I can only see some bright-lit corridor. “Wait a moment” – as if I was in a hurry to go somewhere. As if I could go somewhere without remembering if I am at all supposed to go or be anywhere, let alone remembering who I am. To pass the time I get off the bed and walk around the room to stretch my legs. It takes the woman much more than a moment to get back, or at least it seems to take her rather long. Finally, she reappears in the door with a dark-haired bearded man whose head hardly reaches her shoulder. So, she is tall.

– Hello, Amy, – says the man and smiles. The woman next to him looks pale and worried. – My names is Doctor Smith, this is Doctor Jones. She tells me that you don’t remember anything. Is that true?

Right, as If I would be joking. It is not such a funny joke, anyway.

– Well, not anything… – I do not know why but it feels good to tease them a little bit. I make the pause a bit longer for the dramatic effect. – I remember words, you know, names of things, how to talk…

The man frowns, but also tries to keep smiling pleasantly at me, and the combination of these two expressions looks funny on his face.

But I do not really feel like laughing.

– Also, – I continue more seriously, – Amy doesn’t feel like my name. And I can’t remember what my name really is.

– Your name is Amy, Amy Mills, – the man continues to frown and smile at the same time. The woman, what was her name, Doctor Jones, tries to say something, but he silences her with a wave of his hand.

– And it might feel strange for a while. You seem to be experiencing some temporary amnesia after the accident.

The woman wants to say something again, and again Doctor Smith raises his hand to stop her.

– What accident? – I ask. – And how do you know that it is temporary?

– Because I have experience with such things, Amy, dear, – he comes up to me and lays his hand on my shoulder. He smells of tobacco and coffee. – You were in a car accident. There was no serious damage to your health, but you had a minor head trauma which seems to have resulted in amnesia. In such cases it is mostly temporary, so in a day or two, I believe, a week at most, you will get your memories back.

– What about my parents? Or… Someone must be looking for me, no?

– You are in your father’s private research clinic and hospital. He was on a business trip when this happened and he will be getting here as soon as he can.

I see Doctor Jones pulling at the man’s sleeve, like a kid, to get his attention. He finally turns to her.

– Not now, Sarah, – he says in an urgent loud whisper. – We will talk about it later. – he makes a lot of emphasis on later. – Can you wait for me in my office?

The woman looks at him intently, trying to say something important with her eyes only and then leaves. Doctor Smith turns to me.

– I am sorry about that. Where were we? Right. Your father will be coming soon, don’t worry. If your memory does not return by that time he will answer all of your questions, and until that time we will do our best to recover your memories and take exceptionally good care of you. Does that sound good to you?

It does sound good. Nothing is seriously wrong, my amnesia is temporary, my dad is coming… So, why doesn’t it feel good? I still have a vague feeling of something being not quite right. But I also feel tired despite having woken up literary minutes ago and disoriented, and maybe this is all just the effect of being in a car accident, so I say:

– Everything is fine, yes, sounds good.

– Splendid. Now, shall we take you to another room? You need some rest, and this examination room is hardly suitable for that, do you agree? – he seems to be going out of his way to please me, but he is right. This room feels cold and unwelcoming and naked.

– Yes, please, – I say and smile at him to make him feel at ease. – I will gladly have some rest somewhere else.

Doctor Smith smiles back even wider than before if that is possible and leads me out of the room into the brightly lit corridor.

The corridor is as white as the room we have just left and even emptier – there is nothing on the walls, and there are very few doors. There also are not any signs, but Doctor Smith seems to know where we are going as he leads me confidently on. At first I am trying to remember the turns we are making, but then I give up. There are too many, and also why would I want to find my way back to that unpleasant room anyway?

– Here we are, – says Doctor Smith finally. We are standing at a door just as white and empty of any signs as all the other doors were.

This man probably has some kind of navigating system installed in his head or what not – otherwise I cannot imagine how he finds his way around these doors and corridors.

Doctor Smith opens the door and gestures for me to come in. I do, and he follows me. The room has walls just as white as the corridor, as the examination room, but seems a bit more welcoming. There is a normal bed, not a hospital-like one, a table with a lamp and some books on it. On the bed there are also some clothes. Doctor Smith sees me looking at them and smiles again.

– You can change from your hospital gown, – Right, I am in a hospital gown. I look down at myself and see it for the first time since I woke up. – There is no need for you to be walking around in it.

– Aren’t I a patient?

– Yes, you are, – he looks puzzled. – You can keep it on if you’d like, but there is no need for that. It will only be necessary during some tests we are going to run later.

– Thank you, – I do not know what else to say, or to do.

– You are welcome. I am afraid I need to leave you here for a while. You can lie down, or read some of these, – he gestures to the books.

– I’ll be back in a while, or send someone else to examine you. If you need it, the bathroom is down the hall to the left. See you later.

He leaves the room and closes the door. I just stand there I was, not really knowing what to do. Finally, I decide that maybe some fresh air would help me. I walk up to the drawn curtains and open them.

There is no window behind them, just another white wall.

Well, that is fun. It is not that I wanted to look out of the window or breathe some fresh air that much, but it just seems…

Weird. But what do I know.

I do not feel like reading and for a moment I am at a loss, not knowing what to do. Then I remember that Doctor Smith mentioned a bathroom. I also realize that I do not remember what I look like.

The bathroom must have a mirror. I walk towards the door and for a moment I am afraid that Doctor Smith has locked me in – I do not know exactly what makes me think so, there is just something about this whole situation that makes me feel somewhat suspicious – but the door is not locked, not even closed properly and it swings open at my lightest touch. “Down the corridor to the left”. I look around the bright white corridor and see some other doors. I feel extremely tempted to try and open them. And why not? No one is watching. Not that I know of. But maybe there are some hidden cameras or something. I still decide to walk up to the nearest door and try it. The door is locked. What did I expect, anyway? It could be another patient’s room and I could walk in on someone without knocking. Also, I did not set out to search through this place for who knows what. I set out to go to the bathroom to look at myself.

The bathroom is just as white and brightly lit as everything here. What is the deal with these people and white? But I am getting distracted again. As I hoped, there is a mirror, even better than I hoped – it is a full length one. I walk towards it with some trepidation and take a look. The mirror does not show me anything special. Just a young girl or woman, skinny, with shoulder-length dirty blond hair and a pale, scared face. I lift the gown to look at my body and see some scratches, but no serious injuries. So, I guess, the worst consequence of my accident is the amnesia. It does not hurt, but the feeling of confusion and disorientation is getting almost unbearable. I come closer to the mirror to have a better look at my face. There is nothing special here either – it is pale, seems scared – maybe that is why the pale blue eyes look so big, – freckly. Strangely enough, my face does not seem as foreign to me as my name did. Yes, I am studying it as if I see it for the first time in my life, but it seems kind of familiar, seems mine. Also it does not look like an Amy’s face, but there is nothing I can compare it to. Speaking of comparison, I look younger than Doctor Smith or Doctor Jones. It is not that they are old, but I seem to be younger. Again, without any other points of reference I cannot really make any conclusions. I stand so in the bathroom for quite a long while, staring at myself in the mirror, hoping that the look of a familiar face will stir up some memories, but to no result. After I despair to remember anything I stand for a little while longer, just because, until the bright light begins to hurt my eyes, and then I go back to my room. I almost get lost in this bizarre corridor, and try to open a couple of wrong doors first. It seems to me that I only manage to find the door to my room because it is the only one unlocked.

In the room I look through the books on the table, but their titles tell me nothing, and I do not feel like reading anyway. I lie down on the bed. It is comfortable, much more comfortable than the bed in the examination room. I do not really want to sleep or feel tired, but as I lie on the bed trying to fish out thoughts out of my empty head and make some sense of the whole situation I gradually doze off.

Out of somewhere deep in a dreamless sleep I hear a door open, and then the pleasant voice again.

– Amy, are you asleep? – asks Doctor Smith.

– Well, not anymore, – I open my eyes and sit up on the bed. Doctor Jones is standing at the door, with some folders in her hands.

– I am sorry to wake you up, – she says apologetically, – I thought we could start doing some exercises, trying to recover some memories. Your father sent us some materials and…

– Right, my father, – I interrupt her, rather rudely, but I do not really care. Suddenly I remember the idea that seems to have come to me in my sleep – I do not think I had it before going to bed.

– I want to call my father.

The pleasant expression on her face fades just as it did in the examination room when I confessed that I did not remember anything.

– Call your father? – she repeats, and again in her voice I hear a hope that she misheard me, or that I am joking, or something like that.

– Yes, – I repeat more politely, – I would like to call my father, please. Is there something wrong in my request?

– No, but I…

– Let me guess. You need to consult Doctor Smith again?

Her cheeks get slightly red. She probably likes me less and less with my every question. Am I not supposed to ask questions? I am trying to remember who I am, after all, I do not think I can do it without questions.

– Never mind, – I finally say. – I guess I could do that later. Let’s do your exercise, or whatever.

– It is for your own benefit, you know, – she says in a very I-am-an-adult-I-know-better voice.

– I believe that talking to my father would benefit me too, but who am I to know?

She shoots me a glance that immediately confirms: she is not a fan of mine, at least, not at the moment.

– I am sorry, – I decide to apologize, – it is just so hard, all this stuff.

– It’s ok, – she softens. – You will get better, I promise.

She takes the chair, brings it to my bed and sits down.

– First, I would like you to look at some photos and see if they stir up any memories.

She opens one of the folders and hands me a stack of photos. I guess they are supposed to be my childhood photos: I can see a girl who looks very much like me, but younger, playing with her toys, running in a garden, on the porch of a house, at the seaside, playing with a man. Apart from this man there are no other grown-ups or children in the photos. The man must be my father.

– That’s my father, isn’t it?

Doctor Jones nods. The man in the photos is also thin and blond, and he seems to look both happy and sad at the same time. I wonder why. Then I realize that maybe it is because there is no woman in the photos.

– What about my mom? Why isn’t she in the pictures? Do I have any siblings?

– You have no brothers or sisters. And your mom died when you were little. Of cancer. – Doctor Jones makes a pause to let this sink in. – Does that make you feel sad?

Does it? The person I did not know existed mere moments ago died years ago, when I was a child.

– Not really, – I confess. – I don’t remember her, don’t even remember having a mom at all… Is that bad? Should it make me sad?

– It’s all right, – Doctor Jones reassures me, – and maybe even better – you have a lot of emotions to deal with as it is. Keep looking through the photographs.

I keep looking, but they are just more of the same, and they do not make me remember anything. Even worse, just as the name “Amy” they feel foreign and fake, they do not feel like my childhood at all.

For a moment I wonder if I should confess it to Doctor Jones.

After all, this maybe just an effect of the amnesia, which I probably should not hide from my doctor. But then I think how it will make her smile fade again, how she will stutter or turn pale or run for Doctor Smith again as if I have done something wrong, and finally decide against telling her.

I keep looking through the photos, studying them in detail again and again.

– Anything? – Doctor Jones asks softly after awhile.

– No, – I confess, but do not elaborate.

– It’s fine, – she says, even though she is obviously a little bit disappointed. – This is just the beginning of the healing process. We will continue another time. – She hesitates for a moment, then her face lights up with a smile and she says quickly:

– You must be hungry! I will have some food brought to you immediately. She grabs the photos, almost jumps up from her chair and rushes out of the room before I realize that I have just let her go without reminding her about the call to my father.

Not immediately, but very soon a woman enters the room with a food tray. She is short, thin and is dressed like some kind of diner or cafeteria worker. She smiles at me while she puts the tray on the table.

– I did not know what you prefer, so I brought a little bit of everything.

She sounds nice, kind, motherly. She almost makes me want to open up to her. But then again, Doctor Jones has a very welcoming voice, too, but I do not feel like opening up to her anytime soon. So I just say:

– Thank you, – but then remember one very important thing. – Excuse me, but do you know where I could make a phone call? I want to call my dad.

She is almost at the door, but she turns around and looks at me, puzzled.

– I am sorry, dear. I just work in the cafeteria. Haven’t they let you call your dad yet?

– I asked Doctor Jones, but she ran away as if someone was chasing her, and Doctor Smith has not been to see me since he brought me here. Don’t you have a mobile phone or something?

– I am afraid I don’t, – she says apologetically. – I think you should talk to Doctor Smith. I’ll ask around, see who can remind him to pay you a visit. Enjoy your meal, dear, – and she slips out of the door.

I am disappointed, but I am also rather hungry, and hunger seems to add up to all the confusion and disappointment I am feeling. I should eat before I do anything else. While eating I realize that I should have also asked for a watch – I have no idea what time it is and how much time has passed since I woke up in the examination room. How much had I slept till Doctor Jones woke me up? How much time will pass till I get my memories back or till my father gets here? No matter how long it takes, I will have to wait, but somehow it seems to me that putting a number to it would make things a little easier.

Having finished my meal I notice that the cafeteria woman has also brought me some toiletries and a big fluffy white towel. I am beginning to hate the color white with all my heart and soul, but the idea of a bath or at least a shower seems so tempting that I am ready to put up with it. I do not remember if there is a bath or shower in the bathroom – I was too busy staring at my face, but I hope there is. Even if there is not, washing my face and cleaning my teeth will do me at least some good. I am still in the hospital gown, so with the towel and other things I also grab the clothes that were left for me and head for the bathroom.

There is no bath, but there is a shower, roomy and welcoming with lots of knobs and buttons that confuse me a bit. I just need some hot water, please! It turns out to operate very easily, and in just a few moments I am standing under a blissfully hot stream of water. I might be deceiving myself, but it seems that the water is washing off some of the confusion and suspicion. I even begin to feel guilty about behaving as I did towards Doctor Jones. After all, she is not the one who put me in that accident or took away my memories. She is just trying to help me the best she can, and if she makes some mistakes – well, we are all human and none of us are perfect. I also suddenly realize that even though she seems so important and independent and tough, she is not the boss here. She has to report to someone and run her decisions by them, probably, by Doctor Smith – I remember vividly how she ran for him the moment I told her that I did not remember anything. Not that I should be angry with him either. He is just doing his job. Suddenly I remember what Doctor Smith said earlier, at the very beginning. “You are in your father’s private research clinic and hospital.” My father’s. So maybe he is the one who runs things here, and does not allow them to let me out of the room or let me call him, for whatever reason. For whatever reason, but there just has to be one, I can feel it. And as the hot water flows over my body, I begin to feel that there is nothing suspicious going on here, after all, and, for whatever reason I am being held unawares, it must be a good reason, or at least some logical one.

Oh, my, the water does wonders to body and mind. I leave the bathroom calm, relaxed, and practically a new person. The closes they left me are a bit too large, but they are clean and comfortable, and I would not think of asking for more. The hot shower also makes me feel really sleepy, so as soon as I get back to my room – I find it at the first try this time – I lay down on the bed and immediately, or at least it feels so, fall asleep.

If my previous sleep was dreamless, this one is very far from it. I have an extremely vivid dream, or rather dreams, flowing into one another, pictures running past my eyes, rapidly, without stopping, pictures of the little girl and her father, pictures of me looking into the mirror – in the mirror I see the little girl again, a car accident – is it my car accident?, a blond woman with a worried face trying to talk to me, it is my mother, but I do not recognize or remember her, pictures of the little girl again – I am trying to make sense of all this, but it is hard, it is like walking along the endless white corridor with an endless number of locked white doors, trying to find the door to my room, trying to find the way out, trying to find myself – but the corridor goes on and on, and on, it is endless until it abruptly ends and becomes a street. And just as abruptly, the rushing time and the rushing images slow down to normal. I find myself in a big street of what seems to be a big city, a metropolis. The road is full of cars, the sidewalks are crowded with people. The people walk by me, as if I am a ghost – but no, they do not walk through me, they walk around me, but do not notice me, as if I am invisible, but I am not – I suddenly realize that they see me, but pretend not to: they turn their heads a bit too far to the side, their eyes wander a bit too much, trying to avoid meeting my gaze. Do these people know who I am? Is it why they are pretending not to see me, avoiding looking at me? I try to talk to some of them, but no words come out of my mouth. I feel desperate. I start coming up to people, grabbing their sleeves, trying to look into their faces, crying wordlessly, begging them not to avoid me, to look at me, to recognize me, to tell me who I am. It goes on for God knows how long, until I give up. I stop, letting the flow of people wash over me for a while, just as I let the water wash over me in the shower. Then my legs fail and I sink to the ground. The asphalt must be hard and cold, but I do not feel it. People still rush by me in an endless current, and it is easier now for them to pretend that I am not here, to avoid looking at me. Suddenly, a little girl stops in front of me. She looks very much like a girl from Doctor Jones’ photos.

Mommy, who is this? – she asks someone, pointing a finger at me. I do not see the mommy’s face, just the thin long legs in high heeled red shoes, just as Doctor Jones’. – Why is she sitting on the ground?

It is nobody, honey, let’s go, we’ll be late.

An elegant hand with long fingers and manicured nails takes the girl’s small hand and leads her away. I am alone again in the current of people, in a dream that seems to have no end. And the scariest thing – all this, the whole episode in the street seems eerily familiar. It is more familiar that the photos of the little girl playing with her father, more familiar than the name Amy which I am about to start hating, more familiar than even my face in the mirror.

I wake up with a start, shaking and sweating a little, more confused and scared than ever. Well done, dream, congratulations on ruining the effects of the marvelous shower. I look around the room trying to find some comfort in reality, in my surroundings, but I find none. What I feel is that I want to go home, but I do not know what or where this home is, and – and this feeling was undoubtedly brought on by the stupid dream – if I even have a home at all.

After the dream I have to go to the bathroom and take a shower again, this time much cooler and shorter and much less comforting than the first one. When I get back to the room, I notice some new things on the table. Were they there when I woke up? Or did someone sneak into the room while I was having a shower to put them here? I suddenly get the feeling similar to what I felt in the dream – that people here are avoiding me on purpose, and I hope it is not true.

On the table I find a couple of new books, another folder with photos and what seems to be а music player. There is also a note, written in a very elegant, even stylish, handwriting. For some reason when I read it I hear Doctor Jones’ voice in my head: “These are a couple of your favourite books, some of your favourite music and a few new photographs. Please, do take some time to have a look at them – they might arouse some emotions and help to jog your memory”. Take your time. Right. I have no idea of time here, but I guess all I can do is take it. And then, behind the books, I also notice a watch. It is small and electronic, and shows 9:35 a.m. Well, at least I can start counting days now. Doctor Smith said that my memory should return in just a few days. How many days is “just a few days”, I wonder?