Remembering That Night. Stephanie Doyle

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СКАЧАТЬ felt like that phrase had been her mantra at one point. “Deep breaths,” she repeated. “Deep breaths.” She tried to take one after each time she said it. Her lungs slowed.

      “Okay. That’s better. Now can you remember anything else? Any detail. Like your big purse or maybe a favorite place. Any small detail might help us find out who you are.”

      She looked at him then. At his eyes that were pinned on her face and then moved to her hands, then back to her eyes.

      “You don’t believe me.” She couldn’t say how she knew, but she did. It was as if he didn’t care about the answer she gave, only how she said it. “You think I’m a liar.”

      “No. I’m only trying to help you.”

      She shook her head. There was no help in this room. The officer wanted to help her. When he found her on the side of the road he was worried she was hurt. Worried she was in pain. She knew what it felt like to have someone want to help her.

      “You’re lying.”

      He shifted then as his lean body worked to find a more comfortable position in the chair. “Why do you think so?”

      “Because your eyes are...mean. I’m sorry if that’s harsh. But you’re sitting there like you’re relaxed, but your eyes don’t match. They’re almost cruel. So I think you’re lying. You think I know who I am. What happened.”

      After a moment, he shrugged. “Yeah, I do. I think amnesia is very rare, especially to the extent you’re claiming.”

      Amnesia. It was a ridiculous word. A word from daytime TV and silly sitcoms. Bad fiction books.

      It wasn’t real. It couldn’t really be happening to her. “I agree with you. That isn’t possible.” This was just a temporary lapse. A crazy event that would be reversed in a minute when her life and her name and this morning came back to her.

      “Then tell me what your name is.”

      He said it so gently. As if he was helping her to say the thing she really wanted to say. And she really did want to say it.

      My name is...

      My name is... And I’m from...

      My name is...

      She closed her eyes and pushed her brain to function. She did math in her head. Odd numbers she added together easily. Multiplication tables. Eights. Nines. Twelves. She knew that without effort. She thought of books. She knew who Harry Potter was. He was a wizard. With friends. The books were about magic.

      Movies. The Sound of Music. When Maria finally kisses the captain. She knew that was her favorite scene.

      My name is...I like The Sound of Music and Harry Potter.

      She met the man’s eyes, the scary ones, and shook her head.

      “I don’t know it. I don’t know my name. Please help me. Please, please help me.”

      * * *

      GREG SHUT THE DOOR BEHIND him carefully, silently. The sheriff’s eyebrows were almost off his head waiting for his assessment.

      “Well?”

      “Yeah, what’s the word, Cruel Eyes? That’s totally your new nickname, by the way.”

      Chuck was laughing at his own joke, but Greg didn’t think it was funny. Mean and cruel. He’d never had those words associated with him before. He’d spent his life making people comfortable with him, getting them to open up to him. He’d been a support and comfort to people for years when he’d been a psychologist.

      Only he wasn’t a psychologist anymore. Now he was a cynic. A cruel one, apparently.

      “I don’t know.”

      “What? I thought you were an expert in this stuff,” the sheriff complained.

      Chuck snorted. “Come on. You know she’s lying. You said it.”

      “No, I only think she’s lying. And that’s based on the statistical improbability of her condition. However, physically she showed no signs of it.”

      Chuck let out a whistle. “But that’s almost impossible to do, isn’t it?”

      “It is. Unless she’s a sociopath or so completely delusional she doesn’t believe she’s lying. Which is, statistically speaking, also unlikely.”

      “Buddy, I don’t care about the damn statistics. Does this girl not know her name or what?”

      Greg turned and looked through the window again. She was still sitting the same way. Only, if anything, she looked even more defeated. Because when she’d asked him to help her, he’d gotten up and left her instead.

      He didn’t help people anymore. Except the need, the physical need, to spend more time with this woman, to dig deeper into her brain, was almost as strong as the pull of the casinos not fifteen minutes down the road.

      In fact it was stronger.

      Did she know her name? Could she have done something no one else had succeeded in doing before? Fabrication was easy. Controlling a physiological response to it was not.

      “What’s your gut say?”

      Greg turned to the sheriff, struggling a little to take his eyes from the woman on the other side of the window. It wasn’t conceivable. It wasn’t likely. But he couldn’t ignore the evidence because he didn’t like it. Because it didn’t fit with what he expected.

      Instinct, intuition. Greg hated these words. While psychology was a difficult science it was still a science. Greg relied on it and the body’s physical response to stimulus. Based on the data, he could only come to one conclusion.

      “She could be telling the truth.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      “TELL ME AGAIN WHY WE did this.”

      Greg and Chuck sat outside the treatment room in the only hospital in Brigantine. A small facility, it mostly responded to severe sunburns, stomach irritations from too much cotton candy and the unexpected illness or accident that happened while families were on vacation. Brain trauma was no doubt outside their specialty but Greg thought their mystery woman should at least be looked at by a physician. Just because she was speaking with ease and moving without restriction didn’t mean there couldn’t be the possibility of some type of brain event. He’d volunteered to take her and the sheriff gratefully allowed it.

      The truth was the small-town sheriff had no idea what to do with the woman. Especially given no crime had been reported that he knew of. Even though they couldn’t charge her with anything, she did volunteer to have her fingerprints taken, if only for the hope of identification. If she was a teacher she would be in the system.

      Or if she was a criminal.

      She also agreed to let them cut a small piece of her bloodstained dress. That way she could leave wearing it, and if the police needed to they could get a СКАЧАТЬ