Day 0
I was born
A paramedic dressed in red touches the shoulder of the man who is hugging me, whispering at his ear.
A woman with blue uniform coat and gold buttons follows him.
The man don't move, strengthens the embrace, until the woman calls him by his name.
My father's name.
He let me go, slowly, an arm around my waist to keep the contact.
I know who he is. I'm not his.
"The ambulance is here", says the woman.
I look at her, two sad eyes, a tear on her cheek.
"We have to go." The man is talking to me.
"I need my clothes. In my room." My voice is tensed, I'm more afraid than in front of the rifle, when my instinct told me to run. Lost words from a forgotten past, never touch a gun, never be close to it, never in the line of fire….
I shook my head, the voice belongs to the man, I was not there.
The man looks at the woman, pleading her consent. she nods.
"Just dress her up, we really have to go."
I lead the way inside the house, full of white smoke that burns throats, what does police use to make such a horrible smell?
My room is just across the sitting room, I enter, he wants to follow and I stop him, a hand on his chest, closing the door on his face.
His eyes are pliant and he's hurt by my actions, I know his role but he played it with me too many years ago.
I'm not a little child and I'm in underwear under my bathrobe.
He asks me to hurry up, to leave this place, to run away; I grab my green cardigan, trousers, shoes, tell him my winter jacket is hanging from the corridor rack.
I close the door behind me and we're out again, in the middle of the confusion, police cars, vans, men with rifles or white from hair to toes.
He looks around, like he searches someone, he yells "wait" to a woman with long blond hair who's talking with an armed man, between a police van and a sportive green car.
The woman looks at us, make a step, stops, lift a hand – half greeting, half blessing - enters the car and leaves.
Day 1
My hometown
I know he's observing me while I explore the house, opening drawers and closets in my former bedroom, taking off every item, making a pile on Anna's bed.
Toys, stuffed animals, Barbie dolls.
He passes along the corridor, again and again.
Every other time, he asks me something.
Am I hungry? Cold? Do I want a tea? At what time dinner?
I answer yes or not, or don't answer at all and his shoulders sag, he sighs.
It's so strange, I thought my memory would be back but there is nothing, only a black hole, also when I observe the clothes of the me that lived here, of a little girl.
He cooks, we eat, he cleans up and we don't know what to talk about.
How was your day at school? You want to see a movie? Do you need help with the history homework? Can you drive me to town to buy a birthday present for a classmate?
He grabs a photo album from a shelf, putting it on the table; I follow his moves with my eyes but I refuse to open it. I've stared for a long time at the photo on the low wall, close to my drawing. Me . Him. My mother. My sister.
Tiredness makes me head for the bathroom early in the evening, it is too much, this house this man this life all of a sudden.
I don't have toothbrush and paste. I can't brush my teeth. I reopen the bathroom door violently, he comes immediately, trembling for the force I put on the door; his eyes are wide, we observe on the sink two glasses with a toothbrush each. Two? He opens the cap of the paste then rummage under the sink until he finds a yellow toothbrush for children, still wrapped up in plastic and paper.
"I'm sorry, tomorrow we'll go to the supermarket."
"I could take a shower if there is a towel or a bathrobe." Off the hospital smell, off the smell of myself away from here.
And I refuse to see the pink bathrobe with Minnie printed on the back my old me used.
He handles me a blue towel, so large I wrap myself into like a roll.
"I need something for the night."
I don't want to sleep with the only underwear I have.
In my closet all the things are for who I was, nothing for my age or my size.
What to expect from him? A selection of teen ager clothes the right size, colour, model I like?
Does he remember what being a father mean? Is he able to be so again?
I follow him on the threshold of his bedroom, not at ease with the idea of enter there, but wanting to see everything he does.
He opens the top drawer and picks up a v neck t shirt. Was it mom's? She dressed so elegantly, I seldom remember a t shirt on her, especially one so plain.
He drapes the item, looks at it, then at me, put it away and grabs from the lower drawer one of his dark grey t shirt.
Day 3
Cross the bridge
Why dad didn't find me? I was close, so close, on the map there is only a bridge that stretches between the darkness and the light.
Why he let us go? I look at him all morning since he had collect me at the hospital.
What happened? We were happy, the photo of a loving family is on the low wall, or so loving it seemed.
I asked Frank how he met mom and dad and he said the worked with mom, but always he let the matter drop. I started loosing memories of my parents, of my former life. Anna was younger, hers were more fragile and disappeared too fast.
I cried when Frank told they were dead, I wanted my stuffed bear, my best friend, and shouted all my desperation, the pain of a little girl. And the same when Anna died, this time worse, because I wasn't a seven year old anymore.
Alone in the world, and I had no roots, nothing at all. People at the village talked about relatives, growing up I understood I had no past at all. The demons were hidden in the corner of my room at night, I felt Frank's eyes observing me, controlling me every day. I was lost in the woods of the fairy tales.
The bad wolf took care of the lost child, no prince charming rescued Snow white
Day 4
Mamma mia
The effort to open both eyes is too much. I barely see through my left one, eyelashes glued and I cannot lift my hand to clean them.
There's my mother at my bedside, I call for her and she doesn't come closer. I ask her to move, my voice is strange because my mouth is dry and mom gives me water.
A hand lift up my head, the other approach a plastic glass to my lips. I drink, wanting more, but the hands retract.
I call for mom again, and she is silent.
Please caress me and tell me everything will be ok, so this pain and dizziness will disappear fast.
I want her healing kiss but I'm falling in the darkness, I see Frank pointing a rifle at me, I hide in the dark closet again, it's a safe place.
When I'm up again mom is still sat beside me, but she 's not my mother, she s blond with a green coat, the woman who shoot.
Fear. Who shoot me? When? Where? Memories galloping back to me.
The man with the gun, dad's bloodied face, the pain in my leg, dad's words.
Where is he? He must be here with me, not this woman.
She stares at me and I look at her and the voice that screams for a father is not mine, it cannot be mine.
She stood up while a nurse run to my bed and force me to stay calm, telling the woman to leave.
"Your father knows you're recovering, he'll come soon."
The nurse pin my arm and when I wake up there's daylight and my real father is sat on the chair, face swollen and stitches on his forehead, in a hospital vest like mine.
"Where has she gone? I thought she was mom and I shout at her. Who was she?"
Dad open his mouth, twice, clearly looking for an answer, then starts crying, desperately, like he didn't cry for years, not like two days ago at Anna's grave.
He grabs my hand, lift it to his face, floods it with tears.
I'm immobile, what can help him?
I touch his shoulder, his eyes - red and puffy - meet mines.
I'm sorry, he says over and over.
He tells me something about the man who shoot me, it's a complicate revenge, he and Saga were working on it then with me back he lost traces of everything. He nearly lost Saga, two bullets in her vest.
So the three of us all were shoot in a few days, how ironic, welcome to my family, admission test to be shoot at.
And now Saga's gone and he wants - he does want – he needs to have her here with us.
The nurse enters, sees dad in a state of distress, took his blood pressure and sends him back in his room.