Chapter 3: New Voices

I can hear singing. A beautiful voice, singing low, smooth words close to me. The notes wrap around me tightly, close to my heart, helping me to breathe easy. The voice is calming, familiar, and the sound striking. The music around me is simply beautiful.

I strain to make out the words, but can't. I can hear them but my understanding of their meaning is just out of reach. Trying harder I focus all I can on the voice, but I can't decipher the words creating the beautiful song, it's all just music, blurred together.

The harder I try, the more the words seem to fall away, until I can't hear words at all, only a humming. And soon the humming begins to break apart too, beginning with a melody that slowly cracks and flattens, until all I can hear is a fuzzy noise in my ears, like they've been stuffed with cotton.

I don't know how long I wait there, listening to the noises fall apart, a symphony collapsing in on itself. But eventually the cotton is removed, and all I can hear is a quiet beeping.

Its then I become aware of myself, of my body. I'm aware of the heavy weight bearing down on me like I'm deep under water, of the bright light pressing against me that's just past the dark void I'm stuck in, and of the mechanical beeping in the background. My body feels heavy, like my veins have been filled with thick syrup. Everything feels so fuzzy and off. I try to move my hands but I don't know if they move because my body feels so heavy, or because I can't find them. I focus on just wiggling my fingers, but I don't know where they are. My whole body feels like just one big mass, I can't find certain parts to try and move.

I stay still, simply feeling, until I can locate my chest by its rhythmic rise and fall. Once I find that, it becomes easier to find the rest of me. I can hear the beeping in my ears and feel the bright light pressing against my eyelids. Once I've figured out where all of me is, I try moving my fingers again. This time it works, I feel them scratch against some sort of fabric.

Then the pain comes. It is subtle though, diluted. Instead of a crashing angry wave, it feels more like molasses moving over me. The pain comes, slowly sweeping up from my toes to my head, but it isn't an overwhelming pain. It is a dull ache in the background.

I lay still a moment longer, fully coming into myself before opening my eyes.

It's bright, stingingly so. My eyes water and I squint against the light. Eventually they adjust and I can open them fully. I'm more aware of the pain now, now that my eyes are open and I'm not floating inside my head. Which aches, my head aches. It feels like soup is boiling inside my skull. My sides hurt too, like there are a dozen tiny knives pressing into my ribs from every angle.

Turning my head I look around and take in the surroundings. I'm lying on a bed. The weight on my chest is the thick blanket pulled up over me. There's a window to the left, with bright sunlight streaming through.

I'm lying stiffly on the bed; face up, with my legs straight together and my arms placed on top of the bedspread. And there's a tube coming out of one of my hands. I stare at this for a moment, trying to understand what it's doing there. I'm sure that isn't normally supposed to be there.

The beeping catches my attention again. I look to my right; medical equipment sits next to the bed, special monitors and an IV drip.

I'm in a hospital.

…Why am I in a hospital?

I'm not sure how long I lay there, listening to the rhythmic beep of the monitor while trying to recall what happened that put me in the hospital. But I'm pulled from my thoughts when the door opens and a nurse walks inside.

She's a short, round looking woman. She's looking down at her clipboard as she walks into the room, unaware I'm awake.

"Hi," I say, to get her attention.

The nurse's eyes fly up and she sort of jumps backwards awkwardly. "Oh," she gasps, "Oh, you're awake." The woman's hand rests over her chest for a second or two, as if calming her startled heart. "Goodness, you scared me."

"Sorry," I say, I didn't mean to scare her like that.

"That's alright hon, just wasn't expecting you to be awake." She walks forward once she's calmed down and begins her inspection of me and the machinery near the bed, checking to make sure everything is alright.

"You weren't expecting me to be awake?" This interests me.

The nurse smiles kindly, "No. You've been unconscious for three days now."

"Oh." I think for a moment, still unsure why I'm here. "What happened?"

The woman's smile tightens, looking sympathetic as she stands near the bed. "You were hit by a car, you don't remember?"

I begin to shake my head no, but stop when that hurts too much. "No, no I…"

"That's alright. Head trauma sometimes leaves everything a little like scrambled eggs for a while. I'll go and let the doctor know you're awake." She smiles again before turning to leave. I'm alone again.

There isn't a whole lot to do while I wait. I end up looking out the window, watching the small patch of sky that's visible. There's a few wispy clouds out, but it's still bright. It's probably early afternoon.

I look up when someone new enters the room. "Hello there, Sleeping Beauty," a dark-skinned man says as he walks towards me. "I'm Doctor Richards." His voice sounds like a deep laugh each time he speaks. His eyes move up and down over me for a moment, asserting that there's nothing wrong, before he talks again. "You suffered quite the knock to the head there, missy."

"What happened to me?"

"You were hit by a car, a pretty nasty hit too." My eyes widen, but he keeps speaking; his voice is calming. "No broken bones, so that's good, but you have a few bruised ribs and hit your head pretty hard." He nods to my head.

Oh their own accord, my fingers lift and find a bandage covering the side of my face, between my ear and eyebrow, reaching into the hairline. "Oh."

"Head wounds always bleed a lot, apparently there was quite a lot of blood at the scene. By the time we got you, the paramedics had already slowed the bleeding. We gave you a few stiches, and we're changing the dressing every little while. But there's been no signs of infection, which is a good thing." He steps closer and begins a more thorough examination. He shines a light in each eye, humming in approval when my pupils react properly. Then he listens to my heart and lungs, making sure nothing's wrong there.

He asks me to take a deep breath. That hurts. Breathing is going to hurt for a while. My sides feel like someone has stuffed rocks just under the skin and they are pressing down on my ribs, trying to crack them. Who knew bruises could hurt this much?

Once he's finished his exam, including checking the display screen of the machine next to the bed and re-adjusting the IV drip, he steps back and looks down at me. "The police will be by in a little while to get your statement," he says. "I don't think the person who called 9-1-1 saw who hit you."

"I… I don't remember."

His smile teeters towards a frown of sympathy, "That usually happens after head-trauma accidents, not remembering the moments leading up to what happens." He pauses, then adds, "We'll need you to fill out some medical forms for us too. You didn't have any ID on you when they brought you in, Miss…?" He waits, letting me fill in my name.

My mouth opens, lips automatically moving to offer the name. But nothing comes out. My mind is met with a blank. I blink a few times, eyebrows drawing together in confusion. I should know this. My name, I know what my name is, why can't I think of it?

Why can't I figure out what my name is?

My chest beings to tighten with panic as I try filling in other things instead, things I should know about myself. My hair colour. How old I am. What my parents look like. If I have any siblings. My mind is just… empty.

I don't need to know what it means when his face falls. I already know what he's going to say: I can't remember.

Post-traumatic retrograde amnesia.

That's what I have, that was what Dr. Richards had called it. He said it could last a few hours, or a few days, that it was hard to tell with head injuries, knowing just how much damage had occurred inside.

I can't remember anything about myself. My name, age, where I live, what my bedroom looks like. I can't remember people; parents, friends, or relatives. I don't know what I do for a living or if I've ever been on vacation. I don't know my favourite food or colour or animal. It's all just… empty.

It scares me; lying in the hospital bed, not knowing who I am. It scares me just how empty it is inside my head. I'll try to think and there's just this huge abyss in front of me. Everything I know about myself is on the other side, where I can't get to.

One of the nurses took my picture the other day, saying if anyone was looking for me, that they'd be able to find me here.

It's been four days though. No one has come to claim me, to take me home to my family. If I have a family. I don't really know.

There isn't a whole lot to do. They moved me to a different room though, and it has a television. And I share the room with someone. An old Asian man who sleeps most of the day, his name is Mr. Kil and his leg is broken. He's nice enough, when he's awake, but slowly begins to lose his patients in carrying a conversation with someone who doesn't know her own name. He doesn't snore when he sleeps though, which is good.

Whenever he is awake however, Mr. Kil insists the television only play the news, he likes knowing what is going on in the world while he's stuck in the hospital. But it gets boring. Because as beautiful as Santa Clarita, California looks from inside the window, its news is not all that interesting.

When he's watching the news I tend to gaze out the window for long periods of time. It would probably look a lot nicer outside if it wasn't winter right now. But it's a desert, so there isn't a whole lot to see. Mostly it's cloudy out. One of the nurses told me that it hardly ever snows here, but that it rains sometimes in the winter. She told me it was raining the day of the accident.

Since my roommate is asleep most of the time I do get to watch some TV, and have found that even though I don't remember who I am, I do remember things. I recognize characters and shows. There are Friends reruns on, and sometimes I can quote the character's lines before they say them.

"That's normal for amnesia patients," Dr. Richards tells me. "Usually a patient loses their declarative memory but retains their fact and procedural memory, which is why you can remember events but nothing personal about them. We had a patient a few months ago who remembered how to play the piano, but had no idea who had taught him."

I have no idea if I know how to play the piano, they'd have to get one in here for me to try to test this theory.

I'm still getting really bad headaches, but Dr. Richards says that normal too.