Chapter 4: And Choices
On Mr. Kil's last day in the hospital before he is released – assigned to bed rest at home – is when I meet his daughter, Jen. Mr. Kil is sleeping when she arrives, so she and I talk for a while. She's nice enough; a lot more talkative than her father. But almost too talkative. And her face always looks pinched, like there is always a bad smell under her nose.
Right away I can tell she feels bad for me. I figure it's going to be like this for a while now, people not knowing how to react when I say I don't know my name. How exactly do you carry a conversation with someone who doesn't remember anything about themself?
She's sitting on the chair that normally sits next to Mr. Kil's bed, but she moved it closer to me in order to talk. I'm sitting up in my bed, fingers playing with the IV needle taped to the back of my hand. At first Jen intimidates me. She's tiny and has dark, fierce eyes and moves her hands in sharp, jerky motions while she speaks. But once I relax into her presence it's easier to listen.
That's mostly what happens, Jen carries the conversation and I listen. She talks really fast. I can't tell if it's either she thinks she needs to get every thought out of her body as fast as possible so that I don't interrupt, or that she just has too many thoughts that are pouring out of her body faster than she can control.
She's in university, but can't decide if she should declare an English or a Linguistics degree. I'm not really much help to her, but I listen as she talks, and she seems to like that.
Maybe she talks really fast because she's used to people not listening or cutting her off, so she tries to get out as many words while people are still paying attention to her as possible.
"So," Jen finally offers, when she seems to have exhausted all the things about herself that she can say. "No one's come by the hospital with a missing person's report matching you?"
I shake my head no.
"That kind of sucks. Maybe you live alone? Do you think you're the kind of person who would have moved away from home and cut all contact with your family?"
I'm not really sure how to answer this, since I can't even picture what my family looks like. "I… I don't know."
"Mmm," she muses ,twirling a lock of dark hair in around her fingers. "Well, if you don't show up for work someone will notice. Or your neighbours might realize you've disappeared when your newspaper's start piling up. Unless you're homeless. Do you feel homeless?" She leans forward with her hands on her knees, pressing the matter. "Do you think you might have been homeless?"
"Um… I don't think so?"
"Mmm," she says again. "Probably not. You're a pretty woman, I can't imagine you being homeless. How old do you think you are?" She doesn't pause to let me answer though. "I'd say mid to late twenties. It's possible you're still single, and that's why no one's looking for you. But again…" she frowns, looking me up and down disapprovingly. "I can't really judge fashion sense if you're in a hospital gown. But your hair and fingernails look well kept. Maybe you just got out of a really bad relationship? A breakup. That's it. That would explain you being pretty and single."
I'm pretty sure that was both a compliment and an insult, but I don't say so. She keeps talking, and I start to wish Mr. Kil would wake up soon. Talking with him may be a little more difficult, but at least he breaths in between sentences and doesn't make me feel like he's secretly insulting me.
Jen questions me some more, and I try not to be rude. She's only trying to help. Though asking things like if I think I might be allergic to pets, or if I'm the type of person to travel gets annoying. I don't know if I'm allergic to pets of if I like to travel. I don't know anything.
That's what it comes down to essentially, that I don't really know anything.
"And the doctors don't know how long it will last?"
I shake my head, "Dr. Richards said that sometimes things from your past can trigger memories, like seeing people or places that your mind recognizes. It might bring memories to the surface and help the brain recognize old pathways."
"But since no one's here with you, that isn't happening," she nods to herself.
I do have memory flashes, when I'm sleeping. There are a few things that repeat, but they don't mean anything I can grasp. A house with a big tree in the front yard. A voice. A few blurry faces.
The voice and the faces I can't place at all. But the house must either be where I live now, or where I lived at one point in my life. Something makes me think it was some time ago, when I was little. The tree is really big and tall, good for climbing. I have long legs. Maybe I climbed it when I was little.
The voice is the same voice from before, when I first woke up. When I'm sleeping I get flashes of it. Sometimes it's speaking, sometimes is singing. But I can never tell what it's saying, or even if it's male or female. I know inside that I know who the voice belongs to, but there's a wall inside my head keeping everything from me.
Sometimes in my dreams I see more. The faces come almost into focus, I can almost make out the words the voice is saying. Other images surface that I know I should remember. But it all fades away when I wake up. It's frustrating. And it makes my headaches worse.
"I think the thing that would bother me the most," Jen says, "Would be the name thing. I could maybe deal with not remembering other things. But I'd at least want to know my name."
I open my mouth to say something, but she talks over me.
"Or at least choose a name for people to call me until I can remember my real one, it would make things easier." She gasps then, looking at me and clapping her hands. "Oh, that's it! Make up a name for yourself!"
I give her a confused look. "What?"
Her eyes are wider than any woman's eyes should ever be, "Make up a name for yourself!"
"But I have a name." I just can't remember it.
Jen hushes me, "For one, trying to think up a name might help you remember your own. Two, do you know how hard this is for me to talk with you when you don't have a name? Very difficult," she snaps the last part at me. "If you give yourself a name, at least the nurses will have something to call you besides 'the girl in 307.'"
That does make sense.
Jen seems to know she's won. "Go on. Pick out a name."
"Um."
"Come on." Her words blur together, growing higher in pitch, "People pick out names for babies all the time. It can't be that hard. And people make up aliases and second identities and stuff like that, right? That's like you. Just pick a name."
She wants me to have a name so it's easier to talk with me, but I take her idea of it maybe helping me remember my actual one to heart. "Let me think," I ask her quietly.
At first, about a million names flood into my mind all at one, all of them begging and pleading with me to pick them. They bubble up and jostle each other and reach out towards me with wiggling fingers. But I push them all down, I want to take this seriously. I'm not just picking a name. I'm picking an identity for myself, a way for people to address me until I remember my real name.
I let each of the names float in front of me, one at a time, analyzing each one in turn. Both as a temporary name, and to see if they're familiar. Familiar as in if it feels like my own name, or to see if they trigger something in my memory, like a name of someone I know. Each name has its own flavour, and I take my time to test out each and every one I think up, hoping something will tug the right way on my taste-buds.
I make my way through the alphabet, going through all the girls' names I can think of. I test each one out in my mind, listening to the way it sounds inside my head, pausing a moment before discarding to see if I remember something.
Some of the names sound too old, more like someone out of an old book, like Beatrice or Dianne or Ruth. Others sound too ethnic for the pale skin I've seen reflected in the hospital bathroom mirror, like Aisha or Tenisha or Priya. Some I come up with make me pause, like I remember someone with the name, but I can't pull up the memories, like Susan or Tina or Holly. A few feel too fancy, like stained glass that is better to look at than touch, like Olivia or Annika or Camille. Some feel too short for me, like Lea or Min or Sara, or too long, like Virginia or Dominique or Audrianna. Others feel pretty, but just don't sit right, like Layla or Jade or Tienna.
I go through the alphabet as best I can, and by the time I reach the end, though I haven't found a name that will work as a substitute, or that feels like my own, I've narrowed it down. Each time a name beginning with the letter 'B' floats through my mind, it tugs a little harder at something inside. They tumble to my lips, and I whisper them, trying again; Bridget, Brianne, Bennett, Bianca, Bristol, Beverly, Bethany.
Bethany. It doesn't feel quite right, but it's as close as I can get. It screams 'almost there,' but I can't push my mind any closer. I'm already stretching my fingers out into the darkness that surrounds the edges of my mind, hiding everything from me.
Jen's attention drifted from me to the television – she's watching the news, like father like daughter – while I was absorbed in the names. Her red painted nails tap restlessly on the arms of the chair while a reporter talks about a car pile-up on the highway.
She looks over at me, "You done?"
I nod.
"And? Did you pick a name?"
"I think… Bethany. It sounds… I think it sounds close to my old name. I'm not sure. Something about it feels…" something about it feels almost familiar. I don't think this one was actually my name, but it has to be close. It's like my name tastes like mint-chocolate and Bethany tastes like just the mint, it's almost but not quite right, it's missing a key something.
"Bethany," Jen tests out, eyes scrutinizing me. "You sure? It sounds kind of… peppy."
"I'm sure," I say.
One of her eye's twitches, I can tell she doesn't approve of my choice, but she lets it go and launches back into talking about her school problems again. I'm glad she let it go; it really was a good idea. I feel… happy. I feel happy that I've found a name. I haven't felt happy since I woke up in here.
But I vow to keep trying out names. I don't know if I'll be able to find one that fits better, but I want to see if any more feel even a little familiar. Dr. Richards said sometimes seeing old pictures or talking with people you once knew can trigger memories. The best I can do right now is try to remember their names.
I tell Judith, the nurse I met on my first day awake, first.
Once Mr. Kil wakes up a nurse comes by to help him into a wheelchair and he and Jen leave. I wave goodbye at him; he grunts at me and tells me not to get hit by any more cars. I laugh and tell him not to fall down any more stairs. He nods his approval.
Jen rolls her eyes at us. I can't tell if she likes me or not.
Judith comes by a little while later with my lunch. Of the nurses on staff, she's my favourite.
She acts tough and like she's always in a hurry, but she knows her stuff and is really nice. And she's one of those people who are good talkers. It's not that she rushes her words out or has a whole lot to say, but when she does talk everything she says just makes you want to listen more. Sometimes the things she says are random, sometimes they make perfect sense. But they always make you want to listen more to what she has to say.
She tells great stories – and she sneaks me apple fritters, bonus – about her family and her life. She has three teenage boys, two dogs, three cats, and a "white as fuck husband who thinks he can rap." Apparently this is his way of bonding with his children. Judith says she married a dork. I think it's funny.
"Guess what?" I ask as she enters the room with a tray of food.
"You enjoyed Mr. Kil's company so much you stashed him in the adjoined bathroom so they couldn't take him away?" she answers without hesitation.
"What? No," I laugh. "Guess what great idea his daughter had?"
"To repopulate the earth using only people who like mushrooms?"
"I… why would you do that?"
She plops herself down in the chair Jen had next to my bed; I know she likes taking her break when she brings me lunch. I think I'm one of her favourite patients.
"So people stop throwing out damn good food." She nods to the tray. "Cream of mushroom soup. I've had three people toss it out already."
I pull it closer and inspect my lunch. A thick, greying soup with bits of onion and parsley. It smells really good. "It smells really good. And you still haven't guessed right."
"Well eat it then, can't have you losing weight while you're here." Judith is under the impression I'm too thin, she calls me fragile-looking often. I'm not sure why, I don't think I'm really underweight. She says I'm tall so it's deceiving. I told her I'm in a hospital so it's deceiving, of course I look sick and pale and thin. Judith herself is what she calls "a plump, respectable weight."
"You still haven't guessed," I insist as I spoon out a mouthful. It doesn't just smell really good, it is really good. Why would anyone throw this out? It's like heaven for your taste buds.
"I'm not going to get it, am I?"
I decide to tell her, we could be here all day if I kept making her guess. Because she's right, she wouldn't guess it. She'd guess just about every other completely random thing except the thing I want her to guess.
"Jen suggested I pick out a name. Since I can't remember."
The happy glimmer in her eyes recedes slightly as her mood sobers. This tends to happen with all the nurses, Judith especially. I'm just another happy patient until suddenly I'm the poor girl who can't remember anything. "Oh?" she asks carefully.
"Yeah. I thought it was a really good idea. At least this way I have something for people to call me. Until I can remember." If I can remember. But I don't say that out loud.
"And what did you come up with."
"Bethany."
She smiles, thinking for a moment. "It suits you. It's cute. Happy."
"Jen said it sounded peppy."
"You are rather peppy for someone stuck in a hospital."