Dr. Naboru tried for weeks to get the young girl to tell him what had happened that night, prodding at her with gentle inquiries. He tried subtly different versions, but they all boiled down to a repetition of the same questions. Why had she left the house when her parents thought her asleep? Why had the other four girls been there as well? What about the two young men? Always she stared at him in confusion and insisted she didn't remember leaving the house, or what night he was talking about. The other girls were her friends, so of course they would be with her. The young man with the blue eyes was there because he loved her.
When pressed about the other young man, she asked who he meant.
Then she would ask again if her boyfriend had come to visit her yet.
So Dr. Naboru tried the other round of questions. The people in the nearby apartment building had seen a bright light at two-thirty in the morning. Had she seen it? What did she know about the screaming that had been heard at the same time? People said it sounded like a young woman. Had that been her? Did she remember the hospital? Did she remember how she got so much blood on her when the doctors could not find a single wound?
These questions she shied away from completely, and when he persisted she turned her back and stared out the window as though she could not hear him at all. They sat for over an hour like that for several sessions, Dr. Naboru fighting to keep his frustration from bubbling up. Her blatant refusal to even acknowledge this line of inquiry showed that her supposed amnesia of what happened could not be complete. Deep down, perhaps beyond her own conscious mind, she was hiding something. Finally, three weeks into her treatment, he allowed his anger to come forth and snapped out three blunt questions.
What had happened to the other girls that night?
What had happened to the two boys?
Why was she the only one left alive?
She spun to face him, her eyes meeting his for a split second. He saw something in the depths of those impossibly blue eyes, something that seemed to shatter apart in an instant of unbearable memories. But whatever had shattered left shards with razor edges, and danger flashed there as well. Behind the pain was a bright crimson rage.
