The Girl Without a Name

by Sandra Block

  “It’s like a ghost town up here,” I say, looking around. Dark, no patient lights, no beeping noises, no nurses calling from overhead. A forgotten, orphan floor.

  “Yeah, it’s been empty for over a year. They’re still deciding whether or not to move dialysis up here.” He gazes around, too. “You want a drink?”

  “A drink?”

  “Sure,” he says, heading to the corner where a Pepsi machine buzzes softly, casting a gray-white glow on the wall. “Pick your poison. It’s on me. The least I can do for them calling you on your holiday.

  “All right.” I tap on the Diet Pepsi window. He stares at the machine, fingering his chin in a semi-comic gesture of deep thought. “Going to have to go with the root beer.” He clinks in the quarters, and the machine spits out our drinks. I spy a bag of Fritos calling out to me and push that button, too. It’s as good a break-the-fast as any. He sits down in one of the plastic chairs.

  “Have a seat.” He points to the other one and unscrews his bottle with a loud hiss. Then he leans back, his long legs crossed in front of him. We sit a moment, drinking our drinks. The chips are heavenly. Though after a while, I wonder what the hell he wanted to show me in this musty, old abandoned floor.

  “Okay, you ready for the big reveal?” he asks as if in response to my unspoken question.

  I raise one eyebrow doubtfully, and he takes this for a yes and walks over to the window.

  “You sure you’re ready now?” he asks, and before I can answer, he rips open the curtain with a soft metal scrape. A thousand hazy city lights spring up in the window, miles of buildings and streets laid out before us.

  “Wow.” I walk over to the window and stand beside him.

  “Amazing, huh?” he says with pride at his discovery. The glass is cool under my fingertips. The inchoate sob of an ambulance sounds out from a distance. A lone traffic light switches from red to green with no cars nearby to follow its command. After a while, I make my way back to my chair, and Dr. Berringer joins me. We sip at our soft drinks, staring out at the night. Our penthouse view from a run-down hospital suite.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’m not at home,” he says.

  The workaholic question. The unhappy couple question. “I assume you have your reasons,” I say.

  He sniffs out a laugh. “That’s one way to put it.” He scratches his knee, at the thinning dark-brown (seal-brown, if I had to say) corduroy. “You know,” he says, but then he pauses and doesn’t say any more.

  So I don’t say any more. And we sit drinking, watching the night glow and flicker, the moon a hazy pearl in the sky. And I think that this might just be a good new year after all.

  Chapter Eight

  I’m still an hour early for rounds when I get the idea. Dr. Koneru, the hospital pathologist, might know what to make of the scar. We bonded over cafeteria food once, when she asked me about Asperger’s syndrome. I was only a first-year and shared the thimbleful I knew, then found out later she was asking about her son.

  I make my way down the dank, fluorescent-lit hallway to her office in the basement and knock on the open door. She glances up from a microscope. “Why, hello there.” Her face softens with a smile, and she brushes back her hennaed hair. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?” But she says “voods.” She pronounces all her w’s that way.

  “Sort of an odd question,” I say.

  “Okay. What is it?”

  I pull out the picture I printed. “This scar is on the left ankle of our patient Jane Doe. She’s catatonic.”

  She takes the picture and brings it up to her face. Then she pulls a magnifying glass out of her top drawer and gives it a better look.

  “What do you think?” I ask.

  “Well, it’s not a cigarette burn,” she says.

  “Ha,” I crow. “I didn’t think so.”

  She turns it side to side. “It is funny.”

  “Like a circle or something, right?”

  “Keloid on the rim. African American?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Koneru stows the magnifying glass back in her tidy drawer and lays the picture next to the microscope. “It is hard to tell, Zoe. I think it is most likely a burn, possibly with some metal. But the keloid throws this all into question. It could just as easily be a deep cut with irregular healing.”

  I pause. “You think someone cut her?”

  “It could even be a shaving cut, Zoe.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s true.”

  She shifts the power on her microscope. “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

  “That’s okay. Thanks for trying anyway.”

  She glances down at the picture one more time and shakes her head. “Just not sure. Can I keep it?”

  “Sure. No problem. I can make more copies.”

  She goes back to her microscope, and I’m contemplating grabbing a coffee in the lobby when I see a text from Jason.

  rounding early today, remember?

  Oh shit, no, I did not remember. So I don’t have a half hour to kill; I’m a half hour late. I take an interminable ride up the elevator after a three-year-old has a jolly old time pushing random buttons and then scramble into the nurses’ station.

  “P is for punctuality, Probation Girl,” Jason scolds.

  “And F is for fuck off.”

  He laughs. “We already rounded. Did you see Jane yet?”

  “Yeah, this morning. No change. Why?”

  He doesn’t look up from his note. “She woke up.”

  “She—” I don’t finish the sentence, tearing off to her room as fast as my legs can take me. Dr. Berringer is leaning over her with Detective Adams by his side. As I stumble in, Jane looks up at me, nervous, unsure. “Hello there,” I say.

  A hesitant half smile turns on her lips.

  “Did she say her name?” I ask, crowding next to the bed.

  “She’s not quite there yet, Zoe,” Dr. Berringer says, his tone betraying some annoyance at my grand late entrance.

  “How long until she talks, do you think?” asks the detective, facing Dr. Berringer.

  “It’s variable. Sometimes right away, sometimes a few weeks.”

  The detective taps on his reporter’s notebook, which has two words in black, sloppy writing: Jane awake.

  I lift up Jane’s arm, maybe because I’m just used to doing this, and she looks up at me and yanks it back. Her eyes are brown as raisins, fixed on me.

  “She’s probably scared,” I say. Jane looks down at the rumpled blue blanket on her lap.

  “Probably,” the detective answers. “Any idea what finally woke her up?”

  “Ativan, probably,” Dr. Berringer answers. “Though it could just as well be that it was spontaneously resolving anyway.”

  The detective watches her another second, then stashes his notebook in his pocket. “Thanks for calling me. Let me know if something changes.”

  “Will do,” Dr. Berringer answers.

  “Hey, before you go,” I ask. “Did you find out any more on the scar?”

  “No, I didn’t. I asked our social worker who deals with the abused kids, and he wasn’t sure. He said it’s probably a cigarette—”

  “Yeah, but here’s the thing. I asked our pathologist, Dr. Koneru? And she didn’t think it was consistent with that. Too perfectly round.”

  “It is weird,” Dr. Berringer agrees. “But still the most likely explanation.”

  The detective shrugs. “Hopefully, pretty soon, you can ask the source herself.”

  Jane stares at us, not offering an answer. The detective gives my shoulder a quick pat on his way out. “Bye, guys.”

  After he leaves, Dr. Berringer turns to me. “Okay, Zoe. What’s the next step here?” he asks, like he’s testing me, not just asking.

  “First, I’d see if she’ll take anything by mouth, and if so, D/C the feeds.”

  “Okay.”

  “Keep up the Ativan, but lower the dose.” I’m wondering if it’s the correct dosing that fi
nally woke her up.

  He grabs his beat-up doctor bag. “That all sounds good.” He looks down at her then with a broad smile. “Good stuff. Keep an eye on her today. Oh, and Zoe?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Do me a favor. Try to get here on time.” He says this with a smile, however, pummeling my arm in a mock punch that does actually hurt, before striding out of the room.

  I stand there, staring at Jane, the beeps in the room echoing around me. Jane peers at the Halloween figurine with curiosity, and I reach up and hand it to her. She turns it over in her palms, touching all the angles like a blind person.

  “It’s yours,” I say. “Do you like it?”

  She gives the merest hint of a nod and swallows. Then out of nowhere, her eyes flood with tears, tracking down her face. And I sit beside her while she cries.

  Chapter Nine

  I take a swig of coffee and almost spit it out. “Blech. Is there chocolate in here?”

  “Yeah,” Mike says, sipping his own mug and absentmindedly petting the dog. “It’s all that was left. It was that or decaf, and I figured…”

  “True. Death by hanging would be preferable to decaf.”

  He looks up from his tablet. “Well, I hadn’t considered the manner of death.”

  Racing around the kitchen, I rip off a banana for lunch. I would throw together a sandwich but I have to leave in five minutes, and I haven’t been hungry for lunch lately anyway. Sam warned me to watch out for a decrease in appetite when he upped the Adderall dose at my prompting (begging, more like) last week. I’m pretending it’s not that. “You late today?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Noon. Gotta get my hair cut anyway.”

  I examine him. “You are looking a little shaggy.”

  “Thanks for the endorsement, hon.”

  I throw back another god-awful sip of coffee and do my checklist. Purse, check. Satchel, check. Phone…

  “Shit. Where’s my fucking phone?”

  He doesn’t look up this time. “No idea.”

  I march around the kitchen, tearing through magazine piles, sweeping countertops. Arthur watches me with curiosity. Mike seems annoyingly uninterested in the whereabouts of my phone. Though I do ask him this same question about ten times a day. “I’m going to be late, late, late!”

  “Hmmm.” Mike taps on his phone screen, then I hear my own phone going off.

  Somewhere upstairs. I climb up there, and it goes silent. “Call it again?” It starts up ringing, and I play a game of Hot and Cold until I find it in the laundry room. The thing ends up in the damnedest places. I jog back downstairs. “Did I tell you Jane woke up?”

  “Yes, you did.” He grabs some just-popped-up toast.

  “Okay.” I look around one last time. “Am I forgetting anything? My phone…”

  “In your hand.”

  “Right.”

  “Zoe.” He scrapes butter on his toast. “I don’t want to intrude, but—”

  “Yes, I’ve taken my meds.”

  “No,” he says, chewing. “You mentioned the dose change, and…”

  “And?”

  He dips his knife in the butter again. “You just seem a little up is all.”

  I give him a look.

  “Or something.”

  I give him another look.

  “Or nothing. Forget it. Arthur, did you hear anything? Some idiot making noise? No? Me neither.”

  As I grab my car keys, I catch a glimpse of Arthur panting up at him, and I could swear the dog is smiling.

  * * *

  My heart thumps out of my chest. I take two deep breaths and wait for it to stop, which it does. Palpitations—something else Sam warned me about.

  Jane looks at me with curiosity. Maybe she can tell something is wrong. Hard to know, because she still isn’t talking. My heart thuds again, then stops. I stand up and give Jane a bright smile. “I guess we’ll see you later then, with the team.” I’m walking out the door when I hear a soft voice.

  “Where am I?”

  I spin back around and look at her. She stares at me blankly, and for a moment I think I might be hearing things, when she repeats it. “Where am I?”

  “Um.” I’m floored. It’s like a beloved doll suddenly opens her mouth and starts talking to you. “You’re in the hospital.”

  She nods and looks around. “Why?”

  “You were…” I pause, thinking of the right way to put this. “You were sick, honey. You were sick.”

  She nods again, like she’s in slow motion.

  I take a seat next to her. “What’s your name?”

  She purses her lips and takes a long time to answer. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know how you got here?”

  She ponders this deeply again and finally comes up with “No.”

  A cart of food trays rumbles by out in the hall, silverware clinking. “The police brought you in. Do you remember that at all?”

  Jane looks confused. “The police?”

  “Yeah. They found you wandering around on the streets.”

  “The streets?” she repeats. “Where?”

  “Buffalo. We’re in Buffalo.”

  She shakes her head like she’s shaking off sleep.

  “Where did you think we were?”

  “I don’t know. New York City maybe.”

  “New York City?” I ask. “Is that where you’re from?”

  She doesn’t answer but sits up and surveys the room. “How long have I been here?”

  I retrace the time. “Three weeks now? Almost a month.”

  “A month?” She looks gobsmacked.

  “Yeah.” I put her chart on the foot of her bed. “What’s the last thing you do remember?”

  “The last thing I remember…” She pauses again, for an uncomfortably long time. “A limousine.”

  That’s the last thing I expected her to say. “Where was it going?”

  “I don’t know.” She picks at some tape on her arm from a blood draw.

  “Were you in it?”

  “No, I was watching it,” she says.

  “Watching it?”

  “Trying to chase after it.”

  I pause. “Why were you chasing after it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who was in it then?”

  “I don’t know.” Jane scratches her elbow. “You know what?”

  I ready my pen. “What?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Hungry?” I laugh. “Hungry is a good thing! We can fix that.”

  She gives me a hesitant smile, which grows into a full-fledged smile. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her smile, and it’s a gorgeous sight.

  “Nancy is your nurse. I’ll talk to her about grabbing you some food. Then I’ll come back later with the team. You remember the tall guy? I mean, taller than me. And the one with the bow ties?”

  Her expression turns nervous. “No.”

  “Never mind. I’ll do proper introductions when we round this afternoon.” I turn back when I get to the door. “By the way, you have a scar…on your ankle?”

  She reaches down automatically to the left side.

  “Do you have any idea how you got it?”

  Jane touches the scar but doesn’t look at it. I wait a long while for her answer.

  “I don’t know.” She screws her face up in thought, then finally she says, “I’m hungry.”

  “Hungry, right. We’ll take care of that in a jiffy.” I scoot into the hallway and get right on the phone to Detective Adams. “Guess who’s talking, talking, talking?”

  “One second.” The detective yells something muffled away from the phone. “I’m guessing it’s Jane.” The detective’s voice sounds far away among the buzz of activity in the background.

  “Yes indeed. You win a prize.”

  “Must be my lucky day.” His voice gets louder as the phone shifts toward his mouth. “Do we have a name yet?”

  “Not yet, unfortunately,” I answer. “She doesn’t know
anything really. She doesn’t even know how she got here. The last thing she remembers is chasing a limousine.”

  “Chasing a limousine?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Hmm. That’s odd.”

  “Oh, and she thought she was in New York City.”

  The phone moves onto his shoulder again. “Okay, I’ll get out there soon.” Someone calls out his name. “Listen, Zoe, I have to get going. Thanks for keeping me in the loop.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  There’s a pause on his end. “Here’s the thing. I know you care about this girl. We all do, really. But I’m working on a lot of cases right now…” He trails off.

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah, so feel free to call me with any big changes or updates. Like today, for instance. But”—he pauses—“you don’t need to call me every day or text me reminders or anything.”

  I feel my face flush. I guess I did text him last week, three or four times. Or six times maybe. I lost count. It was after my Adderall bump.

  “I promise,” he says, “we’re on it. And I’ll call you if we find anything.”

  “Oh, sure. Sorry about that.” In other words: Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

  “I mean, you don’t want me to try to be a doctor, right?” He laughs, to lighten the mood.

  I force out a laugh, too.

  “I’ll call you soon. Okay?”

  We hang up, and on the way back to the nurses’ station, I corner Nancy to arrange for an extra lunch, then swing into the nurses’ station. “Guess who’s talking, talking, talking?” I ask the room, though only Jason is there. He looks up from his computer. “Did you hear me? Talking!” I reach over for a high five, and he offers only a fist bump in return. “Come on, where’s the excitement?”

  Jason turns back to his e-mail. “You’re kind of amped up these days.”

  “Not really,” I answer, trying not to sound defensive. But I have to admit that this seems to be the general consensus. So far, Mike has told me I’m a “little up,” Eddie told me I seemed “zippy,” and Scotty—less diplomatically—told me to “calm the fuck down.” The slap of Dr. Berringer’s walk announces him in the doorway, and Jason signs out of his e-mail.