The Girl Without a Name

by Sandra Block

  My face turns red. “It was research.”

  “Yeah, well. He’s on his own probation. I heard he’s got to see a psychiatrist. All sorts of shit.”

  And now I know why he’s seeing my psychiatrist.

  “And he’s getting a divorce,” Jason adds.

  “He told you?”

  “Oh, honey, he tells me everything. That man totally overshares.”

  I feel an undeniable prick of jealousy, thinking back to that night. His scratchy sweater, his whisper in my ear. Zoe, don’t ever let me fall in love with you, okay?

  My phone quacks out, and I look at my text.

  Melanie driving me crazy! Never get married :)

  “Who’s that?” Jason asks.

  “No one,” I grumble. I don’t feel like chatting about Jean Luc right now. My oh-so-sensitive ex plying me for sympathy on his wedding.

  I answer with a smiley face, then stare at the text another moment, waiting for a reply. I don’t know why. I can’t help it. I’m like a rat that keeps pushing that lever for my reward pellet. And Jean Luc was my reward pellet. I think of his perfect body in my bed while I watched him breathing, not quite believing he was there with me. I have never dated anyone who looked like him before and never will again. And vice versa. He doesn’t have to share his bed with an Amazon-tall woman, her nose dotted with ridiculous freckles, boring brown hair covering the pillow, her feet nearly touching the edge. He has the perfect match in his perfect Melanie, with her perfectly sized everything and golden-blond hair that mirrors his.

  I shove the phone in my pocket.

  * * *

  “Now I don’t want you to get your hopes up too much. In case it isn’t her.” We are waiting for Detective Adams, who just called that they are on their way up.

  Candy is beaming. Her hopes are surging. “What if I don’t recognize her? You think I’ll recognize her?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, honestly. “Maybe seeing her will spark a memory for you.”

  “Maybe,” she answers, too hopeful again. She rubs her hands together. “It’s cold in here, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s supposed to snow today.”

  “Amy took me outside for lunch yesterday. It was chilly, but great to be out.”

  “That’s nice,” I answer. But that wasn’t yesterday. Daneesha was here for lunch yesterday. Candy has accepted the idea that she loses time sometimes, and that some other girl could be there when she doesn’t remember. But she doesn’t fully embrace it. She can’t identify triggers that provoke the switch, and we certainly haven’t been able to control it. Anyway, all of this is better than Daneesha, who threatens to stop talking any time I bring up “that Candy shit.”

  “How are you feeling with the new meds? Any side effects?”

  She shrugs and sits up in bed with her arms around her knees, grabbing her toes. Candy is ultraflexible, rubbery. She could have been a gymnast. She’s got the Olympic smile down at least. “A little tired maybe. Not too bad, if it’ll help me get my memory back.”

  We started the Risperdal. Daneesha is having headaches, and Candy barely notices. A knock rings out on the door. “Hello, hello,” Detective Adams calls out.

  “Hi,” Candy answers as he walks in. She likes Detective Adams. Even Daneesha likes Detective Adams. He’s like a big Papa Bear; it’s hard not to like him.

  “I want to introduce you to someone.” He motions to the woman next to him. She is fiftysomething, overweight, but not obese. She wears a cream-colored turtleneck, a cranberry cardigan with matching polyester pants, and a string of gold beads. The clothes look well worn but chosen with care. Like she might have dressed up for the occasion. “This is Mrs. Green.”

  Candy grants the woman her brightest smile but obviously doesn’t recognize her. And by Mrs. Green’s bewildered expression, it’s clear she doesn’t recognize Candy either. “I’m sorry,” the woman whispers.

  Detective Adams reads the situation, and his face falls. “This isn’t her?”

  “No, it isn’t,” she says, trying to hide her disappointment for Candy’s sake.

  “I don’t recognize anyone really,” Candy says apologetically. “Not even myself really, so I wasn’t sure.”

  “Well, honey,” Mrs. Green says, her voice a million years old, “I’m sure. And unfortunately, you aren’t my niece.”

  Candy scratches at her knee. “You seem very nice anyway.”

  “You do, too, darling,” the woman responds with a warm smile.

  They stare at each other for an uncomfortable, unscripted moment. Detective Adams and I glance at each other, and he raises his eyebrows in resignation. So she isn’t Destiny, and she isn’t Monica. And I’ve broken two hearts, a friend’s and an aunt’s. Three, if you count Candy.

  I consider it a small grace, at least, that Daneesha wasn’t here.

  * * *

  “Zoe!” Dr. Berringer calls out, catching up with me on my way out of the hospital. I wait for him in the doorway of the lobby. The cold air shoots by me as people come in and out. Dr. Berringer turns the corroding brass knob on his bag. “You heading home?”

  “I was. Why, are there any issues?” I glance back up toward the escalators, hoping to hell not.

  “No, no. I was just going to walk you out if you were going that way.”

  “Sure.” I button up my jacket. The sky is a dimming blue. The wind kicks up leaves at our feet. We pass a row of flowering crab trees, wine-red berries glistening in the sun.

  “Zoe,” he says, breaking into the silence, “I never really got to apologize to you.”

  I pull up my bag, which is slipping off my shoulder. “That’s okay.”

  “No.” He stares down at the pavement. “It’s not. It’s not okay. I should never have called you that night. I should never have let you see me that way, or gotten you involved at all.” It sounds like he’s been scolding himself with this speech lately.

  “Maybe not. But you needed help. And I’m happy that I could help you at all. If I did. Help you, that is, in any way.” Verbal diarrhea, my specialty.

  “You did,” he assures me. “You definitely did. The problem is, I should never have asked you to do it.”

  The whine of a leaf blower rings out in one of the yards behind the parking lot. “How are you doing with it all, anyway?” I ask.

  He sighs. “As good as can be expected, I guess. My wife isn’t being very helpful with the divorce, but I guess that would be too much to hope for. Helpful divorce—kind of an oxymoron, huh?”

  “Yeah.” We walk in silence a bit.

  “How’d the aunt thing go?” he asks.

  “From North Carolina?”

  “Right.”

  “Dead end. It wasn’t her.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “Me neither,” I admit.

  We keep walking toward my car, which I can just see peeking out in the corner, the sun shining it candy-apple red. A red Mini Cooper. Completely unsuitable for Buffalo and my height, but my mom bought it when she was dipping into dementia, and I’ll drive the thing until it’s ready for the junkyard.

  “And the drinking?” I ask, not sure if I should.

  His cheeks, ruddy from the cold, turn ruddier. “Working on that one, too.” He kicks a crumpled-up Coke can out of his path, and it clanks off to the side. “This divorce thing has me thrown, though.”

  We get to my car. “It’ll get better,” I offer lamely.

  He smiles. “One day at a time, right?” He stares at me, putting his hand on my shoulder, as the wind swoops my hair into my face. He tucks a piece behind my ear, almost unconsciously, then drops his hand back down. “Zoe, you know, I just wish…”

  I wait for him to finish, but he doesn’t.

  “It doesn’t matter. Just, I’m sorry,” he says. “For everything.”

  As he walks away, I feel my breath going fast, like I’ve been jogging.

  Chapter Twenty

  Daneesha paces back and forth in the room. The Risperd
al doesn’t seem to be agreeing with her.

  “I am done with this,” she spits out. “Done with speech therapy. Done with art therapy. Done with ‘sharing’ therapy”—she uses air quotes for this one—“with Ms. fucking Uh-huh. Share my problems? I don’t have any fucking problems! Only problem I have is being here locked up in this place because no one believes me that some white dudes were trying to rape me!”

  “That’s not why you’re here,” I say, in a calming voice.

  “No?” she yells back. “I don’t know about that. Because no one can tell me why I’m here, and no one can tell me when I’m leaving.”

  “We’ll let you go as soon as we have a place to send you.”

  “What happened to my auntie? When she gonna get here?”

  “Um, that didn’t work out in the end.” It’s easier than explaining that she didn’t recognize Candy.

  “Okay then. How about something else? I thought the discharge planning lady was all up in that shit.”

  “I wish I had a better answer for you, Daneesha. We’re working on it.”

  She sits down on the bed finally, putting her head in her hands. “And I feel like crap,” she says. “Some kind of flu. Got the runs. Got one fucking monster of a headache.” She shoves her legs under her blankets. “Ain’t y’all supposed to be doctors or something?”

  I reach over and grab her vitals sheet. Her blood pressure is 128/88, her temperature 37.8 C. A touch high for both, but not excessively for an agitated, pacing young girl. Maybe she is coming down with something, though. “We’ll keep an eye on it, Daneesha.”

  “Yeah, you do that,” she grumbles.

  I stand up to leave and glance down at her table, adorned with her newest self-portrait.

  “Someone of y’all made me a picture, too,” she says, seeing me evaluate it. “Looks like me, if I was skinny.” She laughs halfheartedly.

  Which is strange, because she is skinny. But I guess Daneesha doesn’t see herself that way.

  “Before I go,” I say, “you mentioned white guys trying to rape you?”

  “Yeah, what of it? I been saying that since I got here, and none of y’all seem to care.”

  “Were they in a limo? Those men?”

  She cradles her head in her hands. “No offense, Dr. Goldman. But you’re driving me nuts with that fucking limo.”

  * * *

  “Guess who we found?” Detective Adams asks.

  “No idea.” I shift the phone onto my shoulder, grabbing Chloe’s chart.

  “The real Monica Green. In North Carolina.”

  “Alive, I’m hoping?”

  “Alive and kicking, yes, thankfully. So the aunt has forgiven me.”

  “Well, that’s good for you at least.”

  “So I take it there’s nothing new on Candy or Daneesha?”

  “Nope. We’re adding more meds to see if it will help. So far, not really. Just sedating Candy a little and pissing off Daneesha.”

  Yelling and laughter ring out in the background.

  “Sounds like a party over there.”

  “It is, actually. My fiftieth.”

  “Hey, congrats.” A party horn blares out.

  He sighs. “Five more years until retirement.”

  “I’ve got a good forty left if it makes you feel any better.”

  “It doesn’t,” he answers with a laugh. “I’ll let you know if we find anything out.” We’re hanging up as Jason comes in. He plops down in the chair and leans back, the front legs lifting with a creak.

  “God, I can’t wait until this pediatric rotation is over. I can go back to dealing with depressed adults. Depressed kids are just too depressing.”

  “I know. I’m not loving the under-eighteen set myself.”

  “I got this poor kid today,” he says, “in foster care because his parents were abusing him. Now it turns out the foster dad was abusing him, too. The kid tried to commit suicide. Ten years old.”

  “Hideous. Some people should not be allowed to have children.” I shake my head.

  At that moment, Dr. Berringer walks in the room, surveying his residents. “It looks like somebody’s funeral in here.”

  “Oh, we’re all depressed for various reasons,” Jason says.

  “No time for that,” Dr. Berringer calls out. “Buck up that serotonin, we’ve got a job to do.” He leans against the file cabinet and wipes a stripe of dust off the top with his index finger, spreading who knows what kind of bacteria. “Let’s start with Candy. How’s the Risperdal working?”

  “Not too well,” I say, opening her chart. The heater bangs in the stuffy room. “This morning Daneesha was pretty agitated. Complaining of a headache, diarrhea.”

  He taps his finger against his lips, and I notice he’s still wearing his ring. “Let’s bump up the Risperdal. No improvement tomorrow and we’ll add some Effexor.”

  “Okay. What about the headache and flu stuff?” I ask.

  “Watch it. We can always call an ID consult. Meanwhile, let’s run a CBC and a CMP.”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay, Jason, who you got?” he says, turning toward him.

  Jason gathers up his papers. “Ten-year-old Caucasian boy with a suicidal attempt,” he starts.

  Dr. Berringer leans back against the wall, crossing his arms. “God help us.”

  I am suddenly reminded again of the man who stood watching Jane with the saddest expression, his hand on Jane’s head. It feels like a hundred years ago.

  * * *

  At 2:37 a.m., the phone rings, and I jump up in bed. “What? What? What?” I yell out, only half awake. Arthur growls in response. I look around the room and see nothing familiar, until I remember I’m not in my room.

  Mike has my phone, squinting at the light on the screen. “It’s the hospital. Eleventh floor.”

  “Fuck,” I grumble, taking the phone as he turns right back over to sleep. “If I don’t get back, take Arthur for a walk?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he mumbles.

  “The leash is on the washer,” I whisper. But he’s already in dreamland, so I throw on some scrubs, pull my hair back in a ponytail, and head out.

  When I walk onto the psych unit, La-Toya (one of my favorite night nurses) meets me. “I’m sorry,” she says, in her squeaky, Minnie Mouse voice. “I wouldn’t normally call you just for a fever, but Jane’s really acting loopy.” The nurses all still call her Jane. Otherwise it’s too confusing to figure out which patient is asking for what.

  “That’s okay,” I say, scrolling through her med sheet and then heading down to see her. It’s Candy, and she looks awful.

  “Hello,” she mumbles, in an effort to be polite. Her smile is weak.

  “Heard you’re not feeling so well, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she admits. “Not great.” She shivers and pulls her sheet taut over her.

  I flip through the vitals on her clipboard. “Looks like you’re running a little fever.”

  She nods and hugs the sheet tighter.

  “Sore throat? Stuffy nose? Vomiting?”

  She shakes her head to all of these. “I have had some…diarrhea,” she says, embarrassed.

  “Is that right?” Probably the flu that Daneesha was starting to feel.

  “And I had the weirdest dream,” she says.

  “Oh yeah? What was it?”

  She rubs her forehead. “Men were chasing me down the street.”

  “Yeah?”

  “White guys, in suits,” she continues.

  A chill runs through me. I wait, but she doesn’t say any more.

  “That’s all I remember. Probably just a nightmare, huh?”

  “Maybe.” I put her clipboard back on the bed. “But Daneesha was talking about the same thing before.”

  “Really?” She opens her eyes wider and sits up a bit. Candy is always interested in Daneesha, even if she doesn’t fully believe in her. Like asking after a good friend. She rubs her forehead again.

  “Headache?”

&nb
sp; “A little.” Her eyes start closing. Grabbing her chart off the table, I see the self-portraits again. Candy added some artistic flair to hers, light reflecting off her irises. Daneesha’s picture looks like a child’s version of Candy’s, broader face, same color eyes. But looking at it closer, I notice there are other differences, too. Daneesha’s chin is pointier, with a notch in it. A cleft maybe? And on the left cheek, a dot. It could be a smudge, but could it also be…a birthmark?

  “Candy, do you have a cousin maybe, or a sister?” I realize that I asked Daneesha that question before, but never thought to ask Candy.

  She looks straight at me, and it’s as if a veil falls away from her eyes. Candy bolts upright in her bed, clutching at the guardrails. Her bony hands are trembling.

  “Janita!” she screams out, high-pitched, shrill. So loud it hurts my ears. “The limousine took her!” she screams out.

  “Where? Where did they take her?”

  “Janita!” she wails out again, and nurses start running toward the room. She is hyperventilating now, her chest rising and falling. “They’ve got Janita!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She’s got a sister?” Detective Adams asks.

  We had to sedate her overnight. By the time he gets there this morning, she’s sound asleep, our angelic Candy again.

  “Look at this,” I say, handing him the two pictures. We sit around her bed, talking quietly while she sleeps. “I always assumed they looked so different because Daneesha was the worse artist. But then I noticed something else.” I point out the cleft and the birthmark, though he’s not as convinced as I am. “And when I asked if she had a sister, she went ballistic.”

  “Wait.” He puts the pictures down. “She didn’t offer the sister spontaneously? So it may not even be accurate.”

  “Maybe not. But I didn’t give her a name. And I didn’t coach her to go off the rails like that.”

  He nods with a sigh, flipping to a page in his notebook. “And you said Candy was talking about the white guys, too.”

  “Yeah. She said they were in suits and everything.”

  “Huh.” He picks up the pictures again and pulls them away for a far-sighted look, then puts them back on the table with a shrug. “We’ll see what we can do. I’ll put out an APB on Janita Jones. Maybe we’ll get something. Maybe the father took them and then decided against it and dumped them somewhere.”