Alexandra Burt - Little Girl Gone - The can’t-put-it-down psychological thriller

‘Mrs Paradise? I’m Dr Baker.’

I judge only his age − he is young − as if my brain does not allow me to appraise him further. Have I met him before? I don’t know. Everything about me, my body and my senses, is faulty. When did I become so forgetful, so scatterbrained?

He wears a white coat with his name stitched on the pocket: Dr Jeremy Baker . He retrieves a pen from his coat and shines a light into my eyes. There’s an explosion so painful I clench my eyelids shut. I turn my head away from him, reach up and feel the left side of my head. Now I understand why the world around me is muffled; my entire head is bandaged.

‘You’re at County Medical. An ambulance brought you to the emergency room about …’ He pauses and looks at his wristwatch. I wonder why the time matters. Is he counting the hours, does he want to be exact? ‘… on the fifth, three days ago.’

Three days? And I don’t remember a single minute.

Ask him, go ahead, ask him. ‘Where’s my daughter?’

‘You were in a car accident. You have a head injury and you’ve been in a medically induced coma.’

Accident? I don’t remember any accident. He didn’t answer my question. He talks to me as if I’m incapable of comprehending more elaborate sentences.

‘They found you in your car in a ravine. You have a concussion, fractured ribs, and multiple contusions around your lower extremities. You also had a critical head injury when they brought you in. Your brain was swollen, which was the reason for the induced coma.’

I don’t remember any accident. What about Jack? Yes, Mia’s with Jack. She must be. One more time. ‘Was my daughter in the car with me?’

‘You were alone,’ he says.

‘She’s with Jack? Mia’s with my husband?’

‘Everything’s going to be okay.’

The blood was just a vision, it wasn’t real. She’s with Jack, she’s safe. Thank God. Everything’s going to be okay, he said.

‘We’re not sure of any brain damage at this point, but now that you’ve regained consciousness we’ll be able to perform all the necessary tests to figure out what’s going on.’ He motions the nurse who has been standing next to him. ‘You lost a lot of blood and we had to administer fluids to stabilize you. The swelling will go down in a few days but in the meantime we need to make sure you keep your lungs clear of fluids.’

He picks up a contraption and holds it up in front of me. ‘This is a spirometer. Basically you keep the red ball suspended as long as you can. The nurse will give you detailed instructions. Every two hours, please.’ His last comment is directed towards the nurse.

The gurgling in my chest is uncomfortable and I try not to cough. The pain in my left side must be the fractured ribs. I wonder how I’ll be able to stay awake for two hours or wake up every two hours or use this contraption for two hours, or whatever he just said.

‘Before I forget,’ Dr Baker looks down at me. He is quiet for a while and I wonder if I missed a question. Then he lowers his voice. ‘Two detectives were here to talk to you. I won’t allow any questioning until we’ve done a few more tests.’ He nods to the nurse and walks towards the door, then turns around and offers one more trifle of news. ‘Your husband will be here soon. In the meantime can we call anyone for you? Family? A friend? Anybody?’

I shake my head ‘no’ and immediately regret it. A mallet pounds against my skull from the inside. My head is a giant swollen bulb and the throbbing in my ear manages to distract me from my aching ribs.

My lids have a life of their own. I’m nodding off but I have so many questions. I take a deep breath as if I’m preparing to jump off a diving board. It takes everything I have to sound out the words.

‘Where did this accident happen?’

Why does he look at me puzzled? Am I missing more than I’m aware of?

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you much about the accident,’ he says. He sounds subdued, as if he’s forcing himself to be composed in order to calm me. ‘All we know is that your car was found upstate at the bottom of a ravine.’ Pause. ‘You have a lot of injuries. Some are from the accident. Can you remember what happened?’

I reflect on his words, really think them over. Accident. Nothing. Not a thing. There’s a large black hole where my memory used to be.

‘I can’t remember anything,’ I say.

His brows furrow. ‘You mean … the accident?’

The accident. He talks about the accident as if I remember. I want to tell him to X-ray my head, and that he’ll find a dark shadow within my skull where my memory used to be.

I’m getting the hang of this; concentrate, think of the question and repeat it in your head, take a deep breath, then speak.

‘You don’t understand. I don’t remember the accident and I don’t remember anything before the accident.’

‘Do you remember wanting to harm yourself?’

‘Harm myself?’

I would remember that, wouldn’t I? What is he talking about? I’m getting frustrated. We’re going in circles. It’s difficult to stay awake.

‘Either that or you were shot.’

Was I shot or did I harm myself? What kind of questions is he asking me?

I turn my head as far to the left as possible, catching a glimpse of an outstretched leg of a police officer sitting by the door, out in the hallway. Hardly normal procedure. I wonder what that’s all about.

Dr Baker looks over his shoulder and then faces me again. He steps closer and lowers his voice. ‘You don’t remember.’ He states it matter of factly, no longer a question, but a realization.

‘I don’t know what I don’t know,’ I say. That’s kind of funny, when I think about it. I giggle and his brows furrow.

Then he tells me about my voice. How it is ‘monotone’ and that I have ‘a reduction in range and intensity of emotions,’ and that my reactions are ‘flat and blunted.’

I don’t understand what he’s telling me. Should I smile more, be more cheerful? I want to ask him but then I hear a word that puts it all to rest.

‘Amnesia,’ he says. ‘We’re not sure about the cause yet. Retrograde, maybe post-traumatic. Maybe even trauma related.’

When you hear amnesia from a man in a white coat it’s serious. Final. I forgot , sounds casual, oh, I’m forgetful.

I have amnesia, I’m not forgetful after all. Is he going to ask me what year it is? Who the President is? If I remember my birthdate? That’s what they do in movies. I don’t have to rack my brain, I know the answers. But why don’t I remember the accident? What else did I forget?

‘Retrograde means you don’t recall events that happened just before the onset of the memory loss. Post-traumatic is a cognitive impairment, and memory loss can stretch back hours or days, sometimes even longer. Eventually you’ll recall the distant past but you may never recover what happened just prior to your accident. Amnesia can’t be diagnosed with an X-ray, like a broken bone. We’ve done an MRI test and a CAT scan. Both tests came back inconclusive. Basically there’s no definitive proof of brain damage, but absence of proof is not proof of absence. There could be microscopic damages and the MRI and the CAT scan are just not sophisticated enough to detect those. Nerve fiber damage doesn’t show up on either test.’

I remain silent, not sure if I should ask anything else, not sure if I even understood him at all. All I grasp is that he can’t tell me anything definitive, so what’s the point?

‘There’s the possibility that you suffer from dissociative amnesia. Trauma would cause you to block out certain information associated with the event. There’s no test for that either. You’d have to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The neurologist will order some more tests. Like I said, time will tell.’