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

I take a deep breath. The medical facts he’s relaying to me are one thing, but I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something he is not telling me.

‘They found me where again?’

‘In a ravine, in Dover, upstate. You were transferred here from Dover Medical Center.’

Dover? Dover. Nothing. I’m blank.

‘I’ve never been to Dover.’

‘That’s where they found you, you just don’t remember. It’s part of the memory loss.’ He slips the pen back in his coat pocket. ‘You were lucky,’ he adds. He holds up his index finger and thumb, indicating the extent of the luck I had. ‘The bullet was this far from doing serious harm. There is extensive damage to your ear but I want you to remember that you were really lucky. Remember that.’

Remember that . How funny. My hand moves up to my ear, almost like a reflex. ‘You said there’s damage to my ear. What happened to it?’

He pauses ever so slightly. ‘Gone. Completely gone. The area was infected and we had to make a decision.’ He watches me intently. ‘It could have been worse, like I said, you were lucky.’

‘That’s some luck,’ I say but when I think about my ear I don’t really care.

‘There’s reconstructive surgery.’

‘What’s there now, I mean, is there a hole?’

‘There’s a small opening draining fluids, other than that, there’s a flap of skin stretched over the wound.’

An opening that drains fluids. I’m oddly untouched by the fact that a flap of skin is stretched over a hole in my head where my ear used to be. I have amnesia. I forgot to lock my car. I lost my umbrella. My ear is gone. It’s all the same; insignificant.

‘And you call that lucky?’

‘You’re alive, that’s what counts.’

There’s that buzzing sound again and then his voice goes from loud to muffled, as if someone’s turned a volume dial.

‘What about my ear?’

He looks at me, puzzled.

‘I remember you told me it was gone.’ Completely gone , were the words he used. ‘I mean my hearing, what about my hearing? Everything sounds muffled.’

‘We did an electrophy‌siological hearing test while you were unconscious.’ He grabs my file from the nightstand and opens it. He flips through the pages. ‘You’ve lost some audio capacity, but nothing major. We’ll order more tests, depending on the next CAT scan, we just have to wait it out.’

‘My ear, did that happen during the accident?’

‘They recovered a gun in the car. They are not sure how the injury came about, if someone shot you or you shot yourself. Hopefully you’ll remember soon.’

Bullet. Was shot or I did I shoot myself? That explains the police officer sitting outside my door and I wonder if he’s guarding me or if he’s guarding someone from me. This talk of bullets and guns and ravines, my missing ear. I’m blank, completely blank. Except …

‘I remembered something.’

The words come spilling out and take on a life of their own.

‘I need to know if what I see … I … I think I remember bits and pieces, but it’s not like a memory, it’s more like fragments.’ It’s like flipping through a photo album not knowing if it’s mine or someone else’s life. Blood. So much blood.

‘It’s a humpty dumpty kind of a situation, maybe you just can’t put it back together. You may not be able to remember minute by minute, but you’ll be able to generally connect the dots at some point.’

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Wild horses. I make a decision. The blood was just an illusion. A figment.

‘I’m very tired,’ I say and feel relieved.

‘Let the nurse know if there’s anybody you want us to call. Don’t forget the spirometer – every two hours …’

He points at something behind me. ‘Behind you is a PCA pump. It delivers small amounts of pain medication. If you need more,’ he puts a small box with a red button in my hand, ‘just push the red button and you’ll get one additional dose of morphine. The safety feature only allows for a maximum amount during a certain timed interval. Any questions?’

I have learned my lesson from earlier and barely shake my head.

I watch him leave the room and immediately a nurse enters and I try to concentrate on her explaining the yellow contraption to me. I’m supposed to breathe into the tubing until a ball moves up, and I have to breathe continuously to try to keep the ball suspended as long as possible. Because there’s fluids in my lungs.

I have amnesia. My ear is gone. I feel … I feel as if I’m not connecting like I should. I should yell and scream, raise bloody hell, but Dr Baker’s explanations of my lack of emotions, ‘blunted affect’ he called it, seems logical. Logic I can handle, it’s the emotions that remain elusive.

There’s something they’re not telling me. Maybe because they don’t subject injured people – especially those who’ve been shot, who lost an ear, who were that close – to any additional bad news. That must be it. Maybe the police will tell me, or Jack, once he gets here. They already told me I’ve been robbed of hours of my life, how much worse can it get?

I hold the spirometer in my right hand. I blow into the tube and allow my mind to go blank while I watch the red ball go up. It lingers for whatever amount of time I manage to keep it suspended. I pinch my eyes shut to will the ball to maintain its suspension. Suddenly bits and pieces of images come into focus – the empty crib, the missing bottles – as if they are captured on the back of my eyelids. My mind explodes. It disintegrates, breaks into tiny particles.

Mia isn’t with Jack. She’s gone.

The realization occurs so abruptly and is so powerful that the wires connected to my chest seem to tremble and the machines behind me pick up on it. The beeps speed up like the hooves of a horse, walking, then trotting, then breaking into a full blown gallop. Mia’s disappearance is a fact, yet it is disconnected from whatever consequences it entails, there’s a part I can’t connect with. An empty crib. Missing clothes, her missing bottles and diapers, everything was gone. I looked for her and couldn’t find her. I went to the police and then there’s a dark hole.

Like a jigsaw puzzle I study the pieces, connect them, tear them apart and start all over again. I remember going to the police precinct but after that it gets blurry – hazy, like a childhood memory. My mind plays a game of ‘Chinese whispers,’ thoughts relaying messages, then retelling them skewed. Easily misinterpreted, embellished, unreliable.

Every time I watch the spirometer ball move upwards, more images form; a bathroom stall, a mop, a stairwell, pigeons, the smell of fresh paint. Then a picture fades in, as if someone has turned up a light dimmer: fragments of celestial bodies; a sun, a moon, and stars. So many stars.

Why was I in Dover? Where is my daughter and why is no one talking about her?

As I lie in the hospital bed, I am aware of time passing, a fleeting glimpse of light outside, day turning into night, and back into day. I long for … a tidbit of my childhood, a morsel of memory, of how my mother cared for me when I was sick, in bed with the flu or some childhood disease, like measles or chickenpox. But then I recall having been a robust child, a child that was hardy and resistant to viruses, to strep throats and pink eyes.

I don’t know what to tell Jack once he shows up. They told him Mia is missing and he will question me. Jack will return from Chicago, he will ask questions, many questions. He will want to know about the day Mia disappeared. About the morning I found her crib empty. Amnesia is just another shortcoming of a long list of my other countless inadequacies. Shortfall after shortfall.