Private and Confidential
Dear Mrs Kelly, following your successful completion of our puzzle, we are offering you a unique opportunity to start your life afresh. Please contact us as soon as possible to discuss.
It’s a hoax, she told herself, shaking her head. Yet she found that her finger was hovering over the telephone number listed.
Chapter 9
EMILIA
For the second time in a handful of days, Emilia awoke to find herself lying in an unfamiliar bed. Only unlike before, it didn’t panic her. With its off-white, yellowing walls, stiff sheets and blue plastic chairs, it was immediately clear this was a National Health Service building and not a private facility. She turned and squinted at a window looking out into the corridor. From between vertical blind slats she saw and heard nurses and patients going about their business.
Her head pounded sharp and heavy as the events of how she ended up there slotted together. She recalled escaping the last institution through corridors and a tunnel before reaching London’s streets. And she remembered losing her footing and being hit by an oncoming vehicle. But in trying to push her recollections back further, she remained unable to shed any further light on anything about her past, besides her name.
Emilia ran her hands across her head and found a tiny lump no wider than a few millimetres on the crown and a raised bump the size of a large marble along the hairline. Her left side and thigh were sore to the touch, and likely bruised. To her relief, there were no debilitating plaster casts. She had escaped lightly. A drip had been inserted into a cannula in the back of her hand and a wirelessheart monitor silently captured her rhythm. For a few moments, Emilia allowed herself to relax, before a chill ran through her when she recalled the cause of the accident – she had been trying to escape four blurred figures following her.
Who were they and what did they want from me? Were they following me from the first building? If so, what did I do to make them want to take me back? And who am I?
With no immediate answers, a frustrated Emilia distracted herself by taking in the rest of the room. A second external window offered a view across the hospital rooftops with sporadically scattered air-conditioning units and aerials. And on the sill was a vase of fresh pink flowers alongside a card.Someone must know I’m here!she thought.They can help me piece it all together!
But before she could read who it was from, the door to her room opened. Two casually attired female doctors, identifiable via lanyards hanging from their necks, appeared with a male uniformed nurse and somebody else typing notes into a tablet who read from a digital clipboard secured to the wall above her head.
‘Good afternoon, Emilia. Is it okay if I call you that?’ began the man whose name badge read, ‘Dr Fazul Choudary, Senior Consultant’.
‘How do you know my name?’ she replied.
‘You gave it to the Resus team when you were admitted three days ago.’
‘And where am I?’
‘King William hospital in Dulwich, south London.’
‘What else did I tell you when I was brought in?’
‘That you couldn’t remember who you were but that you were being followed.’
Emilia nodded. For some reason, on her admission she had held back from telling them she had only just escaped from somewhere else. And she was reluctant to rectify it now. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
Dr Choudary consulted the notes before he continued. ‘Physically, very little aside from some minor cuts and bruising. There was a risk of brain swelling which is why you were kept sedated until this morning. You were fortunate that the bodywork of an autonomous vehicle is designed to cause minimal impact in the event of an accident. However, mentally – and this is only according to your preliminary psychological evaluation and from what you told us on admission – you may be suffering from episodic memory loss. This means that while you know how to walk and talk and carry out bodily functions, your brain is struggling to encode and retrieve what you have done on a daily basis throughout your life. You can’t figuratively go back in time to a specific event and remember it.’
The diagnosis was welcome; there had been moments when she thought she might be losing her mind. However, it left her none the wiser as to how she might rediscover her identity.
‘Will it return?’
‘In most patients, it does, given time. But we would like to perform an MRI scan of your brain to rule out any underlying cause.’
‘No,’ Emilia said quickly. Her immediate refusal took both Dr Choudary and his team by surprise. Something deep inside her was warning her not to allow anyone insight into the contents of her head.
‘It’s a non-invasive procedure that I would strongly advise you to consider …’ Dr Choudary continued, but Emilia was adamant and shook her head. ‘Okay, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t tell you I’d like to discuss this with you again.’
‘I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s not up for debate. Just tell me what I need to do to get my memory back so I know who I am.’
‘There’s no one-fix solution as it can vary from patient to patient. But after further tests, we will have a greateridea of what might work for you, such as hypnosis, acupuncture, neurofeedback, bilateral sounds … there’s a lot we can do, but none of it is an exact science.’
Emilia became tearful after their departure. The notion that she might never know who she was again terrified her. She turned to lie on her side but a sharp pain tore through her ribcage, stealing her breath. Slowly, she slid further down the mattress and brought her knees to her chest.
The pain medication must have eased her to sleep because she awoke with a start when she sensed someone else was in the room with her. Without thinking, she clenched her fists, ready to lash out until she could see her visitor properly. He was a tall man, with dark, knotted eyebrows and thin lips. He had high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He wore no lanyard around his neck and held no medical device in his hand, suggesting he was not a staff member.
He offered an audible sigh of relief as he approached her bed and leaned over her.
