The doctor’s daughter has stabilized and his ex-wife has told him he is not needed anymore. They do not get along, the doctor and his ex-wife. He returns to his rounds. He has several patients his colleagues have been helping out with, but none he is more excited to see than the woman who has just come out of her coma. Who is she? What happened? He wants to know more about her. Even though he isn’t on rounds until the next morning, he visits, tells her what to expect. She listens carefully. She does not recognize the doctor from two days before, and then she does. There is something strange about him. She keeps this to herself. So far, he hasn’t asked any questions, other than the obligatory How are you feeling? She is beginning to worry that there is something very wrong with this hospital. Where has she woken up? The nurses, the doctors, even the visitors: there is something off about all of them. She wants to get out and to get out, she’ll have to show them that she’s okay. Thinking she’s tired, the doctor leaves her, goes home.
Once the doctor has gone, her ex-boyfriend, Scottie, enters the room. He has brought even more flowers. She tells him to take them away, to take them all away. Then, something about him jogs a memory — this is the man in the car, the man with whom she left the restaurant that night! Not her ex-boyfriend, but someone who looks a lot like him, a man who’d wanted her to pretend to be his girlfriend to make some other woman jealous, or so he’d said. They were in the car because they were on their way to a club in the Mission that night. He was going to pay her a thousand dollars to pretend to be his girlfriend. She was a sales associate at Nordstrom, but, ever since her roommate had moved out, she couldn’t pay rent on what she made. She couldn’t turn down a thousand dollars. It was creepy, but the guy reminded her of her boyfriend, and he seemed harmless enough, so, she figured, what the hell. It is weird that he looks so much like her ex-boyfriend, though, she thinks. She can’t remember where she met this guy. How does she know him? And why is he here, now? Did he push her off the scaffolding? She can’t remember, but she pushes the call button. She doesn’t say anything to the man, even when he asks her questions. When the nurse gets there, she tells the nurse she doesn’t want this man there, doesn’t want him admitted anymore. And could she please do something about the flowers?
The man looks inconsolable. He tells the nurse that she doesn’t need to worry about the flowers, and she doesn’t need to worry about him bothering them anymore. He won’t be back. He starts picking up bouquets. He is on the verge of tears. The nurse has seen how devoted this man was to the woman, how he stayed by her those two month, how he brought flowers every time he came, how he talked to her. She is angry at her patient, as angry as she has ever been at a patient, but she has been a nurse long enough, has seen enough of people, that she is able to hide it. She helps the man gather up all the flowers. They put the flowers on one of the flat-carts the attendants use to bring meals to the ward on. The nurse says that, if the man doesn’t mind, she’ll take the more recent ones around to the nurses’ stations. He says that it’s a great idea. They throw the older ones away. She asks him if he wants to help her. He does help her, though it’s obvious he’s struggling with his emotions. Though she doesn’t really know why she does it, the nurse takes the man home after her shift, and the two of them make love.
It takes a few chapters, but the man falls in love with the nurse, and the woman gets out of the hospital. The doctor finds out that she has suffered head trauma that seems to have caused Capgras delusion, a rare syndrome in which the person affected recognizes faces but believes the people she recognizes are impostors. This explains, to the doctor, her odd behavior. He goes to her room to tell her, but she has discharged herself. The detective is there, with a bunch of white roses. He asks the doctor about the man who used to bring this kind of flowers, whether he ever said anything to the doctor, and what it was that he said. He asks about the woman, about the odd way she acted. He knows the doctor can’t say anything, because of doctor-patient privilege, but maybe he could give the detective a hint? He only wants the woman to be happy, happy and healthy. The doctor says no, sorry. She fell, went into a coma, came out of it. She is well enough to go home. These are things the detective knows already. As for the man who visited and brought roses, the doctor barely said a word to him. The doctor says, You probably know much more about him than I do. The detective doesn’t know what this means, or why the doctor is looking at him so strangely.
The woman, not knowing what has happened but not wishing to have to deal with the police again, declines to bring charges against anyone. There is no reason for the detective to have anything further to do with her, but one day, he shows up at Nordstrom. He finds out she quit soon after her return to work. She had been acting strange, everyone agreed. She had been evicted from her apartment while she was in the hospital, and the woman she was staying with afterward says she thinks the woman has gone back home, somewhere in Kansas. She says it was very difficult to live with the woman. She really was acting very strange. The detective leaves, a little more heartbroken.
The nurse’s relationship with the man is getting serious. He has moved some things into her apartment: just little things, but things. She is a brunette, has been most of her adult life (she was a blonde when she was a child, her hair is almost white in pictures), but one day, she decides to get her hair dyed. She thinks it will be a fun new thing to try. She has it dyed, platinum blonde. It looks good on her. She decides to really splurge. She goes to Nordstrom, picks out a new outfit and new shoes. She gets a lot of very odd looks, and one sales associate comes over and says, Hey, welcome back, but she doesn’t think much of it, just thinks it’s a new sales tactic. She puts on her new outfit before the man comes over. They are going out to dinner, to a restaurant she’s never been to. He assures her it’s good.
A few months later, the nurse runs into the detective on the street. Neither recognizes the other — they met only for a few minutes, in the hospital, some time ago — but there is some odd attraction between them. The detective thinks she looks like.
but it can’t be. He invites her out to dinner. She feels a certain amount of power, a feeling that has been developing ever since she dyed her hair and started dressing differently. She’s been asked out by a number of people, men and women, in the last few months. She’s tired of the man she’s been seeing — he’s very romantic but also very possessive and clingy. She’s planning to break up with him that night, at dinner. She tells the detective no, thank you, I’m flattered. The detective persists. She thinks for a minute. The old her would have played it safe, broken up with her boyfriend and then gone home. Maybe she should think different. She tells him she’s having dinner with an old friend, but if he doesn’t mind picking her up at the restaurant, and if he doesn’t mind that it’s fairly quick, she will join him for a drink after. He readily agrees. As he’s walking away, she thinks, You know, he kind of looks like.
…
Cinema. was and is a breach in the wall between the past and the present, one that lets the dead return, albeit as images of flickering light rather than phantoms in the dark or armies marching across the land. Anyone who watches old movies watches the dead.
(Solnit, River of Shadows)