“There’s always an exception to any rule.”
Hannaport laughed softly and shook his head. “If pessimism were a competitive sport, you’d win the world series.”
She blinked in surprise, then smiled. “I’m sorry. I guess I am being excessively gloomy.”
Glancing at his watch, getting up from his chair, he said, “Yes, I think you are. Especially considering how well the girl came through it all. It could have been a lot worse.”
Carol got to her feet, too. In a rush, the words falling over one another, she said, “I guess maybe the reason it bothers me so much is because I deal with disturbed children every day, and it’s my job to help them get well again, and that’s all I ever wanted to do since I was in high school — work with sick kids, be a healer — but now I’m responsible for all the pain this poor girl is going through.”
“You mustn’t feel that way. You didn’t intend to harm her.”
Carol nodded. “I know I’m not being entirely rational about the situation, but I can’t help feeling the way I feel.”
“I have some patients to see,” Hannaport said, glancing at his watch again. “But let me leave you with one thought that might help you handle this.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
“The girl suffered only minor physical injuries. I won’t say they were negligible injuries, but they were damned close to it. So you’ve got nothing to feel guilty about on that score. As for her amnesia.. well, maybe the accident had nothing to do with it.”
“Nothing to do with it? But I assumed that when she hit her head on the car or on the pavement—”
“I’m sure you know a blow on the head isn’t the only cause of amnesia,” Dr. Hannaport said. “It’s not even the most common factor in such cases. Stress, emotional shock — they can result in loss of memory. In fact we don’t yet understand the human mind well enough to say for sure exactly what causes most cases of amnesia. As far as this girl is concerned, everything points to the conclusion that she was in her current state even before she stepped in front of your car.”
He emphasized each argument in favor of his theory by raising fingers on his right hand. “One: She wasn’t carrying any ID, Two: She was wandering around in the pouring rain without a coat or an umbrella, as if she was in a daze. Three: From what I understand, the witnesses say she was acting very strange before you ever came on the scene.” He waggled his three raised fingers. "Three very good reasons why you shouldn’t be so eager to blame yourself for the kid’s condition.”
“Maybe you’re right, but I still—”
“I am right,” he said. “There’s no maybe about it. Give yourself a break, Dr. Tracy.”
A woman with a sharp, nasal voice paged Dr. Hannaport on the hospital’s tinny public address system.
“Thank you for your time,” Carol said. “You’ve been more than kind.”
“Come back this evening and talk to the girl if you want. I’m sure you’ll find she doesn’t blame you one bit.”
He turned and hurried across the gaudy lounge, in answer to the page’s call; the tails of his white lab coat fluttered behind him.
Carol went to the pay phones and called her office. She explained the situation to her secretary, Thelma, and arranged for the rescheduling of the patients she had intended to see today. Then she dialed home, and Paul answered on the third ring.
“You just caught me as I was going out the door,” he said. “I’ve got to drive down to O’Brian’s office and pick up a new set of application papers. Ours
were lost in the mess yesterday. So far, this has been a day I should have slept through.”
“Ditto on this end,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
She told him about the accident and briefly summarized her conversation with Dr. Hannaport.
“It could have been worse,” Paul said. “At least we can be thankful no one was killed or crippled.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me: ‘It could have been worse, Carol.’ But it seems plenty bad enough to me.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I told you. I wasn’t even scratched.”
“I don’t mean physically. I mean, are you together emotionally? You sound shaky.”
“I am. Just a little.”
“I’ll come to the hospital,” he said.
“No, no. That’s not necessary.”
“Are you sure you should drive?”
“I drove here after the accident without trouble, and I’m feeling better now than I did then. I’ll be okay. What I’m going to do is, I’m going over to Grace’s house. She’s only a mile from here; it’s easier than going home. I have to sponge off my clothes, dry them out, and press them. I need a shower, too. I’ll probably have an early dinner with Grace, if that’s all right by her, and then I’ll come back here during visiting hours this evening.”
“When will you be home?”
“Probably not until eight or eight-thirty.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“Miss you, too.”
“Give my best to Grace,” he said. “And tell her I think she is the next Nostradamus.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Grace called a while ago. Said she had two nightmares recently, and you figured in both. She was afraid something was going to happen to you.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. She was embarrassed about it. Afraid I’d think she was getting senile or something.”
“You told her about the lightning yesterday?”
“Yeah. But she felt something else would happen, something bad.”
“And it did.”
“Creepy, huh?”
“Decidedly,” Carol said. She remembered her own nightmare: the black void; the flashing, silvery object drawing nearer, nearer.
“I’m sure Grace’ll tell you all about it,” Paul said. “And I’ll see you this evening.”
“I love you,” Carol said.
“Love you, too.”
She put down the phone and went outside to the parking lot.
Gray-black thunderheads churned across the sky, but only a thin rain was falling now. The wind was still cold and sharp; it sang in the power lines overhead, sounding like a swarm of angry wasps.
***
The semiprivate room had two beds, but the second one was not currently in use. At the moment, no nurse was present either. The girl was alone.
She lay under a crisp white sheet and a creamcolored blanket, staring at the acoustic-tile ceiling. She had a headache, and she could feel each dully throbbing, burning cut and abrasion on her battered body, but she knew she was not seriously hurt.
Fear, not pain, was her worst enemy. She was frightened by her inability to remember who she was. On the other hand, she was plagued by the inexplicable yet unshakable feeling that it would be foolish and exceedingly dangerous to remember her past. Without knowing why, she suspected that full remembrance would be the death of her — an odd notion that she found more frightening than anything else.
She knew her amnesia wasn’t the result of the accident. She had a misty recollection of walking along the street in the rain a minute or two before she had blundered in front of the Volkswagen. Even then, she had been disoriented, afraid, unable to remember her name, utterly unfamiliar with the strange city in which she found herself and unable to recall how she had gotten there. The thread of her memory definitely had begun unraveling prior to the accident.
She wondered if it was possible that her amnesia was like a shield, protecting her from something horrible in the past. Did forgetfulness somehow equal safety?
Why? Safety from what?
What could- I be running from? she asked herself.
She sensed that recovery of her identity was possible. In fact her memories seemed almost within her grasp. She felt as though the past lay at the bottom of a dark hole, close enough to touch; all she had to do was summon sufficient strength and courage to poke her hand into that lightless place and grope for the truth, without fear of what might bite her.