She's Not There Read Free Page B

anything else and I need to know if—”
    “Take a breath, Mr. Tobias,” Dr. Haskins said.
    Alex realized he was still clutching his cell. He set it facedown on the table and pulled in two jagged breaths.
    “First, your wife is going to be all right.”
    Alex stared at the doctor for a second, and then tears formed in his eyes. He looked away.
    “She suffered a cerebral contusion and an intracranial hematoma that—”
    He came back to her. “I’m sorry, what does that mean?”
    “She has a pretty bad concussion and there was some cranial bleeding, but we’ve got it under control. However, her brain was bruised and this has manifested itself in amnesia.”
    “Amnesia? She’s lost her memory?”
    “I don’t know how bad it is yet,” Dr. Haskins said. “Your wife regained consciousness only about an hour ago so I haven’t had much time to assess her condition. I’ll know more when we do cognitive tests. Right now, I’d say the amnesia appears to be retrograde, meaning she remembers nothing that happened to her before she was injured.”
    “Nothing? Does she remember me?”
    Dr. Haskins hesitated. “At first, she could only tell me her name was Amelia. But when she remembered her last name, the police ran her driver’s license, and that’s how they found you.”
    Alex stood up abruptly. “I need to see her.”
    “Please, Mr. Tobias, not now. We’ve got to do more scans and tests. We’ll know more tomorrow. But right now, the thing she needs most is quiet.”
    Alex sank back down on the hard chair, putting his head between his hands.
    “Amnesia from head trauma is quite common—car accidents, sports injuries,” the doctor said. “My nephew got a concussion playing high school football and made a full recovery. The only thing he can’t remember is getting hit in the game.”
    Alex said nothing, didn’t move. The doctor kept talking, her voice dissolving to a painful buzzing in his head. She was saying again that Mel would get better, that her memories of her life, friends, and family would come back, that any image, sound, or even smell might trigger things. But that it would take days or weeks for the whole picture to form again.
    Mel . . . my Mel . . . what happened?
    “The police couldn’t tell me anything,” he said. “Do you know anything about what happened?”
    “Not really,” Dr. Haskins said. “She was dropped off here.”
    “Dropped off? What do you mean dropped off?”
    “The admitting nurse found your wife in the emergency waiting room. She had fainted in the chair and—” Dr. Haskins paused, pursing her lips. “Well, to be honest, no one noticed she was there for at least an hour.”
    “What? How the fuck did you—”
    “Calm down, Mr. Tobias. This happened late Friday night. Do you know what a county hospital emergency room is like on a Friday night?”
    Alex stared at the doctor. Friday night? Mel had been gone for two days? He shut his eyes.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “Go on, please.”
    “It was only later, after she was taken to the ICU, that we started to put things together.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “We checked the security tapes. The cameras in the emergency entrance and waiting room showed a man bringing your wife into the room and then leaving. He drove away in a truck. That’s all we know. The police have the tapes and are looking for him.”
    “Do they think he . . . this man, do the police think he did this to Mel?”
    “I don’t know. You’ll have to talk to the police. There was an officer here earlier. He said he was coming back.” The doctor paused. “Look, I know I shouldn’t speculate about anything but your wife has a bruise across her chest that is consistent with hitting a steering wheel. I think she was in a car accident and this man found her and brought her here.”
    “Car accident? Why didn’t he just call an ambulance?”
    Dr. Haskins shook her head. “I can’t answer that.”
    The doctor looked up suddenly, toward a