Sydney

Broots wasn’t usually a calm and collected man. One could actually say that he was rather jumpy; esspecially around Miss Parker in whom the object of his affections and his tormentor easily merged into one person.

But on the other hand he wasn’t as fussy and puzzled as Miss Parker often regarded him. In actuality he had a sharp mind and when he was presented with a problem he worked until he was able to solve it.

His current state, however, could only be described as completely off balanced. One minute he gloomily stared into space as if pondering the meaning of the recent events in the Centre, the next minute he was frantically searching databases for any trace of Miss Parker.

I watched him going through a rather depressed phase right now, stirring his coffee in a tired motion that lacked both energy and speed. While he stared at the dark liquid dripping from the spoon I tried to gaze past him at the computer-screen.

“Anything new?” I asked, worried myself but scared to admit it, since I had the distinct feeling that voicing my own worries would send Broots straight into intensive care.

“Nothing”, he replied in an almost bored voice. “It’s like she’s had vanished off the face of the earth.”

I couldn’t help but imagine Miss Parker’s comment in that situation. “Vanished off the face of the earth?” I could hear her mocking voice in my head. “How very Shakespeare, moron. Get over that pathetic attempt to be prosaic and get me some results!”

But reality struck as the room remained quiet, the silence only interrupted by the soft humming of Broots’ computer.

“Have you eaten today?” I asked sternly, but he shook his head.

His usually cheerful, often curious face lacked all animation as he watched the white sugar on the spoon absorbing the coffee to eventually turn a light brown.

It was the wheeze from the door that made him jump. His chair crashed against the wall when he stood, the spoon jingling in the background as it hit the floor.

“Mr… Mr Raines!”

I slowly turned around and folded my arms in front of my chest. Was this about Miss Parker, I wondered?

Raines was his usual creepy and extremely unhealthy looking self as he slowly, almost threateningly approached Broots.

“Would you stop… trying to get into the… mainframe, Broots?” he wheezed. “It is annoying the techs… who have to frequently block your… attempts.”

In every pause that he needed to catch his breath, Broots seemed to draw closer to suffocation.

“O… Okay Mister R… Raines. I’m sorry”, he stuttered and I felt sorry for him. When Miss Parker had her go on him, her words embarassed but did not really frighten him. I suspected that this was down to the fact that he was still happy to have her attention, but faced with Mister Raines he seemed to shrink, to withdraw into himself.

I decided to put him out of his misery.

“We’re missing our Miss Parker”, I told Raines’ back, which caused him to slowly turn around, pulling his oxygen tank behind him in the process.

“Are you?” he asked and even for a trained professional like me, his expression was absolutely unreadable.

“You are supposed to find Jarod. Are we… clear?”

Without waiting for an answer, he headed for the door. The wheels of the oxygen tank, making low shrieking noises that suited his departure pretty well.

When he was gone, Broots sank back into his chair like someone who had just done a ten miles run. Exhaustion and desperation marked his face as he looked up at me.

“He knows something.”

That I did not doubt.

Jarod

I had stood in the hospital shop and twice picked a bunch of flowers then tossed them down again. Me giving Miss Parker flowers was absolutely ridiciulous but still…

Other patients’ rooms were full of them whilst hers remained fairly impersonal. Since I had enough money to do so, I had taken up buying flowers for lonely patients like the old lady in number 174 who did not have any relatives left, or the boy from France who was on holiday without his family and had broken his leg in a skying accident. It just didn’t seem right to be lonely in a hospital and the lack of flowers, in my opinion, was an outward sign for that.

In the end I had opted for a women’s magazine and a box of chocolates instead, because it seemed to be less personal. Also, I told myself, flowers would have probably indicated romantic interest which I did not want Miss Parker to expect from me.

She had fallen asleep after our early morning conversation and so I had asked the nurses to not wake her up for breakfast, just check on her, so she could sleep away the headache.

Now, at three o’clock in the afternoon, she sat up in bed and stared at the TV screen in obvious boredom.

“What are you watching?” I asked, pulling up a chair.

She switched off the screen and moaned. “Nothing in particular. I keep changing the channels but I’ve either seen the shows already or I hate them.”

“So you do remember the TV-shows you’ve seen?”

I bent forward, curious to find out more about the type of amnesia she suffered from.

“Weird, huh?” She shrugged at the irony of it. “I don’t remember my life but I remember fiction.”

“I have asked one of my colleagues who specializes in head trauma to run a few tests on you,” I told her. “There is no common cure for amnesia but maybe he’ll find something that might help us.”

She smiled uneasily. “Thank you.”

We looked at each other for a second, then I finally raised my hand with the chocolate and the magazine.

“I brought you something”, I stated and placed the items onto the covers.

“Well thank you”, she replied and gazed at the magazine cover. “What men really want in bed and this season’s best hairdos,” she read aloud, then her voice dropped with sarcasm. “Sounds like fun. I suppose that they didn’t have anything less intellectual?”

I was so used to her snide remarks that I didn’t as much as raise an eyebrow. To my surprise it was her who was shocked.

“Oh my god. Do I always say what I think?” she asked, looking sincerely embarassed so I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I think so.”

“But that’s awful”, she said. “It was so thoughtful of you to bring me something to read and all I could do was critizise your choice.”

“Don’t worry”, I answered. “I’m sure I can exchange that for The Times.”

“Oh would you?” she asked, relief audible in her voice.

“Sure.”

There was another pause. Then we both spoke at once.

“We can I get out of here?” she asked the same second I started to tell her that she would be released tomorrow.

She smiled and although it never reached her eyes, I appreciated the gesture. It was not as if she had ever tried to be friendly before. And the battle that was going on in front of my eyes very much intrigued me. There was an old instinct that told her to be harsh and sarcastic towards other people but it collided with the unbiassed being of Miss Parker without recollection of the events that had shaped her character into what it was. Truly interesting indeed. And sweet, in a very twisted and Parker-like way.

“Your concussion’s mild if you consider the circumstances”, I explained. “We wanted to keep an eye on you in case there were any internal injuries that we could not diagnose but you seem to be fine.”

She sighed.

“What happened to my car?” she asked.

“Total loss”, I told her what I had learned just a few hours ago.

“I was lucky to survive…” she murmured.

“You were lucky to survive,” I agreed.

We were silent for another moment, then she looked up at me again with tears in her eyes. She choked slightly before she could speak.

“What do I do?” she asked.

I frowned as if I didn’t understand.

“I researched a little.” She vaguely pointed at the phone on the nightstand. “There is an address on my driver’s license. It’s from Delaware but it seems that the house does not exist. I have been told that there was no number 145 on that street. It goes up only until 144.”

Her sharp wit was obviously intact as well. A fact that made me slightly uneasy.

How long would it take for her to realize that we had never met on business? When would she start asking me questions about her profession, her marital status and her old life in general?

It once again became apparent to me that I had in fact maneuvred myself into one of these situations that you had to avoid like the plague if you did not want to be caught by the Centre.

“Maybe there’s a faulty record. It’s possible that the house you live in was newly built and not recorded.”

She looked at me with the same superior glare I had often seen her give Broots. Unlike him I did not shrink at the sight but it still made me uncomfortable.

“Are you kidding?” she asked and her eyes narrowed. “You are trying to get rid of me, Jarod Dorian.”

My fake name sounded weird when spoken by her, I thought. Before I could interject, she had already raised a hand to silence me.

“Who are you trying to fool?” she accused. “We haven’t met on a business meeting! What kind of business meeting should that have been? I don’t remember what my profession is, but I can tell from my knowledge damn well that it was not in the medical field or in the pharmacy business. So what kind of business should the two of us have had with each other?”

It took me a minute to identify what it was that had seeped into her voice.

What kind of business should the two of us have had with each other?

It was very much like Miss Parker to make a perfectly innocent sentence sound like an invitation by means of only one slightly cocked eyebrow and the subtle dropping of her voice. At first I didn’t realize that I was battling desire. When I finally did, I mentally slapped myself.

I should have constructed my lies more carefully esspecially since I was so used to not being honest to people about my education and where I came from. But usually I wasn’t faced with such vigilance and this kind of unchallengeable logic.

“I think your concussion is worse than I expected,” I told her in my calm professional doctor’s voice. “It should be best for you if you slept a little more.”

The first emotion that showed on her face was disbelief, which was very quickly replaced with anger.

“Oh yeah, Jarod. Just run away and leave me here like this! I don’t know you but somehow I feel it’s appropriate.”

I looked into her eyes and was shocked to find anguish shining through the rage.

It just wasn’t right to leave her behind, I thought. She was a human being after all. And she was at her most vulnerable right now.

“I’m sorry”, I said, slowly returning to her beside and once again sitting down on the chair. I carefully picked up her hand and held it between mine.

It was a curious sensation. Miss Parker having soft hands was no surprise on the logical side, but softness would be nothing you’d usually associate with her.

“Why don’t you just tell me who I am?” she asked, voice muffled.

And there it was. That moment that changes everything at once. I had asked her that question so often in the past and she had always given me the same answer.

And that was my way out that I had been searching for.

“I don’t know,” I answered, picturing her old raven-haired self rolling her eyes at the question and repeating the answer once again.

“And what’s that about us being close then?” she rasped while she tried to withdraw her hand, but I held on to it.

“You know how it goes,” I said evasively. “We stayed in the same hotel…” I knew very well that I was confirming what she had already suspected.

“Sort of close?” she asked. “It was just a stupid fling in a hotel and you say we’d been close?”

Her free hand flew up to her head and she rubbed her temples furiously.

“This is a damn hospital! Why don’t I get any painkillers?”

“You got some two hours ago,” I gently reminded her. “Remember?”

She dropped her hand and jerked the other out of my grasp.

“What do you think? Since there’s not much else that I remember… yes I do.”

We stared at each other for a full ten seconds before she exhaled softly.

“There absolutely is nothing you can tell me about me?”

I cleared my thoat. She would hate me for that but I didn’t know what she would do if I told her that she was actually a hopelessly overworked, irritable, lonely woman who took great pleasure in terrorizing her fellow workers and made a living of chasing that only person in the world that she now knew. I was sure that even a Miss Parker wouldn’t be able to handle the truth without suffering a nervous-breakdown.

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Quite the coincidence,” she mused. “Me turning up in your ER…”

“Quite the coincidence indeed”, I agreed, this time meaning it.

I rose from my chair.

“My break is over, I guess. There are patients waiting to be treated.”

She nodded and half-heartedly reached for the magazine.

“Don’t bother with The Times. I might just find out how I should wear my hair this season.”

She absent-mindedly twisted a streak of bright blonde hair round her forefinger and inspected it.

“I’m a blonde. That’s a shocker,” she joked but I was pretty sure that she did not remember ever having sported another haircolor.

Suddenly, a thought struck me.

“Do you have any idea what you look like?”

Her gaze was genuinely surprised as she looked up at me.

“I was so busy trying to find out about my past that I never…” she trailed off as I made for the wardrobe.

“There’s a mirror in here,” I explained and handed it to her a moment later.

She very slowly raised it and looked inside. I had seen her look in the mirror before. She had always mustered herself with a cold, distanced gaze, as if she was simply checking for any errors in her make-up or a stray strand of hair.

This time she appeared to be really seeing herself, looked into her own blue eyes, touched her cheekbones and then smiled tentatively.

“Could have been worse,” she said and I could not help but return her smile.

“Much. Dr. Grant will get back to you later for the tests I told you about.”

Willing to grant her some privacy I backed out of the room and walked towards my office. Although she had found out that something was not as it seemed far too early for my liking, this situation had shown me something else. Her irritable ways were enough proof for me that her amnesia was real. Why would anybody in their right mind who wanted to convince me that they were harmless, behave like this?

If she had truly wanted to carry out some elaborate plan to catch me, she would have pretended to be frightened and lost because she knew damn well that it was a very safe way to make me stand by her.

Instead she had lashed out at me and confronted me ruthlessly.

She was either very stupid or actually clueless.

And stupid, I knew very well, she was not.

---

“Thank you, Doctor Dorian,” Simon, the young intern said with sincere gratitude. “If you hadn’t let me in on that surgery I wouldn’t ever have got the chance.”

I smiled. Simon was the classic underappreciated doctor but now that he had been a great help on an emergency sugery on a tumor patient, I knew that he would find his way.

His gaze went past my head over my shoulder and left eyebrow and the corner of his mouth raised simultaneously in appreciation. I turned around to find out what mesmerized him and, too, found myself involuntarily staring.

Miss Parker was dressed in the clothes she’d been found in and her hair, curled slightly, fell over her shoulders. The new look was pretty sexy, I had to admit. Not that the old one hadn’t been, but this was different. With her sharp suits and short skirts she had looked very desirable but completely out of reach. Now she looked younger and more at ease.

The look of determination on her face, however, told me that she was everything but.

Her stride hadn’t changed, her steps were still long and firm as she approached.

“Wow, you know her?” Simon whispered, his lips barely moving so she wouldn’t be aware that he was talking about her.

She had crossed the hall more quickly than I would have thought her capable of in her condition and looked up to me.

“I hear that you’re off-duty, now, Dr. Dorian,” she said in a tone of voice that did not allow for objection. It wouldn’t take her long to realize that she had majored in law and business studies, I thought beside my irritation. She would have made a great prosecutor.

“I’m off-duty, too,” Simon replied jokingly. That was probably one of the reasons nobody took him seriously. He flirted with every good-looking woman he could get hold of. I opened my mouth to tell him to leave us alone, but Miss Parker was already taking care of that.

“Glad to hear that. That would give you some time to grow up, neewbie,” she told him just to completely ignore him from that moment on.

While Simon shuffled off, I once again folded my arms in front of my body, being completely aware of the defensiveness the gesture conveyed.

“Where do you live?” she asked me.

“Is this the holy inquisition?” I replied.

“Very funny. I need some place to stay.”

I laughed out loud and immediatley realized that it had been yet another mistake. Her eyes darkened considerably.

“Look, I know that you know something that you keep from me. You could at least have the decency to take a little care of me.”

I frowned at her words.

“I would say that you’re able to take care of yourself.”

Her mood changed as quickly as a traffic-light but without the yellow bulb.

“You said that we were sort of close, you remember?” she asked accusingly and I was left with no other choice than nodding in grudging agreement.

“Did you lie to me on that, too? Because if you and I’d had any kind of relationship in the past you wouldn’t let me down like that now. Even if we just had some fun in a stupid hotel-room.”

I hadn’t expected her to look this hurt and that finally broke my resistance.

“I’m sorry,” I said, helpless at the sight of her despair.

“As far as I know you are the only person I have in this world.”

Her voice had lost its strength and gave me the faintest hint that her usual neurotic self had probably always been set up to disguise the fact that there was a certain vulnerability to her that nobody was supposed to see.

I couldn’t help myself. Letting her down right now was just not an option.

“I should have a spare bedroom for you,” I finally said and put my hand on her shoulder.

She looked up at me her face suddenly unreadable.

“Thank you.” It was more like a long held breath finally being released than an actual sentence, but I understood it anyway.

“Well then, let’s go,” I said and motioned towards the door that led onto the parking-lot.

She walked very close to me as we left the building and when we drove, I caught her looking at me from the corner of my eyes. Weird enough that Miss Parker who kept hanging up on me during calls and whose only aim it had been to get me back to the Centre now clung to me.

With mixed emotions I turned into my driveway ten minutes later. I was curious how she turned out and whether I would be able to discover her true self under the firm wall she once again erected around herself, to finally be sure what was her and was an act.

But I was also worried about what would happen when I’d finally have to tell her just what the nature of our relationship was...