‘Good afternoon, Rachel. Are you feeling a little better today?’ The doctor’s voice was kind and solicitous. Clearly he was expecting an answer in the affirmative.
I shook my head slowly, unable to speak as hot tears began to course down my cheeks. My father reached across from his chair and took my hand. Tactfully choosing to ignore my distress the doctor continued.
‘Well, I have good news, young lady. We have done just about every test imaginable, and I’m happy to report there is no serious or permanent damage resulting from your little escapade.’ He turned in his chair to indicate an illuminated X-ray of a skull, presumably mine, on a lit panel behind him. ‘Everything looks completely normal. No injuries to the brain or cranium whatsoever.’
‘Thank God,’ breathed my father in fervent relief.
‘But it’s all wrong!’ I cried out, ashamed at how pathetic my voice sounded.
‘Oh no, Rachel, I can assure you the tests are all conclusive. We repeated several of them, just to be sure. They most definitely are not wrong.’
‘Not the tests,’ I contradicted, striving not to lose control again and be sedated before I could make them understand. ‘If you say the tests are right, then I suppose I have to believe you. Why would you lie to me about that? But everything else is wrong!’
‘Hush, hush, Rachel.’ I could tell from his tone that I was scaring my dad again. Hell, I was scaring me again, but I had to get through to them this time.
I drew a deep shuddering breath and tried to continue in a less hysterical tone.
‘I know this sounds crazy to you but please just hear me out. I don’t know what is happening here, but none of this is real – at least not to me. In my life – in my real life, my father is sick, very very sick and I think I am too.’
The tone the doctor used was mild and placating.
‘So you believe you have cancer as well, is that it?’
He was making me really angry now. I truly did not like this man.
‘No, not cancer. I have something wrong with my brain.’ Strangely enough no one butted in to refute that one. ‘It’s all due to the accident…’
‘When you were mugged?’ asked Dad.
‘No, the car accident at the restaurant; the one where Jimmy died and I got badly hurt.’
The doctor looked across in confusion at my father, who was shaking his head as though trying to see a solution through a fog.
‘Are you aware of the accident Rachel is talking about?’
‘Well yes,’ replied my father hesitantly, and I almost cried out in relief that he wasn’t going to tell me that I’d imagined that too. ‘A car did crash through the window of a restaurant where Rachel and her friends were sitting. It must have been, oh I don’t know, about five years ago or thereabouts, just before they all went off to university.’
‘And people were seriously hurt? Was Rachel injured?’
‘I think the driver of the car was badly hurt, but Rachel and her friends managed to get away from the window just in time. Rachel was one of the people to come off worse; she fell whilst running from the window and was knocked unconscious for a minute or two, and of course there was also Jimmy, he had quite a nasty cut on his head.’
‘But no one died?’ prompted the doctor.
‘No one died,’ confirmed my dad.
‘But Rachel did hit her head?’
‘She did. She had mild concussion.’
‘And five years later she is mugged and sustains a second injury to her head…’
The doctor made a church steeple with his fingertips as he paused to assimilate all he had been told. ‘I do believe it is all beginning to make sense now.’
It was? Not to me, it wasn’t.
Dr Tulloch leaned across the table, a benign smile upon his face. Unconsciously my father and I leaned towards him to hear his conclusion.
‘Rachel, I believe I now understand what is causing your problems. It seems clear to me that you are suffering from a rather severe case of amnesia.’
If he was expecting his diagnosis to be met with whoops of joy, he was sadly mistaken.
Amnesia? I don’t think so. In fact I knew it wasn’t that. For a start isn’t amnesia when you forget things? Well if so, that clearly wasn’t what I was suffering from. My trouble was remembering things that apparently weren’t real – not forgetting them! Yet when I challenged him on that one, he had a medical explanation.
‘There are many many different types of amnesia. It is far more complex than just the “bang-on-the-head-who-am-I?” stuff you see in the movies.’
‘I see,’ said my dad, and I swivelled sharply in my chair to look at him. Was he really buying into this? Did this answer really make sense to him?