“It’s possible you’re just dehydrated. Your vitals are normal, at least.”
I lift my arm and notice that there’s an IV needle inserted into my vein.
“It’s just saline, to get you hydrated,” she says. “Be careful not to dislodge it.”
“Okay,” I say, grateful to have someone telling me what to do.
“The person who was with you said you were having trouble with your recall this morning. Can you tell me your name?”
“Ally. Ally Linden.”
“And how old are you, Ally?”
“Thirty-four.” I feel a flood of relief that the number spilled from my lips without me even having to think about it.
“Good. Can you tell me where you live—the actual address?”
“I—” This time I fail miserably. I have no idea what my address is. I rake through my mind, desperate for images—of me turning a key, entering an apartment. Nothing.
“That’s okay, just try to stay calm for now,” the paramedic says, her voice gentle.
“Why can’t I remember?” I plead. “Is something wrong with my head?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you to the hospital and they’ll figure it all out. And the colleague who helped you said his office would let the hospital know how to reach your husband.”
The bag of saline jostles as we hit a pothole and I realize I’m shaking, softly at first and then so hard my legs are bouncing.
I don’t remember being married. And I don’t have a single clue as to who my husband might be.
4
If I think too hard about where I am right now, I almost lose it. I have to fight the urge to jump off the bed and take off like a bat out of hell.
I’m in the ER, but not the regular part, where you go for a kidney stone or broken collarbone. I’m in a private room in this section completely removed from the fray. It’s the psych unit. The place for patients who are manic or paranoid or hallucinating out of their minds or dangerous to themselves or others. God, how have I ended up here?
This isn’t where I started the process, though. As soon as the ambulance arrived at the hospital, I was wheeled into the main emergency room. They drew blood and had me give a urine sample, clearly checking for drugs. They also examined my vision, reflexes, and coordination to rule out the possibility of a concussion.
Please let it be as simple as that, I’d prayed. Though there was no obvious bruising, I did have a throbbing headache. As I lay on a bed in a curtained-off area, I tried to summon a muscle memory of my skull smacking against a pointy edge of a cabinet or coffee table. But a coffee table where? I still couldn’t recall a thing about my current life beyond my name and age.
In the end there was nothing to suggest a concussion.
Over time, nurses and physician’s assistants came and went, whisking the faded curtain back and forth with a snap, and I waited, enveloped by sounds of beeping and pinging and gurneys rolling by, my panic ballooning with each passing minute.
“The paramedic said that the hospital was trying to reach someone on my behalf,” I told a nurse at one point. It was too distressing to even say the word husband out loud. “Do you know if they did?”
“Let me check,” she replied, but I never saw her again.
And then after three endless hours, I was told I was being moved for a psychiatric evaluation. Stay totally calm, I warned myself. Do not appear frantic or unhinged. I was sure if I did, it would become like one of those movie scenes in which someone starts screaming over and over that she’s not insane, which only guarantees that everyone believes she is.
I wondered if the psych section would be on a secret floor or hard to access, but the orderly simply wheeled me through a set of automatic doors at the far end of the regular ER, and there I was, like in one of those dreams in which you discover a series of unknown rooms in the house you’ve lived in for years.
I’m alone for now, in a private room, dressed in the paper scrubs they gave me. If I didn’t know better—and couldn’t glimpse the two uniformed guards out in the center area—I’d think I was in the VIP wing of the hospital—freshly painted, uncluttered, and very quiet, since there aren’t any beeping machines or monitors here.
There must be plenty of days, though, when it isn’t hush-hush, when