Dreamer

1

Where am I?
She tried to focus, to remember how she had got there but found she could not. There was nothing, just silence and darkness clouding her memory like a thick mist.
She rubbed her eyes and looked around to find she was lying in a room, light and airy, painted in a pretty cornflower blue. Sunlight leaked in, bathing the cream carpet in halos of light. The room was sparsely, but adequately furnished with a chest of drawers in the corner, a cupboard and the bed she was lying on.
A voice startled her.
‘Are you awake? Can you hear me?’
She swallowed and replied,
‘Yes’.
An attractive young woman came into view, smiling and carrying a clipboard. She wore a coat so white it made the girl’s eyes sting to look at it, over her jeans. She offered a hand to the girl on the bed.
‘I’m Emma Hayes, one of the doctors who work here. I need to ask you a few questions as you’ve just arrived.’
Dr Hayes rifled through some papers, selected one and produced a ballpoint pen.
‘Ok, let’s begin at square one. What’s your name?’
There was a pause. The younger girl opened her mouth to form the word, but found herself at a loss of what to say. She hung her head and mumbled, ‘I don’t remember.’
Dr Hayes stared at her, taken aback.
‘Err… do you know your age?’
The younger girl shook her head sadly. The fact that she couldn’t remember anything frightened her.
‘I don’t know who I am, where I came from, who my family are-or were. It’s-It’s as if my brain’s forgotten my past. There is one thing though…’ She screwed up her eyes in concentration. ‘There were flames, huge ones, the stench of burning, people running, screaming, death, fear. I had to get away from something, or someone- I can’t explain it. The fear was immense, sickening. That’s all.’
Her eyes had widened in fear and she was shaking violently. Dr Hayes shuffled uncomfortably and put an awkward arm around her. The silence stretched between them.
‘Hey, it’s just the shock. It’s going to be ok, trust me. Shall we give you a name for the moment so I can call you something? Any particular name you want?’ she said in a forced cheerful voice.
‘I don’t know’, replied the girl. How could this woman be worrying about her name when she had much more pressing matters to think about such as what had happened?
‘How about…’ Dr Hayes searched around for inspiration. Her eyes fell upon the blank form in front of her. ‘How about April? That’s the month.’
The girl considered, muttering the name a few times, trying it out. April.
‘Alright’, she said decisively, ‘I’ll be April’.
‘Good, that’s a start. Now what about your age?’
April ignored the question or rather did not hear it, as she seemed to have entered a dreamlike state where nothing was making sense. She was struggling to remember something, anything about herself. Her brain refused to co-operate, barring her way to any memory that would help her. Who am I? What happened in my past to seal off my memories of it? It seemed like there was something, a huge part of her that had been left behind in some distant place, in a distant time. Fear groped at her heart. What if her family had been in the flames? What if they were dead because she had left them? What if she could have helped them, but instead she just forgot their existence? She shook with unhappiness as the worst thought came to her. What if they are still alive, in need of help and I am the only person who could have given it to them? She blamed herself furiously for the fates and possible deaths of the family she did not even know existed.