Jasmine

There was a knock at the door. It wasn't a loud one. It was as if someone had lost his balance and hit the door by accident. No one had ever knocked on my door before. People use the doorbell. There is a dental practice next door. When people come out of hours, they often ring my doorbell. For some reason they think I can help.

There was another knock. It was ten o’clock in the evening, and the main entrance of the building was locked. Whoever knocked, somehow got into the building. I carefully went to the door and peeked through the peephole. There was a woman outside. She was about 5 feet 5 inches tall, had curly blond hair and wore and elegant, dark-blue trench coat. She was probably in her mid-twenties.

I hesitated: “Should I open the door and possibly make my life more complicated or should I wait until she leaves?” I had an intuition, or more precisely a fear, that if I didn't open the door, I would irrevocably miss out on something, so I opened the door.

“Hi, are you looking for someone?” I asked her.

“Sorry, I used to live here… but I’m afraid, how to say, I simply disappeared.” she said and somehow she really looked like someone lost between parallel universes.

“What do you mean you 'disappeared'?”

“There was a moment when, all of a sudden, I was simply no longer here, and I do not know why, but I’m suddenly back now” she said “Last time I walked out this door I was six years old.”

“You mean for about twenty years you weren’t anywhere?” I was struggling to make sense of what she had just told me.

“I must have been somewhere, but my last memories are from here” she said. “My mom prepared my school backpack, my sandwich, I kissed my mom and my dad, I waved to my little sisters and I walked down the stairs. Then I heard a terrible explosion and suddenly I was not here any more.”

If I were a sci-fi fan, I would have immediately thought that aliens had kidnapped her and then brought her back to Earth after some twenty years, but as a psychiatrist I knew there is a condition called dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder, that would explain such cases. It is usually triggered by some kind of a shocking event, for example, the death of a family member. But switching, as it is professionally called, tends to happen more often.

I looked at her: a beautiful woman, a pleasant appearance, nice clothes. So she must have lived somewhere all these years. And, she must have had at least one other identity that had lived in her body for the past twenty years. I thought, if she was telling me the truth, then it was something really amazing.

Unfortunately, I had no idea how to address her other identity. It seemed to me that her six-year-old self was back and she did not know what happened to her in the past twenty years.

“Where are you coming from?” I asked after musing about her story for a while.

“I do not know, I was suddenly in front of your, I mean, our door.”

“What’s your name?”

“My mom called me Jasmine” she said “but, unfortunately, I cannot recall my family name.”

“What is the last thing you can recall from the day when you left this flat?”

“The last thing I still remember is an explosion that thundered through the whole house and left me buried under dust and smoke.”

The longer I was talking to her, the clearer it became that she had no clue whatsoever where she spent the past twenty years or so. According to her identity card she was Jasmine Robertson and was 25 years old.

“What should we do now?” I asked her. “I’m sure soon enough someone will look for you.” I told her, but I was mistaken.

She smiled and looked satisfied that she had found her old flat. We agreed that she would sleep in the guest room and the next day we would find a solution. However, days went by and no one was looking for her. Either she organized her escape quite successfully or she lived on her own.

The following days we talked a lot. I got to know her family, her sisters who she had never seen since the explosion. I assumed that that was that trauma that triggered the personality switch. However, I could not believe that her true identity never took over again. It was something very odd, without any precedents.

We also went to places she still remembered, mostly parks and playgrounds. She especially liked the sweet fragrance of the jasmine bushes growing everywhere in the neighbourhood. We also found her favourite ice-cream shop, Perugini, that still sold ice cream. It was interesting to discover places we both liked.

I wondered why she came back. I mean what triggered the identity switch this time. Unfortunately, her six-year-old self could not give me any clues, so I tried to find other unusual things that happened lately.

One day, as I was checking the local papers, I found something that might fit her sudden reappearance. It was the sad anniversary of the biggest tragedy in our district ever. There was a huge explosion that completely destroyed many flats in my house, and a lot of people died. Although there was an official enquiry into the tragedy, it was inconclusive. So, people started their own investigation, but they could not find a satisfactory explanation either as to what had caused the explosion.

“It's possible that her grown-up self has read the article, and it probably made her so agitated that she switched to her six-year-old self.” I thought “If that's true, she probably still lives in the neighbourhood.” But I was still unable to speak to her grown-up self and I slowly stopped asking questions. The truth is, I really liked her and I hoped she would switch back some time and I would be able to get to know her grown-up self as well.

But one day she just walked out the door and disappeared. I looked for her everywhere, even contacted the nearest police station a few blocks away, but after I explained her condition, they said it might be better to let her return to her family.

Since then, I was hoping that one day I might spot her face in the crowd when walking in the street. I knew she would not recognize me, but at least I would know she was alright. Years passed, but she just seemed to have disappeared from this world.

Yesterday, however, as I was walking down my favourite street with jasmine bushes on both sides, I saw a young couple looking at one of the bushes.

“I wonder what this flower is called, it smells so good” the woman said and turned to the man. As she turned around, I immediately recognized her.

“Jasmine. It is called jasmine” I told the woman as I passed by. She looked at me, but she did not recognize me.

“Thank you very much” she said. Our eyes locked for a passing moment and I thought she might have a faint memory of me, but she just smiled and walked away with the man on her side.

I wondered whether she was happy in her current life. I was hoping she might come back one day and ask me to let her in, but she might never come back. The future has not been written yet.


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