“Poor thing,” Dr. Avanthikar sighed. “He’s been here some time?”
“One of Dr. Zadeh’s original Alzheimer’s patients. Lost his shadow first of everyone here,” he answered. “Recently he’s gotten much worse. I don’t know what to do—Dr. Zadeh didn’t tell me what we should do once they forget everything. He was so convinced we could figure something out in time. After the exterminators, I tried, but I didn’t know how to continue his research.”
“Might be no point anyway now,” Wifejanenokids said. He pointed at the ceiling. “After this.”
“That’s grim,” Marie scolded.
“Only because we aren’t trying,” Wifejanenokids replied. “At least if we tried.”
Marie pointed at the same ceiling. “And how could we stop a shadowless from—” She gestured chaotically. “Once it hits?”
“All right, that’s enough,” Dr. Avanthikar cut in sharply. The shadowless all startled, then watched her in rapt silence. She was so new to them, and her age and title gave her an air of authority. And she still had her shadow. “We won’t have a fight in this tiny space. Since we’re already down here, it doesn’t make sense to leave unless we have a better idea. So instead of squabbling, all of us will spend our time thinking of any possible strategies to help us survive if this hurricane . . . changes.” She eyed them all, not unlike a schoolteacher. It made the amnesiac smile to see her treat them not with fear, but with the same love that she had shown Hemu—it only looked tough, on the outside. “Okay?”
They all nodded.
“That means you, too.” She nodded her chin at the amnesiac.
He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Outside, above them and beyond the walls, there was a faint cracking sound, like wood splitting. Something was giving way in the garden, maybe a tree. He tried to imagine what might happen when the full brunt of the hurricane hit New Orleans, a city filled with thousands of shadowless still alive and waging a fifteen-way war against all the tiny factions of struggling shadowed survivors, and they all panicked as it drowned the empty parts of their memory. If the misremembering didn’t kill them, the struggle between all of the magic would. The amnesiac sat down to try and think. Then he realized.
“Shit,” he said. He moved all the blankets, checked every box of food. “Shit.” It wasn’t anywhere.
“What did we forget?” Buddy asked quietly. His voice was high with fear.
“No,” the amnesiac said. “You didn’t forget anything. I made a mistake.”
Marie edged up to where he was leaning against the stack of rations. Thunder made the ceiling of the basement shiver.
“Wait.” Curly suddenly stood up. “Where are we?” He had forgotten.
Marie put a hand on Curly’s shoulder, to calm him. “Too late now, whatever it is,” she said softly to the amnesiac. “I doubt the building above is going to hold.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” he said.
“Where are we?” Curly repeated. “Someone tell me.”
“New Orleans,” Marie whispered to him. Even as she did it, the amnesiac saw her glance at Downtown, to make sure she was actually right—not only that she thought she was, but had forgotten, too.
Dr. Avanthikar glanced at the water, then the medicine. “What did you leave behind?”
“The bag,” the amnesiac said. “All the patient records—the book about Gajarajan.”
Everyone was quiet. The amnesiac could see on Marie’s face that she agreed with him now. That was the one thing that would be worth going back for.
“I know right where I left it,” he said. The main hall, just off from the center, where he had handed Harry’s nearly lifeless body to Curly in case he had to fight the stranger who had turned out to be Dr. Avanthikar. “It’ll only take a minute. I’ll come back. I promise.”
Marie looked down, then at Curly, unable not to. “It’s not that,” she said.
“You just get back here, and I’ll open the door,” Dr. Avanthikar said.
The amnesiac nodded gratefully to her. She’d cared for Hemu. She understood. She knew what they were afraid of—not that the amnesiac wouldn’t come back, but that he would, and because of the stress and the danger, there was the small but terrifying chance that they wouldn’t remember to let him in. It was already affecting Curly, chipping away at what he had left. And so the doctor said it before Marie had to, to spare her the shame of having to admit it.