In the four days since I’d woken up at the Chimera Centre, I’d been prodded by more people than I cared to think of. Dr. Fallon came regularly to examine me, and a nurse midwife came every morning to listen to my fetus’s heartbeat and check my urine. When I wasn’t getting another MRI, I was in physical or speech therapy.
The first time I’d had a proper look at my body happened when the nurse, Ida, came to change my catheter. She’d rearranged my sheets and gently pulled up my gown. My new legs were skinny and puffy, like ecru-colored nylons stuffed with mush. Far at the other end, my feet sported a waxy, violet tinge between the toes, and when I ordered them to wiggle, they responded in the most casual, disinterested way. Who, us? Hello. My belly resembled a spreading, giant jellyfish that had swallowed a basketball. My boobs were tender and way bigger than before. Compared to my old body, which had been tight and strong, this one felt like bread pudding.
My physical therapist was jubilant in his torture of me. I learned to roll from my back to my side, and then to push upward with my arms, protecting my belly during the effort. I felt like a monstrous baby training my weak, clumsy body to obey me, and it hurt, too. My muscles burned from the unaccustomed exercise, and my sessions left me exhausted and irritable.
My garbled efforts with the speech therapist were a joke. But I had quirky, nice surprises, too. Just that morning, I had discovered that I could read nametags, which apparently weren’t written in a strange script after all. Letters formed magically into English words that had not been there the day before. It gave me hope that my mind was healing, along with my body.
Madeline leaned near and traced her finger over my cheek. “You’ve always had the prettiest skin,” she said.
It was such a mom thing to say. Madeline made me miss my ma, and I was hungry for news about my old life. I pointed at Diego’s breast pocket where I could see his phone and focused my mouth as best as I could: “FFoe.”
He touched a hand to his pocket. “You want my phone?”
I nodded. Yes.
“Sure.” He arranged my swivel table above my lap and positioned his phone before me. “What do you want to see?” he asked.
I couldn’t speak to tell him, but he opened an Internet search window and let me type. Alien and klutzy, my thumbs worked the letters: ROSIE SINCLAIR.
The browser produced a scroll of posts, all in tiny letters. I had to enlarge them to read them, but I fumbled with the open-tweezers move and the print wouldn’t expand.
“Diego. She’s using her right hand,” Madeline said.
I glanced up at her.
“You’re left-handed,” she said to me.
I flexed my stubby fingers experimentally, and then I tried my left hand on the screen instead. Instantly, my fingers moved with the smoothness of a familiar tool, astonishing me. Madeline laughed, but I hardly heard her. I manipulated the screen to bring a headline into focus: Where’s Rosie? Still No Sign of the Forge School Star. The next read, Rosie Sinclair Sighting: Latest Forge Hoax.
“What do you have there?” Diego asked. He angled the screen so he could see, and his curious smile faded to a puzzled expression.
“What is it, Diego?” Madeline asked. When he passed the phone to her, she became engrossed. “Who’s Rosie Sinclair?” she asked, flipping through the phone. She frowned. “She was a star on The Forge Show,” she said. “She was expelled last semester. There’s some story here about the dean becoming her guardian. Very strange. Have you ever watched the show, Diego?” she asked.
“It’s that nonstop one about the art kids,” he said. “I never did, but Althea could have. Maybe this is that celebrity quirk Dr. Fallon talked about.”
Madeline looked thoughtful and passed the phone back to Diego. “I suppose.” She turned to me and smiled. “Don’t worry, darling. They told us that certain patients develop a fascination for some celebrity or random stranger. It can be a kind of identity escape. It’s just a phase. It doesn’t last.”
I flicked my gaze to Diego. He was staring down at his phone, thumbing slowly through the posts. I reached to indicate I wanted it back. Instead, he slipped the phone into his shirt pocket.
I vocalized again, more urgently. “FFOE.”
“Don’t be difficult, Diego,” Madeline said. “Give it to her. She can type to us.”
“I think it’d be better to let her get reacquainted with her real life before bringing the Internet into it,” Diego said.
“For heaven’s sake. She just wants information. Who wouldn’t?” Madeline leaned over my table and held her own phone in front of me. “Maybe you’d like to see some friends. I have some pictures.” Her fingers got busy. “See? These are your cousins, and here you are for prom, with Tom. You have more on your own phone. We’ll have to get that for you.”
The picture showed an arresting girl with sharp features and vibrant eyes. Her slender arm encircled the neck of a muscly white guy in a tux as she mock-choked him. I liked the soft, deep blue of her dress and his bowtie of the same hue. A headband of pearls and glitter was threaded through her hair. The two looked enviably relaxed and happy together. Stylish, too. I slid the photo sideways, and the next pic showed them together again, only this time, the girl was goof-facing the camera, and the big guy, very chill, was smiling at her with open adoration.
Cute, I thought. And then, that’s the guy she slept with. Has to be.
“You know what’ll kill me?” Madeline said. “If she knows Tom but she doesn’t know us.”
“But she does know us,” Diego said. “Don’t you, sweetheart?”
I hesitated, uncertain what to say. I couldn’t look at Diego. I needed these people, and I was likely to get more of their support if they believed I was their daughter. But I couldn’t lie. “No,” I said. “Mm sorry.”
Madeline bit inward on her lips. She patted my hand. “Not to worry,” she said softly. “Give it time.”
“But the other day,” Diego said. “I swear she knew I was her father.”
“Let’s give it time,” Madeline repeated. “She’s coming around. That’s the main thing. Every day she’s better.”
Her tender optimism killed me. When I glanced at Althea’s dad, he had a lost, gut-punched expression, and then he turned to the window with the stoic silence of an eagle. The baby kicked inside me again.
“Mm sorry,” I said again, and I was.
The snow on the pine had come loose in a couple of places and dropped off to reveal the darkness of the tree underneath.
“I don’t suppose you’ve called Tom,” Madeline said.
“No,” Diego said. “He signed off on the baby. You know where I am on this.”
“But we have to think of her wishes, now,” Madeline said. “Althea,” she said to me, and I turned. “Would you like us to tell Tom you’re awake again? Just say yes or no.”
I was curious about the guy in the pictures, but I had no idea what Althea would want, and I couldn’t guess how her awakening might affect Tom now. As I wavered, Althea’s parents went on.
“Think for a second, Madeline,” Diego said. “She was leaving him. She was riding away from him when she crashed.”