Identity Page 3

BREATHE. Just Breathe, Christy. Close your eyes and breathe.

  How many times had she told herself that in the last half hour? She was trying to trick her mind into thinking the thick fog of fear would lift. That light would suddenly stream into the darkness in the form of a flashlight held by Austin, who had come to her rescue.

  But she kept remembering that it was only a trick. In reality, light wasn’t going to come. She really was trapped in a grave of her own making. She didn’t even know if her short call to Austin had gone through.

  Her head was bruised from banging it on the concrete ceiling during a particularly bad panic attack. She’d tried to kick out both ends of the grave more times that she could remember. Her body was soaked in sweat.

  Christy now lay on her back, feeling another wave of fear wash through her body from head to toe, as if it was the breath of death itself. Her mind spun through memories of the last four years, the only ones she had.

  She couldn’t remember her first week at the Saint Francis Orphanage. The first month was mostly a haze. They told her that she’d been picked up wandering the streets without any identification. The nuns and the counselor who cared for her and the other eleven children, most of whom were younger than she, were kind and affectionate and repeatedly assured her that her condition wasn’t so unusual. Clearly, she’d faced some kind of trauma, but knowing its nature wouldn’t necessarily ease her passage into a well-adjusted life.

  She’d formed a bond with Austin in her third month, after learning that he, too, suffered from amnesia. Being the consummate cerebral junkie, he dismissed his past as an aberration that had no bearing on his future. He gave it no more attention than a shrug. She, on the other hand, obsessed over her identity, which only made her more insecure.

  In her grave now, she wondered if this particular death was her karmic obligation. Maybe this was how she was supposed to die.

  The fear riding her breath began to descend into that familiar space that spawned panic attacks. The thought that she might suffer even deeper terror than she already had shifted her emotions.

  Anger welled up in her gut. Anger at her parents, whoever they were. Anger at herself for being so weak. Anger at the anger itself.

  And then it wasn’t just anger… It was rage.

  Without thinking, she swiveled on her backside, screaming full-throated, eyes shut tight in the darkness. She slammed her heels against the plywood barrier with every reserve of strength her legs still possessed. Then again, fists clenched, not because she had any illusion of breaking what she’d failed to break before, but because she could.

  And still again, and again, using her heels, not caring if she bruised herself or scraped her back on the hard floor.

  Something popped on the seventh or eighth strike. At first she thought it was one of her bones. But it wasn’t.

  The wood?

  Christy jerked up to see and hit her head again, but the thought of getting out overrode the pain. She twisted and saw dim light outlining the long, thin panel that had sealed her in.

  She kicked again, frantic to be out. The bottom of the door popped open several inches before striking something that blocked it from the other side. But that something had moved as well, filling her grave with a distinct scraping sound.

  She scooted her butt closer for more leverage and pushed out again. This time whatever was blocking the exit slid noisily and the plywood swung up and open on hinges behind a row of large steel drums. Fresh air flooded the small space.

  She blinked. She’d broken through!

  Scooting feet first, she placed her heels on one of the drums and shoved it into the room beyond, then slid around and crawled out the same way she’d first entered—like a crab, this time scuttling for her very life, hardly aware of the tearing sound of her blouse as it caught a sharp edge and tore right down the back.

  The moment she cleared the door, she clambered to her feet, panting. The door dropped shut behind her.

  Free.

  Christy spun and saw the plywood door that had resisted her kicking for so long. The screws that had anchored a sliding lock on either end had popped out of the concrete. Each of the large metal drums was stenciled with red letters: ST. MATTHEW’S.

  She didn’t care what it all was for, only that she had escaped with just a few scrapes and bruises.

  She turned and took in what appeared to be an old boiler room, judging by the large hot-water tanks and labyrinth of pipes along the unpainted concrete walls. It was old but still in use by the looks of it. She must be in the basement of the hospital. The door from the boiler room was closed to her right.

  Her course now was plain. She would cover her tracks here, exit through the hospital, return to the storage room for her locket, and put the whole incident behind her as if it had never happened.

  She quickly shoved the drums back into place to cover the door and its broken latches. MATTHEW’S

  Christy quickly crossed to the door, found it unlocked, and pushed her way through. She was halfway to a door topped by a sign that read STAIRS before any thought of her appearance entered her mind. She glanced down.

  Sweat mixed with dust stained every inch of her shirt, not to mention the large tear in back. Walking down a hospital corridor looking like she’d crawled through a sewer wouldn’t go unnoticed. Her face must also be a mess. Maybe she could clean herself up in a bathroom.

  She hurried to the first of two doors on her right and peered through a small glass window. Inside, stacks of linens and a sink. A laundry? She pushed the door open and stepped in.

  Five stacked washers and dryers hugged one wall; the other ran with racks of neatly folded uniforms, towels, and linens. Several bulging cloth laundry bins beside the washers awaited processing.

  It took her less than a minute to strip out of her filthy, torn blouse, discard it in a waste can, and shrug into a light blue smock from one of the bins. Her blue jeans had fared better than her shirt, and a damp washcloth made quick work of the dirt on her knees.

  She cleaned her hands and arms in one of the two sinks, then her face. Did her best to fix her hair. A bruise darkened her forehead—bangs hid the worst of it. What a mess.

  She stepped back and looked at herself in the mirror above the sink. For a few seconds her mind, however relieved at having escaped such a harrowing ordeal, took time to notice her imperfections.

  A red pimple on her right cheek had tenaciously resisted the acne medication she’d applied over the past three days. Her neck was fat and her nose too stubby. She’d left her flat without a trace of makeup.

  Austin had once said that her obsession with body image was patently absurd. How could anyone have fingers that were too short? They worked, didn’t they? And long nails only got in the way. Better to chew them off.

  What did a left-brained male who’d yet to open the cover of Cosmopolitan know about body image anyway? She was too fat, plain and simple. Ten pounds might as well be the weight of the world. He could never understand that.

  Christy turned from the mirror feeling disgusted. And foolish for feeling disgusted. Maybe Austin was right; maybe she really was a basket case.

  At least she wouldn’t stand out like a street urchin now.

  She entered the stairwell and took the steps at a run, mind on her locket.

  The stairs emptied into a short, vacant hallway. The distant sound of voices reached her. She crossed to a large door operated by a crash bar and pushed into what looked like a standard hospital corridor. A glance in either direction revealed no exit sign.

  An older female patient with wispy gray hair, wearing a smock similar to the one Christy now wore, ambled toward her aided by a squeaky walker. Beyond her, the hall ended at a sign that read ADMINISTRATOR.

  “Don’t you worry, honey,” the patient said, smiling toothless, “just stay away from the Froot Loops. They’re poison. Rot your teeth right out of your head.”

  Christy gave the woman a slow nod. “Can you tell me where the exit i
s?”

  The woman stopped in the middle of the hallway and stared at her as if she hadn’t heard. “You drink coffee?” she said. “Cause it’ll rot your gut and give you gas.” She paused. “I got gas right now.” She proved it without breaking eye contact.

  Clearly no help. Christy turned to her right and headed to the far end of the hall, which jogged left toward what was hopefully the exit.

  Twenty feet ahead, across the hall, a door swung open and a man with brown hair and square glasses, wearing a white doctor’s coat, stepped out of a door marked ADMISSIONS. He led a young patient out by her arm. Blue smock with name tag: ALICE RINGWALD. Shoulder-length dirty blond hair hung around her apprehensive face. The girl’s eyes met Christy’s for a brief moment before Christy looked down.

  She angled across the hall and walked past them, keeping her attention averted, hoping she didn’t look out of place in her jeans.

  She’d never spent time in a hospital herself—only visited twice, once with Austin when he’d gone for an MRI. Her own self-consciousness seemed absurd in a place like this. Her heart went out to the young girl, who was probably contending with testing and procedures and questions of life and death.

  All while Christy worried about a single pimple on her cheek.

  The sound of a door opening behind made her wonder where the man in white was taking the girl. She glanced over her shoulder and saw them step through the same door she’d just exited.

  “Can I help you?”

  Christy jerked her head around and pulled up sharply, three feet from a nurse who stood in her path, clipboard in hand. The door beside the woman whispered shut.

  “No, I’m good.” She started forward.

  “You sure?” The nurse, Linda Roper by the brass badge on her red blouse, took in Christy’s jeans.

  “I was just leaving.”

  “Leaving?”

  “I was just visiting.” Christy looked down the hall. “That way, right? I got a bit turned around.”

  The nurse smiled. “Don’t we all? We don’t have visiting hours in here, dear. That’s what the lounge is for, Britney.”

  Christy glanced down at the name tag on her blue smock. How was she going to explain this without looking like a fool? She was busted, pure and simple.

  She smiled apologetically. “It’s not mine. I…” What was she supposed to say? She couldn’t think of anything but the truth. Kind of.

  “I got lost and ended up in the basement. My shirt ripped and I found this shirt down in the laundry.”

  The nurse studied her as if trying to decide if she would buy such an unlikely story.

  “Crazy, I know, but I’m not stealing it. I swear, if you have anything else I could wear… I just didn’t know what else to do.”

  “It’s okay, dear. Crazy things happen to the best of us.” She stepped forward, gently rested her hand on Christy’s elbow, and turned her back the way she’d come. “Come with me.”

  Christy turned with the woman. “Can I just bring it back? I don’t live far, I swear I’ll bring it right back.”

  “Of course. But it’s property of Saint Matthew’s psychiatric ward. I wish I could let you leave with it, but I can’t. We’ll find you something more appropriate.”

  “You have something?”

  “I think we can find something.”

  Good. It was all going to work out. She’d left the storage room unlocked. What was the chance that some bum would get in there before she could retrieve her locket? Her mind spun through the possibilities as they headed down the hall.

  The nurse led her into the administrator’s office and nodded at the receptionist, who sat filing her nails behind a desk.

  “Can you pull up a file for me, Beverly?”

  The receptionist glanced at Christy’s smock. “Sure.”

  “Status of Britney Hunt?”

  The receptionist set her file down, brought her long nails to the keyboard, and clacked away.

  “That’s not me,” Christy said. “I’m just wearing the shirt.”

  “We just need to check on her status, dear,” the nurse said. “Protocol. Patients tend to misplace themselves, you understand.”

  She didn’t, not really. She was in a psychiatric ward. Images of the two patients she’d seen earlier now made more sense. They also quickened her need to put this all behind her.

  “Britney Hunt is in 405.” She picked up her phone. “I’ll have the station attendant check her room.”

  “Thanks, Bev.” To Christy: “What’s your name again?”

  “Christy,” she said. “Snow.”

  “Driver’s license?”

  Christy blinked. She’d left her purse at home.

  “Not on me.”

  “No?” Linda nodded at the receptionist. “Anything on a Christy Snow?”

  Clack, clack, clack.

  “No Christy Snow.”

  “Of course not,” Christy said. “Do you have anything else I can wear? I feel a bit stupid in this shirt now.” She felt her face flush.

  “As soon as we check. I’m sure it’ll all be fine but we simply need to run some checks. If you had your license this would be quicker. Any other identification?”

  Her cell phone. It had her name on it.

  “My cell phone?”

  “Might help.”

  Christy brought her hand to her back pocket. No phone. Her heart spiked. She’d left it in the space under the foundation.

  “I…” She hesitated, thinking she should just tell them the whole story. But she would also have to explain why and how she’d broken into the storage room.

  “No?”

  “Well… I, no. I must have lost it when I…” She couldn’t quite bring herself to betray Austin’s secret.

  “That’s okay,” the nurse said. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you just explain this to the administrator.” She addressed the receptionist. “Is Kern available?”

  The receptionist made a quick call, then hung up the phone.

  “Go on in.”

  Christy’s mind was reeling as she followed the nurse around the receptionist’s desk into an office with a golden placard that read ADMINISTRATOR. They way she saw it, she had no choice but to tell all now. And there was no reason why she had to bring Austin into it. They would probably lock the storage room up tight, but she saw no other way.

  The administrator sat behind a large, shiny wooden desk, scanning the contents of a file through narrow reading glasses. His eyes glanced over the wire frames for a moment, then back down to his file.

  “I’ll be right with you.”

  Dressed in a dark blue suit with white shirt and red tie. His finger traced what he was reading as Christy sat in one of the two stuffed chairs facing his desk. Books lined the case behind him, most of them psychology journals and textbooks. A family portrait, which showed him with his wife and a young adolescent boy, sat on the desk.

  Kern Lawson, Administrator. She looked up from the nameplate at the edge of the desk and met his light blue eyes as he set the file down and sat up.

  “So. What seems to be the problem”—his eyes darted to her smock—“Britney?”

  “Apparently she’s not Britney,” the nurse said. “We’re checking now.”

  The administrator’s phone rang and he scooped it up. He listened for a moment before thanking his receptionist and hanging up.

  “And apparently she’s right,” Lawson said with a kind smile. “Britney Hunt is in her room. So that would make you…?”

  “Christy Snow,” she said.

  “I have to get back to my rounds,” the nurse said.

  “Thank you, Linda.” The administrator dismissed her with a nod and folded his hands under his chin.

  “Christy Snow. You’re new here?”

  “No, I’m not here at all!”

  “You’re not?”

  “I mean I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “And where are you supposed to be?”

  “
At home, where I was this morning, on Blanard Drive. I came in this morning, trying to find my locket and I got stuck…”

  The look in his eyes said he’d heard a thousand similar stories from patients looking for a way out. She had to tell him everything. He would check the basement, find that she was telling the truth, and that would be that.

  “Look,” he said before she could speak. “This isn’t rocket science. If you are Christy Snow and we have no record of your admission, then you can be home within the hour. But we have to know, I’m sure you can appreciate that. Many of our patients have very deep imaginations.”

  “There’s no record of a Christy Snow in admissions. They already checked. Please, this is a bit ridiculous.”

  “Yes, of course. Still, you have no identification, I take it?”

  “Not on me, no. But you’ll find my cell phone in the basement.”

  “All right. Do you mind telling me how you came to be in the basement?”

  She swallowed, nodding. So here it went.

  “I lost my locket last night.”

  “Your locket?” he made a note of it on a scratch pad. “Where?”

  “In the storage room. Off the alley.”

  Lawson peered at her. He set his pen down and sat back, crossing his legs.

  “Go on.”

  She told him everything, from the time she woke up until the time she entered the main corridor, sparing no detail.

  “So, yes, I probably broke the law by breaking into the storage room, but I can assure you that I’m not a patient here. I just want my cell phone and locket, and if you want to report my crime to the police, that’s fine. Either way, I don’t belong here.”

  He nodded, jotting down more notes. “Don’t worry, I have no interest in your breaking in. I wasn’t aware there was a trapdoor under those caskets. We’ll have to take care of it.”

  She exhaled, letting her anxiousness fall away. “Someone could get hurt. I could probably sue the hospital.” She thought better of it. “Course, I won’t. I just want my locket back. That’s all.”

  “I understand. I’ll have to check this out, naturally. You can see how this could look differently.”

  “Not really, no. How?”

  He shrugged. “For all I know, you’re a recent admission whose name is Jane Doe and you found a clever way to attempt an escape. Failing, you returned with a clever story—it’s not unheard of. This is, after all, the psychiatric ward. All kinds come to us and many are quite intelligent.”

  She thought about it and saw his point.

  “Then check it out. You’ll find the entrance I told you about, and inside, my phone. Christy Snow, home number 435-7897. I live at 456 Blanard Drive. Trust me, that’s me.”

  “I’m sure it is. Procedure requires that I account for all patients to make sure no one is missing. When that comes up whole and we check out the basement, you’ll be free to go. Shouldn’t take too long. Fair enough?”

  She thought about it and again saw the reason in his being thorough.

  “I suppose. Can you please have them bring me my locket as well?”

  “Sure. Can you describe it?”

  “A silver heart.”

  “Photograph inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of? Boyfriend? Parents? Maybe they could help us out here.”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Then what?” he asked. “It would help us identify the locket as yours.”

  She hesitated. The standard picture had the small words Sample Only printed on the side of the image.

  “It’s just the picture the locket came with. I don’t have any parents.”

  Dr. Lawson looked at her with kind eyes for a few seconds.

  “I see. Not knowing who your parents are can mess with your identity. An all too common phenomenon these days, but in reality, most people have no idea who they really are. Do you know who you are, Christy?”

  The question threw her into a momentary tailspin. A part of her wanted to tell him everything about herself—maybe he could help her. But she put the compulsion aside and took a calming breath.

  “I’m Christy Snow. I live at 456 Blanard Drive, and I need to get home to feed my cat.”

  He smiled. “All right. I’ll get you home. You can wait in our lounge while we run a quick inventory and check out your story.”

  Chapter four