Page 19 of Amnesty

Dr. Kline’s office was basically a box of four walls and no windows. The lighting was always dim, and I always wondered if she did it because she thought it was relaxing or if it was so if she accidentally made a face over something one of her patients said, it would give her some cover.

There was a wire basket filled with glowing rocks sitting atop a wooden bookshelf near the door. They were salt rocks or something. She told me once they made for a calm environment and “cleansed” the energy in the room.

I thought they were ugly.

Of course, I didn’t tell her that. That would just be mean. But as I sat on the leather loveseat that faced her desk during our many sessions, sometimes my mind would drift and I would wonder how something so ugly could make the room look and feel more pleasant.

I guess me not knowing was the reason I was the patient and she was the doctor.

I’d been talking to her since almost the day I woke from my coma. Dr. Kline knew just as much about me as I did—something I often thought of as disconcerting because we weren’t even friends. She was nice enough. Kind and caring toward me.

I was her job. That really should have been a good thing, right? Because she could remain objective. But sometimes objectivity wasn’t personal enough. Sometimes objectivity felt cold.

I looked at her now and realized she didn’t care if I was Sadie or not. It wouldn’t matter one way or the other to her. Either way, her job was to help me deal with it. And if I never found out…?

Wouldn’t matter either.

I couldn’t accept that. More and more, I felt as though I was going to crawl right out of my skin. The need to know occupied so much of my thoughts.

“You’re very quiet today,” Dr. Kline prompted.

“I have a lot on my mind.”

“Such as?”

“Have you ever gone shopping and stepped out of the store and felt like you left something behind? Or on the way in to work suddenly wondered if you forgot to turn off the curling iron or stove? Or went to the office of another colleague and then, when you arrived, wondered why you’d come in there in the first place?”

Dr. Kline accepted my rambling and went with it. “Of course. That sort of thing happens a lot.”

“It’s maddening, isn’t it? Trying remember what you might have left back in the store or if your curling iron was overheating or knowing you needed something from a co-worker, but not recalling exactly what.”

“Yes, it can be quite maddening.”

“That’s how I feel. Every second of every day,” I deadpanned.

She was silent a moment, then began her typical head-shrinker spiel. “I know it’s quite frustrating,”

“Don’t placate me,” I snapped. “You have no idea what it’s like to not know! To want to move on with your life—to actuallybegin buildinga life—but having to sit in a holding pattern because the life you want might not be yours to take.”

“You feel like you’re taking someone else’s life?”

I tossed my hands up in the air. “I have no idea!”

“Because you don’t know your true identity. You don’t know if you’re Sadie.” Dr. Kline went on.

I nodded. “Yes.”

Leaning back a little in the giant leather office chair behind her desk, the woman studied me. In front of her, the desktop computer was on, the blue light from the screen cast over her features, making her look somewhat garish.

“Does it really matter if you are? Who you were before your coma, that person isn’t here anymore. You’re just you now. You seemed excited before for a fresh start, a clean slate. What’s changed? Why do you think it suddenly seems so crippling to not know?”

I bit down on the inside of my lip. I didn’t want to say it.

“Wouldn’t it be true that no matter who you were in the past, the life you are creating now and have been for the past few months would still be yours because you’ve been living it?”

Yes. Yes, to all that.

But also no.

---