Have You Seen Me?(4)

“Let me check,” she replied, but I never saw her again.

And then after three endless hours, I was told I was being moved for a psychiatric evaluation. Stay totally calm, I warned myself. Do not appear frantic or unhinged. I was sure if I did, it would become like one of those movie scenes in which someone starts screaming over and over that she’s not insane, which only guarantees that everyone believes she is.

I wondered if the psych section would be on a secret floor or hard to access, but the orderly simply wheeled me through a set of automatic doors at the far end of the regular ER, and there I was, like in one of those dreams in which you discover a series of unknown rooms in the house you’ve lived in for years.

I’m alone for now, in a private room, dressed in the paper scrubs they gave me. If I didn’t know better—and couldn’t glimpse the two uniformed guards out in the center area—I’d think I was in the VIP wing of the hospital—freshly painted, uncluttered, and very quiet, since there aren’t any beeping machines or monitors here.

There must be plenty of days, though, when it isn’t hush-hush, when patients are shouting, demanding to be let out.

Just thinking about it makes my breathing shallow. I inhale for four seconds, hold it for four, exhale for four and then do it all over again. Somehow the person I am knows how to take deep relaxing breaths, but doesn’t have a clue who she is.

I’m exhaling again when a woman enters, smiling kindly and carrying a clipboard. She’s fiftysomething, I guess, with a youngish vibe. Her shoulder-length gray hair is flipped a little on the ends, and she’s wearing knee-high brown suede boots beneath her wrap dress.

“Ally, good morning,” she says. “I’m Evelyn Capron, one of the clinicians here. How are you feeling now?”

The answer: Scared shitless. Worried sick. Frantic about being married to someone I can’t even picture.

“Concerned, of course,” I say, as evenly as I can master. “I’m not sure why I’ve lost my memory.”

Evelyn nods, her expression sympathetic. “Dr. Agarwal is going to be in to speak to you very shortly. In the meantime, I need to ask a few questions, just as background.”

“Okay.” But how can I possibly answer? For me, there is no background. Only today.

“Ally, are you feeling any inclination to harm yourself?”

Her question jolts me. I know it must be a routine question in the psych ward, but I can’t possibly fit the profile of a suicidal patient. Can I?

“No.”

“Do you feel any desire to harm someone else?”

This question seems even more far-fetched than the first. I’m not even aware of who the people in my life are, let alone who I’d want to harm.

“No, no one.”

She has me fill out admission papers and then says she’s going to give me two printed screening tests. They’re attached to the clipboard, which she hands me. I rest it on my lap, on top of the bedsheet, and scan through questions and multiple-choice answers like, “I was very worried or scared about a lot of things in my life . . . never; a few times; sometimes; often; constantly.”

“But how do I answer these?”

“What do you mean, Ally?”

“I only know what my life is like this morning. I don’t know anything from before now.”

“Of course, then, just with regard to this morning.”

I lower my gaze to the paper and for a moment my attention drifts to the sheet covering my legs. An image blooms in my mind. I’m sitting on a big white sofa with a laptop resting on my thighs. It’s a sofa in my apartment, I feel sure.

“I’m a writer,” I announce to Evelyn, my eyes pricking with tears. “I work out of my apartment sometimes.”

“That’s good, Ally,” she says.

A split second later, another image trips over the first. I’m standing at a window on a high floor, coffee mug in hand, staring at Manhattan stretched out before me. It’s a stunning view, lots of sky and silvery buildings, and I’m smiling. I turn to say something to someone sitting behind me. A man.

“I live by Lincoln Center,” I blurt out this time. “In—in the West Sixties.”

“Very good. Anything else?”

My brain is trying to claw its way out from a landslide.

“No, nothing else,” I say, feeling desperate again.

“Try to relax. Let things come on their own.”

And then, as if by magic, more images appear, slowly at first and then in rapid succession, flooding my mind. With my words tumbling over one another, I share each new detail with Evelyn. She scribbles them down quickly—is she fearful they might vanish again? Soon, it’s no longer a collection of fragments but something that seems whole, like a tapestry. Me.

I’m a personal finance journalist, I tell her. I write a monthly column, give talks, host a weekly podcast. I’m working on a book called . . . it’s tentatively called 25 Money Rules You Should Always Ignore. I spend part of the week in a communal work space, though I used to hold a key position at Greenbacks, the company I showed up at this morning. I grew up in Millerstown, New Jersey. My mother’s dead but my father, a retired pediatrician, is still alive. I have two half brothers, Quinn and Roger.

And I’m married to Hugh. Hugh Buckley. Loving husband, lawyer, runner, Civil War history buff, Monopoly champion, Boston born and raised, and Ivy League graduate—though there’s nothing entitled-seeming about him. Our wedding was three years ago, and we spent our honeymoon in the Seychelles.