Chapter 3 – (Just Like) Starting Over

“You don’t remember?” Dr Hughes asked, her voice trembling. “When we received you, you were a mess. Dr Harper spent days putting you back together in the ICU with the rest of the trauma team. The cause… the paramedic said that it was a T14.91.”

“Which is…”

Dr Hughes swallowed, then swallowed again. “Maybe it’s best if…”

“What is it?” Lana’s tone grew firm and persuasive. With that same tone, men and women’s entire careers had been liquidated.

“Suicide,” Dr Hughes uttered the terrible words at last. “They said that you jumped from the school’s main building. The fourth storey rooftop.”

“School?” Lana could not recall anything regarding a school.

“LAPA, Los Angeles Performing Arts. It’s a conservatory high school.”

Her mind went completely blank.

“Permission to hug?” Her physician looked wracked with a guilt that wasn’t her own. From the look on her face, Dr Hughes clearly mistook her stone-faced confusion for trauma.

Not seeing any harm in the act, Lana gave it.

They hugged. The first real hug Lana had experienced since her parents passed. Dr Hughes’s embrace felt warm, if a little desperate, and a bit stiff, like a mother holding a missing child who had returned. “Euphemia—Eppie… please live well from now on. As unprofessional as it sounds, we’re all rooting for you.”

With her borrowed towel, Lana dried her face. She was in control of her emotions now. The mystery of the song had faded.

“I’ll get Bessey,” Her physio said at last when they separated. “Good work today. We’ll get you back up to spec in no time. If there’s anything you need, Eppie, don’t ever hesitate to ask.”

“Thank you, Dr Hughes,” she said after a while. “I’d like to go back to my room now.”

The pragmatic part of Lana wanted to check her [Potential], but she was now too tired to move, and far too tired to think.

***

“God. What a mess.” Dr Jane Hughes was wondering whether her makeup remained sufficiently intact to attend the case conference when she noticed her camera was still recording after she had wiped down the equipment. Euphemia was her final patient for the day, with whom she had wanted to spend what was left of her rostered hour.

A week ago, when they had brought that poor girl’s ragdolled body into triage…

Hughes shuddered at the recollection.

Assuming the girl survived, she had not expected to see her for months.

And now Dr Harper tells her that, a week after the fact, the girl was healed enough to walk with assistance, and exercise her neglected muscles and tendons.

Hughes had thought the Director was joking until the radiography came in, and Hughes could only admit that, yes, there had been a medical miracle.

For several seconds, she stood where the girl had leaned against the parallel bars, camcorder in hand.

“Whatever will be, huh…”

The song. Whatever it was was too haunting to be real.

Eppie’s voice, the otherworldly, mellifluous purity of it—the silvery chime of each desperate syllable clambering from her youthful throat—

Her eyes grew hot once more.
The whole ordeal had felt like a fevered dream.

With a few familiar clicks, she rewound the video on the memory card, then played it back from the moment time stood still.

The first verse was the worst.
The hope of it all. Beauty. Wealth. Happiness.
The things that Eppie surely deserved, but seldom knew.

“God damn it…” Hughes had to pause the video, lest it ruin her completely again. Her patient didn’t yet know, but Eppie’s discharge was only the beginning of her woes. In LA, the Department of Children and Family Services had a reputation, and it certainly wasn’t for protecting kids.

In her tiny office, with only the sound of the computer fan and her CRT monitor’s electric whinny keeping her company, Jane Hughes played back the video twice over, then slipped the Sony Camcorder into her bag.

***

Dr Gillian C Harper, Medical Director of St Marten’s Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles, instantly failed the test of masculinity when Dr Hughes played the video on the theatre projector.

When his colleague had arrived with the memory card, he had just begun the case conference for Euphemia Fontaine, and was about to call for their Chief Physio.

Gathered around the round table were Unit Manager Bessey, Dr Mills, and the Radiology Lead, who were now all vigorously studying details on the gypsum ceiling while finding that dust had invaded their eyes.

“Thank you for that, Dr Hughes,” Director Harper sighed, then sighed again. “You say she doesn’t remember anything?”

“I added some minor but important details after she inquired, but there was no reaction at all,” Hughes confirmed Harper’s suspicions.

“Radiology?”

“If you look at sample A, dated on the day of her arrival,” Dr Richardson expertly replaced the image on the projector. “You can see the diffused axonal injury here, here, and here. It’s not usual, but there are well-documented incidences of Retrograde amnesia associated with DAI. This was one of our primary concerns. Of course, if you look at sample D—poof—no more inflammation. Her brain is as unremarkable as can be.”

“Mills?”

“Once she physically convalesces and meets Dr Hughes’ metrics, we can apply for a routine discharge. But to whom?”

“Right,” Harper stood as the other sat. He paced half the length of the conference table, then sighed again. “I’ve spoken to Miss Fontaine’s CSW handler.”

His crew perked up. Harper did not blame their lack of objectivity.

How could they not, after seeing that heart-rending performance in the physio studio?

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“It’s not good,” Harper laid his hands on a thick stack of documents he sourced through the CARES unit. “This fucker…”

The Director forced his hand to unclench. “This government colleague of ours informed me that Miss Fontaine was a routine user of narcotics and opioids. She said Euphemia rarely shows up for case meetings and has been disturbing the peace at her high school. She told me over the phone that Miss Fontaine was observed engaging in illicit acts for monetary gain. That she was drinking the day we found her. That she’s a wild child.”