She's Not There (2 page)

From somewhere deep in her head, she heard a violin playing. Vivaldi,
it was Vivaldi’s “Winter.” How did she know that? Then she could feel someone’s hand holding hers, feel the hand slipping the ring on her finger and she could hear the words . . .

I take thee, Amelia.

Her eyes flew up to the doctor.

“Amelia,” she said. “My name is Amelia.”

CHAPTER TWO

He came to an abrupt stop just inside the doorway and stared at the woman in the bed. She was covered in a white sheet and was lying so still that for a moment he thought she was dead. But then he saw the steady blip of her pulse on the monitor. His eyes took it all in, even as he could feel his mind racing to make sense of what he was seeing. Her swollen face, turned slightly toward him, a gauze square on her chin standing out stark white against the ugly splash of purple and yellow bruises on her cheeks. Her hair like wet rope against the pillow. Her lips, fat and tender looking. One nostril crusted with dried dark blood.

He brought up a shaky hand and ran it over his face. Was it her? She looked so shattered, so different, he wasn’t even sure.

As he moved closer to the bed, his eyes locked on the tubes snaking down from the plastic bags above, down to her thin bruised left arm, then to her hand and the diamond ring.

He carefully picked up her hand. It was warm. He pressed it between his own and closed his eyes.

“Sir?”

He turned. A nurse was standing there, holding a plastic bag of clear liquid.

“No one is supposed to be in here,” she said.

“I’m Alex Tobias. She’s my wife.”

The nurse’s face softened.

“I just got a call from the police. They said she was in some kind of accident. Is she . . . in a coma?”

“Coma? Oh, no, she’s just asleep. I just gave her a pill.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“No, I just came on duty. I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to move aside. I have to change her IV.”

Alex set his wife’s hand on the sheet and stepped back to the corner, focusing on the smiling cat faces on the nurse’s bright blue scrubs, watching her pink hands flutter like fish over his wife’s body. His head was pounding, and there was a hard nub of something he imagined as gray stone forming in his chest.

“Are you all right?”

He looked into the nurse’s chubby face.

“What?”

“Do you need to sit down, sir?”

“No, no. I need . . . where is the doctor? I need to talk to a doctor.”

“Dr. Haskins is on her rounds right now. I’m sure she—”

“Can you call her? I need to talk to someone.”

“She’ll be back up here soon, Mr. Tobias.”

The nurse was checking a chart, and when he started to move back toward the bed she stopped him with a firm hand on his arm. “She needs to rest. Let’s go outside.”

Alex followed the nurse back into the hallway. He saw flashes of green as people in scrubs moved quickly by him. Carts rattled down the hallway. Telephones trilled. Everything felt sharper, louder. He couldn’t think.

“The police wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone,” he said. “What happened? How did she get here?”

“As I already said, sir, I don’t really know. But Dr. Haskins will be back in about a half hour. I’m sure she’ll explain everything.”

He glanced around and ran a hand through his hair. “God, I can’t believe this. Is there—Jesus, look at me, I’m shaking—is there someplace I can sit down?”

“There’s a cafeteria just down the hall. Why don’t you go down there and get some coffee? As I said, Dr. Haskins will—”

“I want to stay close by. I have to be here when she wakes up.”

“There’s really nothing you can do right now,” the nurse said. “I gave your wife a sedative. Please, Mr. Tobias, go wait in the cafeteria. As soon as Dr. Haskins gets back I’ll tell her you’re here.”

She gave him a gentle nudge and he moved away, following the signs on the walls that directed him toward the cafeteria. It was a large room, with a lunch counter, vending machines, and orange plastic tables and chairs. Alex got a coffee from the machine and slipped into a chair near a window.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and raised the plastic cup to take a sip of coffee.

His hand was still shaking.

Jesus
. . . he had to pull himself together. He couldn’t let Mel see him like this when she woke up.

When he took a drink, the acrid coffee burned down the back of his throat and settled into his stomach, mixing uneasily with the vodka. When had he last eaten? He couldn’t remember. But the churn in his gut right now came from something other than hunger.

Alex looked out the window, trying to clear his brain, trying to focus on something, anything that would help him calm down. He stared down at the street. He had driven here so fast he didn’t even know where he was exactly.

Andrews . . . that was Andrews Avenue below, he slowly realized, the road that he often used as a shortcut from his office to the airport. It was an ugly street that had been bypassed by the wave of gentrification that had produced the glass-tower condos and boutiques of downtown Fort Lauderdale. The street was home to bail bondsmen, chiropractors, dive bars, and pizza joints.

His eyes settled on the sign on a peeling pink stucco office.

D
AVIES &
C
ORMER.
S
E
H
ABLA
E
SPANOL.
I
MMIGRATION.
P
ERSONAL
I
NJURY.
W
E
C
AN
H
ELP!
S
OMEONE
S
HOULD
P
AY!

Someone should pay . . .

Oh yeah, someone always paid, didn’t they?

The ring of his cell—Bach’s Prélude
from the movie
Master and Commander—
jerked him back. He grabbed the cell from his jacket pocket and checked the caller ID. It was Owen.

He hit “End Call,” but he knew he should have answered it. There was only one reason his partner would be trying to reach him on a Sunday. It meant that the Swanson-Leggett merger had hit a snag, the investors probably finding out that Swanson was being invested by the SEC for securities fraud. It was a bogus charge, but when people were asked to put up millions, they tended not to trust a CEO whose future might include a stint in federal prison.

His phone chirped with a text message:

Swanson out. New money in.

Deal done. Opening Cristal.

Where R U?

He heard the rasp of the door again and looked up. A woman in a white coat and glasses had stopped just inside and was scanning the room. She spotted him and came to the table.

“Mr. Tobias? I’m Dr. Haskins.”

He started to get up, but she motioned for him to sit back down with a nod to the chair. She took the chair opposite.

His words rushed out in a torrent. “What happened to Mel? The nurse said she had a concussion but no one will tell me anything else and I need to know if—”

“Take a breath, Mr. Tobias,” Dr. Haskins said.

Alex realized he was still clutching his cell. He set it facedown on the table and pulled in two jagged breaths.

“First, your wife is going to be all right.”

Alex stared at the doctor for a second, and then tears formed in his eyes. He looked away.

“She suffered a cerebral contusion and an intracranial hematoma that—”

He came back to her. “I’m sorry, what does that mean?”

“She has a pretty bad concussion and there was some cranial bleeding, but we’ve got it under control. However, her brain was bruised and this has manifested itself in amnesia.”

“Amnesia? She’s lost her memory?”

“I don’t know how bad it is yet,” Dr. Haskins said. “Your wife regained consciousness only about an hour ago so I haven’t had much time to assess her condition. I’ll know more when we do cognitive tests. Right now, I’d say the amnesia appears to be retrograde, meaning she remembers nothing that happened to her before she was injured.”

“Nothing? Does she remember me?”

Dr. Haskins hesitated. “At first, she could only tell me her name was Amelia. But when she remembered her last name, the police ran her driver’s license, and that’s how they found you.”

Alex stood up abruptly. “I need to see her.”

“Please, Mr. Tobias, not now. We’ve got to do more scans and tests. We’ll know more tomorrow. But right now, the thing she needs most is quiet.”

Alex sank back down on the hard chair, putting his head between his hands.

“Amnesia from head trauma is quite common—car accidents, sports injuries,” the doctor said. “My nephew got a concussion playing high school football and made a full recovery. The only thing he can’t remember is getting hit in the game.”

Alex said nothing, didn’t move. The doctor kept talking, her voice dissolving to a painful buzzing in his head. She was saying again that Mel would get better, that her memories of her life, friends, and family would come back, that any image, sound, or even smell might trigger things. But that it would take days or weeks for the whole picture to form again.

Mel . . . my Mel . . . what happened?

“The police couldn’t tell me anything,” he said. “Do you know anything about what happened?”

“Not really,” Dr. Haskins said. “She was dropped off here.”

“Dropped off? What do you mean dropped off?”

“The admitting nurse found your wife in the emergency waiting room. She had fainted in the chair and—” Dr. Haskins paused, pursing her lips. “Well, to be honest, no one noticed she was there for at least an hour.”

“What? How the fuck did you—”

“Calm down, Mr. Tobias. This happened late Friday night. Do you know what a county hospital emergency room is like on a Friday night?”

Alex stared at the doctor.
Friday night? Mel had been gone for two days?
He shut his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Go on, please.”

“It was only later, after she was taken to the ICU, that we started to put things together.”

“What do you mean?”

“We checked the security tapes. The cameras in the emergency entrance and waiting room showed a man bringing your wife into the room and then leaving. He drove away in a truck. That’s all we know. The police have the tapes and are looking for him.”

“Do they think he . . . this man, do the police think he did this to Mel?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to talk to the police. There was an officer here earlier. He said he was coming back.” The doctor paused. “Look, I know I shouldn’t speculate about anything but your wife has a bruise across her chest that is consistent with hitting a steering wheel. I think she was in a car accident and this man found her and brought her here.”

“Car accident? Why didn’t he just call an ambulance?”

Dr. Haskins shook her head. “I can’t answer that.”

The doctor looked up suddenly, toward a speaker in the ceiling. Alex heard it, too, a page for Dr. Haskins.

“I have to go,” she said, rising and starting away.

“Wait.”

The doctor stopped.

“Your nephew,” Alex said. “You said he couldn’t remember getting hit?”

“Pardon me?”

“You said that after he got hit, he couldn’t remember it.”

The doctor gave an odd smile. “He couldn’t even remember the game. Three years later, he still can’t.”

Dr. Haskins turned and left. Alex slumped down in the chair and closed his eyes. His cell chirped and he turned it over. It was another text from Owen.

CALL ME NOW

It took all Alex’s energy to sit up and dial. Owen answered on the second ring.

“Where the hell are you?”

“Broward General. Mel’s been in an accident.”

“Accident? What kind of accident?”

“I don’t know exactly. All I know is some guy found her and brought her in. She has a concussion.”

“Jesus . . .”

“Look, Owen, I can’t talk now. I have to—”

“Is she okay?”

“No, she’s not okay. She doesn’t even . . .” He was on the verge of crying. He couldn’t let Owen hear him bawling like a girl. “Owen, I’ll call you when I know more.”

Alex hung up.

He sank back in the hard chair. Soft sounds swirled around him—the door opening, the intercom belching out a page, the swoosh of something in his ears that he finally recognized as his own pulse. There was another sound, and at first he thought it was Muzak, but he realized it was coming from somewhere deep inside his head.

A memory pushed forward. It was music, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Then he heard the violins and remembered the name “Vivaldi” and how Mel had told him the music was perfect because they were getting married in December.

The music was suddenly gone.

He had to see her now.

He jumped to his feet and went quickly back down the hall to the nurses’ station. The nurse in the blue cat scrubs was coming toward him and blocked his way.

“Mr. Tobias, did Dr. Haskins find you?”

“Yes. I want to see my wife now.”

“I told you, Mr. Tobias, I gave her a sleeping pill—”

“I just want to see her.”

The nurse touched Alex’s shoulder. “Okay, you can go in for a few minutes, but please don’t try to wake her up.”

He nodded. The nurse disappeared around a corner and Alex stood for a moment, one hand on the desk to steady himself. Then he went slowly down the hall to the last room on the left.

When he went in, it took several seconds for what he was seeing to register—the bed was empty.

He moved closer and looked down at the end of the IV tube lying in the tangle of sheets. A small stain of blood stood out dark red against the white.

He spun and went outside, scanning the hallway. The nurse in the blue cat scrubs was coming toward him.

“Mr. Tobias, are you all right?”

“Mel, my wife,” he said. “She’s not there.”

CHAPTER THREE

The doors closed behind her with a gentle
whoosh
.

Out!
She was outside.

When she pulled in a deep breath to calm herself, the thick humid air came as a sudden hard press in her lungs after the icy air she had felt moments ago inside the hospital.

She took a quick look around to try to figure out where she was. There was an ambulance parked nearby and beyond that, if she squinted hard, she could just make out the large red
E
MERGENCY
sign.

The sound of the door opening made her spin around. Two men emerged, one pushing an empty gurney. They gave her a long look. She heard them talking and wanted to run, but she forced herself to turn and walk calmly toward the red
E
MERGENCY
sign.

Out to the street, down the sidewalk . . . keep going . . . don’t look back.

The sun was hot, and her head was pounding. She couldn’t read the street signs, but she could make out a bench just ahead. If she rested for a second, maybe the nausea would ease. At the bench, she sat down and looked back toward the emergency entrance.

No one was following her. But they would, as soon as they realized she was gone.

Her right hand was throbbing, and she could feel something in her clasped fist. She opened her hand.

A yellow pill.

She concentrated, trying to replay in her head what had happened.

The nurse had given her the pill with a cup of water, telling her it would help her to sleep. But she didn’t want to sleep so she had faked swallowing the pill and hidden it in her hand.

She stared at the pill for a moment and then threw it into the grass. Sleep . . . she had been so afraid to go to sleep, believing that if she did, the man would be there. But now she knew that he wasn’t someone she had imagined.

Back in the room, she had heard his voice. And when she opened her eyes for that one second she had seen him, or just a blur of him, a tall dark-haired man, standing by the door.

I’m Alex Tobias.

The name had meant nothing to her but she knew his voice.

I’m Alex Tobias. That’s my wife.

Wife?

Yes. She knew that now. He was her husband. And he had hurt her.

The terrible crushing pressure in her chest was back, and she could feel the panic rising up again. She tried to pull in a deep breath, but it made her feel like her ribs were on fire.

Why had she run from the room? Why was she afraid of him? Had he thrown her from a car? Had she jumped? There was nothing in her memory to explain it, but the only thing she knew was that she had to get away from him.

But he’s my husband.

She looked down at the diamond ring on her left hand.

Blood . . . she was bleeding. The top of her hand was bleeding. She clasped her right hand over it and shut her eyes.

More memories tumbling around in her head, coming back now in a quick flashback. The sting as she pulled the IV needle from her hand. The spinning of the room as she swung her feet over the bed. Finding the black dress hanging in the closet and putting it on. No shoes . . . the doctor had told her she’d had no shoes when she came to the hospital so she had found a pair of white slippers in the nightstand and put them on. There was also a comb, a toothbrush, and a tiny tube of toothpaste in the drawer. She put them in a plastic bag and left the room. Blurred figures far down the hall. And in the opposite direction, just a few feet away, the red exit sign.

Then . . .

Flap-flap-flap.
The sound of her slippers hitting the floor had seemed so loud to her ears. She pushed through the exit door and into a stairwell. Down two flights and through another door. In the empty hallway, she looked down at the colored lines on the floor and chose the red one. It led her through a maze of narrow hallways filled with steel food carts and empty gurneys. She passed a few people, keeping her head down, and then she was out, out into the ambulance bay.

She opened her eyes now and looked down at her hand.

The bleeding had stopped. And her head felt a little clearer. She had to get moving.

But where?

Away from the hospital. Away from him.

Clutching the plastic bag, she pushed up from the bench. There was a traffic light ahead and she made her way to it, ending up on a busy four-lane street. Across the street, she could make out a cluster of four buildings, one with a peaked roof that made her think it was a church. She crossed the street.

Yes, it was a church. Maybe they would help her?

She went up the steps and tugged on the doors. Locked. She turned back toward the street. The low slant of the sun told her it was maybe four or five. It would be dark soon. She had to make a plan.

The building next to the church had a sign in the window:
S
T.
A
NNE’S
T
HRIFT
S
HOP
. Shoes . . . she could buy shoes there, and other clothes. But not without money. She would need money to get away.

There was a vacant building next to the thrift shop and she trudged past it. Then she stopped, looking up at the neon sign on the last building.

N
ATIONAL
P
AWN
.

She looked down at the ring on her left hand and pushed open the door.

The inside of the pawnshop registered in her head as a blur of color and shapes. Shelves crammed with silver coffee sets, bronze horses, porcelain dolls, suitcases, knives, gold clocks, and guitars hanging from the ceiling. And a long glass counter that ran the length of the narrow room, filled with jewelry and coins. There was music playing, something so very familiar, something about a woman named Eleanor who kept her face in a jar. But she couldn’t pull the name of the group from her memory.

The large bald man behind the counter watched her as she approached.

She shut her eyes, fighting back another wave of nausea.

“You okay, lady?”

She opened her eyes and nodded. She twisted the ring off her hand and held it out. “What can you give me for this?”

“Pawn or sell?”

“Sell.”

He took the ring, gave her another long look, then reached below the counter and pulled out a small metal gadget, using it to peer at the ring. He looked up at her.

“I need to take this in the back and test it, okay?”

What choice did she have? She had to trust him. She nodded and he left. The music filled the emptiness and she realized it was the Beatles. It made her feel better somehow.

Then, suddenly, she saw herself. At first the image in the mirror behind the counter didn’t even register, but with a brush of her hand through her hair she realized she was looking at herself.

Her reflection was in soft focus, but she could see lank blonde hair, and a sleeveless black dress encasing a tall, slender body. She leaned over the counter, trying to see her face more clearly.

“This is a ten-carat diamond.”

She took a step back from the counter at the sound of the voice. The big bald man was coming out from the back room, holding up the ring between two meaty fingers. A woman came out after him, a tiny leather-skinned thing with frizzed red hair, wearing jeans and a pink halter top.

“What can you give me for it?” she asked.

The man set the ring on the counter. “I’m guessing this is worth about two hundred thousand.”

She was stunned into silence.

“Our normal rate is fifteen percent of that.”

She couldn’t do the math. She had a sudden weird stab of memory that whispered she had never been good at math.

“I can give you thirty grand for it,” the man said.

She had been staring at the ring, and now her eyes shot to the bald man. He wasn’t smiling.

“All right,” she said.

Now he smiled. “Okay, just give me your driver’s license and we’ll do the paperwork.”

“License?”

He had been digging for something beneath the counter but now he stopped and looked up at her.

“I don’t have a license,” she said.

His face went to stone. “Then we don’t have a deal.”

She could feel the redheaded woman’s eyes on her but didn’t look back.

“I’ll take less,” she said.

“Lady, this ring could be hot—”

“Twenty. I’ll take twenty thousand,” she said.

The bald man shook his head slowly.

“Please,” she said.

“No can do.”

She felt tears threaten but for some reason she didn’t want to let this man see her cry.

“Give her the money, Frank.”

The redheaded woman had pushed forward.

“Tracy, you know I can’t—”

“I said give her the money.”

“You want me to lose my fucking license?”

“Go get the goddamn money, Frank. And none of this lowball bullshit. Give her forty grand.”

The bald man swore under his breath and trudged off. The redheaded woman watched him go, then reached below the counter and came up with a clipboard and pen.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

She hesitated. “Amelia.”

The redheaded woman looked up, her small green eyes scrutinizing Amelia’s face, hair, and the black dress. “Look, I can make up a license number and address for you, but I need a last name to put on here.”

I’m Alex Tobias. That’s my wife.

“Brody,” she said.

The redhead scribbled some more on the form, flipped open an ink pad, and turned it toward Amelia. “I need your right thumbprint here,” she said, pointing to the form.

Amelia hesitated and pressed her thumb onto the pad, then onto the form.

“Sign here.”

She took the pen and signed the form. The bald man returned, a big stack of bills in his hand. He slapped the money on the counter with a glare, and then disappeared again into the back room.

The redhead watched him go and turned back to face Amelia. “You got something to put this in?” she asked.

“This is all I have.”

The redhead eyed the plastic hospital bag and then turned to the shelves behind her. She pulled a brown leather duffel down and brought it back to the counter. “Here, take this.”

As Amelia stared at the bag, something clicked in her head—a sudden vision of Louis Vuitton luggage stacked on an airport cart. And the trill of a foreign language. Italian?

“I don’t need something this expensive. Do you have something else?” she asked.

“Take it. It’s a fake, so it’s no good to me,” the redhead said.

Amelia unzipped the duffel and put the plastic hospital bag and the money inside. When she looked up, the redheaded woman was slumped back against the shelves, arms folded, staring at her again.

“Thank you,” Amelia said softly.

The redheaded woman nodded. “Can I give you some advice?”

Amelia waited.

“Don’t let no man ever knock you around again.”

Amelia nodded slowly, picked up the duffel, and started toward the door.

“Hey, wait a sec.”

She stopped and looked back.

The redheaded woman was holding out a pair of scissors. “You’d better get rid of that,” she said, nodding toward Amelia’s wrist.

She looked down at the white hospital band and went back to the counter. The redheaded woman cut off the band and stared at the name “Jane Doe” on it. When she looked up, her mouth was set in a hard line but her eyes were soft.

“Good luck, Amelia Brody,” she said.