Who Is Deborah?. Elise Title

ribbon of color—ruby red—squeezed from a tube of paint flashed before my eyes. Only it wasn’t paint. It was…blood. Ruby-red blood. My blood. Hot and moist and fetid, blurring my vision. And with the image came a violent spasm of shock. That first glimpse of myself in the hospital before the plastic surgeon had put me together again—in a fashion.

      John gave me a sympathetic look. “It’s very possible that you don’t look all that different than you did before.”

      My temples began to beat like a drum. “But I don’t know that, do I?” I snapped at him. “Because I haven’t the foggiest notion what I looked like before.” A dam seemed to burst in me. “Why have any face at all when I’m faceless inside? Anyway, if this is my face, why hasn’t anyone come forward to identify me? I ran a photo of myself for over a week in the newspaper with the biggest circulation in New York. No one recognized me, did they?” I finished bleakly.

      “Katherine…”

      My defenses collapsed, despair washing over me. “Even the name isn’t mine. Made up out of thin air like everything else about me.”

      He looked distraught at my outburst and I felt a stab of guilt. My predicament wasn’t John’s fault.

      “I’m sorry. It is the weather. I woke up early. I’ve been wound up all day. Sometimes I wish…”

      “What do you wish?”

      “That the police had just left my bruised and battered body on the sidewalk that rainy night.”

      I could hear the rain again, pounding in my head. That was all I could remember of that night. That, and then waking up a few hours later in the emergency room of the New York General, with a sweet-faced, young policeman gazing anxiously down at me. I could picture him perfectly.

      “You must have fought back hard,” the policeman had said, a touch of awe in his voice.

      My own voice seemed to have dried up. When I’d finally managed to speak, I discovered it wasn’t easy to move my lips. My face was swathed in bandages. Later I was informed that I’d suffered a concussion and that both my nose and jaw had been broken. But at that moment I wasn’t concerned about my mutilated face. Terror had gripped me. “Was I…?”

      Before I’d had to say the word raped, he’d hurriedly shaken his head. I’d felt a rush of relief. It hadn’t lasted long—just until he’d started to question me and to my horror, I hadn’t been able to give him any answers. Not only had I been unable to tell him anything about the assault, I’d even forgotten my name. I couldn’t remember anything. My mind was a complete blank. And the police had little to go on, since I’d been found without any identification on me, in a dark alley in a commercial district of the city.

      The doctors tried to assure me that once the trauma wore off, my memory would gradually return. But it hadn’t. I’d undergone plastic surgery to have my nose and jaw restructured, and then I’d been moved to the psychiatric ward of the hospital.

      “Katherine.”

      John Harris’s voice drew me from my reverie. I saw that Dr. Royce was standing beside John. I’d been so wrapped up in my thoughts I hadn’t even seen my psychiatrist come in. He was staring at my painting and then he turned to me.

      “Mountains,” he murmured. “Interesting.”

      I sensed some hidden import in the tone of his voice that made the muscles between my shoulder blades tighten. This was odd, because the distinguished-looking psychiatrist generally had the opposite effect on me. I’d developed something of a crush on the soft-spoken, good-looking, kindly doctor. Sometimes, when I was particularly depressed, I would fantasize that he had a special fondness for me, as well. Sometimes I even wondered if it was all a fantasy. To my surprise, I found myself wondering it at that moment. I wasn’t sure why. I thought it might be the heightened tenderness and concern I detected in his warm brown eyes. Ironically, instead of being pleased, I felt a flash of alarm. Something was troubling him. Something was wrong.

      “What is it?” My voice was a bare whisper.

      “Let’s talk in my office,” he said, in a soothing tone. Only it didn’t soothe me at all.

      I was glad his office was just a few doors down from the O.T. room.

      I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until he shut his office door, and I finally exhaled. I spun around to face him. “Please. Tell me.”

      He nodded, gesturing to a big, comfortable gray-tweed armchair. For the past two months, I’d spent an hour every other day in that chair, in therapy.

      I managed a lopsided smile as I moved to the chair. “All of a sudden, my legs feel like jelly.”

      Dr. Royce took the matching armchair that was a few feet from mine, forgoing his usual seat behind his desk. I was completely convinced that something big was brewing. I felt both nervous and excited.

      “Someone’s come to see you.”

      No sooner had he said those words than tears instantly flooded my eyes. I thought I must be hearing things. But I could see from the doctor’s sober expression I’d heard correctly. “Who?” I managed to eke out.

      He put off answering for a moment—his way of giving me a chance to gather myself. There was an electric coffeepot on a table near him. He poured a cup and handed it to me. My hands were trembling badly as I took it from him, but I sipped the hot, strong brew gratefully. Then I plucked out some tissues conveniently placed by my chair and wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

      “His name is Greg Eastman.”

      Dr. Royce fixed his gaze on me as he said the name. If he expected some reaction, a ray of light to dawn, I disappointed him. Not to mention my own sorry disappointment. The name meant absolutely nothing to me.

      “Who is he? How…How does he know me?”

      “He’s a private investigator.” A faint smile curved the psychiatrist’s lips. “He recognized you from the photo you ran in the paper.”

      I started to smile, too. “He recognized me? Then…then my face isn’t…I haven’t…changed….”

      “Not enough for him not to recognize you.”

      There was something I didn’t understand. “Are you saying he wasn’t sure, at first? Is that why he’s waited…?”

      “No. He told me he was out of town when your photo ran in the paper, but his secretary had, as a matter of practice, clipped it out and filed it in his Missing Persons folder. The minute he saw it…” Dr. Royce paused for a moment. “He knew it was you.”

      I waited, as if suspended, for him to tell me who I was. I will never forget that wait. A part of me felt it was interminable; another part of me was afraid for it to conclude. Discovering my identity could be as frightening as not knowing it at all.

      When Dr. Royce finally spoke, there was such solemnity in his voice that the hairs on my forearms literally stood on end. “He says your name is Deborah Steele.”

      I stared at him blankly, not knowing what to say to this announcement, how to react. It was the strangest sensation. I suddenly went numb all over.

      “Deborah.” I tried the name out for the first time. It sounded as foreign and removed from me as the name Katherine—as any name I might have pulled out of a hat.

      My hand was shaking so, I only barely managed to set my coffee cup down on the table. “Is he sure?”

      “Naturally, he wants to see you in person, but…I think he’s pretty certain. He knew you. Quite well, he says. He knew…that you painted.”

      My eyes widened.

      “And he brought along a photograph.”

      “Of…her?” I couldn’t think of her as me.

      Not yet. It was all too unreal. I wasn’t even sure