Story #9: THE PATIENT
The Patient
A woman insists she is who she is, even though no one believes her.
The
car accident happened just before lunchtime on La Rue St. Nicole in Lyon. It
was a sunny Saturday afternoon, with clear, blue skies that rivaled that of
the ocean. The calm of La Rue St. Nicole was shattered by a speeding little
Renault Clio colliding into an old, less-than-roadworthy taxi cab. Both drivers
were killed on the spot, but the first responders were able to rescue the taxi’s
lone passenger from the mangled backseat: A young, raven-haired woman with skin
the colour of cappuccino and an arm that was most certainly broken.
Using
the Jaws of Life, they worked hard to extract her for the paramedics to tend to
her, and only once she was on the stretcher, with dozens of onlookers snapping
away with their phones, did someone try to get her to say something.
“Do
you remember your name?” a paramedic asked the woman in French−and then,
because he didn’t want to assume, in perfect English as well.
The
woman was clearly concussed, in shock, and in a great deal of pain. One side of
her head was bleeding profusely, which would probably leave her with a nasty
scar, and her brown eyes weren’t focusing in the bright sunlight. It seemed
that she didn’t notice that her right arm was in an impossibly awkward
position.
However,
her lips moved to formulate one word: “Jane.”
“Jane.
That’s good,” the paramedic continued, gingerly tending to the woman’s head
wound as his two colleagues began to lift the stretcher. “What a lovely name.
Where are you from?”
The
woman seemed to think about it. “Jo’burg. Yes. Johannesburg. Ow.” She winced. “I’m fine.”
The
paramedic−his name was Eric and it was his second month working for SAMU−gave
her a comforting smile. “Yes. You will be. Do you remember your last name?”
The
woman seemed to scoff. “Of course,” she said. “Doe. My surname is Doe.”
At
that, Eric and his colleagues exchanged glances before loading the woman into
the ambulance.
“Jane
Doe,” Yasmin, Eric’s closest friend and colleague slowly repeated once the
doors were closed behind them, enclosing all four paramedics and the poor
woman. “Your name is…Jane Doe?”
“Yes.
Why?”
Eric
looked at the poor, confused South African woman. The concussion had to be more
serious than they thought. With the ambulance siren in the background, Eric,
Yasmin and Jolie tried to keep this strange Jane Doe awake by asking her even
more questions.
“Do
you have any family here?”
“No,”
Jane responded. “I’m here on holiday.”
“How
old are you?”
“Twenty-five…no,
twenty-six…”
And
so on.
The
one thing that she was absolutely certain of was that her name was Jane Doe and
that no, her arm didn’t hurt in the slightest.
Eric’s
first words to Dr. Paul at St. Marie’s Memorial was that the woman kept
insisting that her real government name was Jane Doe.
“I’ve
seen this before, where amnesiac patients latch onto anything from their
distorted memories and make it their reality,” Dr. Paul told him as they
shuffled to the emergency room that Jane had been deposited into. He was an
old, wise man who had been at the hospital for over 25 years. “We’ll soon get
to the bottom of her real identity.”
Jane
Doe was wide awake and sitting upright when Eric and Dr. Paul swept into the
room.
“A
doctor! Thank you!” she exclaimed, watching Dr. Paul glance at her chart. “Please,
I’m perfectly all right. I’m going to miss my flight if I don’t get back to my
hotel room and pack.”
“Unfortunately,
there is no way I am going to be able to release you so quickly,” said Dr.
Paul, speaking in perfect English.
“Why
not? I told the nurses I’m not concussed, and I won’t go to sleep, okay?”
Dr.
Paul asked the inevitable: “What is your name, miss?”
The
woman glared at him. “For the hundredth time, it’s Jane. Jane Doe.”
Eric
glanced at Dr. Paul, shooting the older man a look.
“You
understand why I am concerned, don’t you?” Dr. Paul told the woman.
“Trust
me, I’ve heard all the jokes my whole life,” the woman grumbled.
“Your
name is not Jane Doe. You are confused.”
“For
God’s sake! Pass me your phone,” the woman demanded from Eric, snapping her
fingers at him.
Eric
looked at Dr. Paul for confirmation before unlocking his phone and handing it
over to the patient. She angrily tapped at the screen for a few minutes, so
hard that Eric was afraid she would crack it.
“There!”
she snarled at them, showing them the phone.
A
Facebook page was on the screen; the avatar belonging to a grinning woman, who
was obviously the patient before them, at the top of Table Mountain. Right beneath
the picture were three words, a name in bold: Jane ‘JD’ Doe.
“Are
you satisfied now?” Jane Doe wanted to know. “Or should I log in to my email
and show you my e-ticket as well?”
END
NEXT WEEK: Short story inspired by the tweet: '"You want me to be a witch? Well, I've been called that before". My grandmother is an icon'.
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