Blue Room Confidentials: Vol. 2 Read online

  Blue Room Confidentials

  Blue Room Confidentials

  VOL. 2

  Kailin Gow

  Blue Room Confidentials (Blue Room Confidentials Vol 2)

  Published by Kailin Gow Books

  Copyright © 2015 Kailin Gow

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For information, please contact:

  Kailingowbooks(at)aol(dot)com.

  First Edition.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Note

  If you haven’t read The Blue Room Series, this series may contain some spoilers.

  Although this series can be read separately from The Blue Room, it is highly recommended that you also read The Blue Room Series.

  DEDICATION

  To My Readers, Betas, and Kailin Krusaders, Thank You for All Your Love, Support, and Encouragement.

  Prologue

  Jaymie Wakeley

  A woman, washed up from the sea. A woman who has lost everything, who remembers nothing. What country, friends, is this? That's what Viola says in Twelfth Night when she washes up on shore in Illyria, having survived the shipwreck she thinks has killed her brother. What country, friends...

  “What country, friends, is this.”

  That's all I remember. Those words on my lips. Those words I whisper as I gasp, my hands on the ground, my palms digging into the beach sound. The only words I remember.

  Viola. A girl called Viola, in the sea. A girl called Viola who is the sole survivor of the sea's wrath and the waves' rage.

  I don't remember my own name. I don't remember where I came from or what I was doing before the sea swallowed me up whole and spit me out again; I don't remember my country of origin or the language that I'm speaking, but I can remember that once upon a time a playwright called William Shakespeare wrote a play about a girl called Viola who was shipwrecked on a strange shore, and I can remember that phrase, that one phrase, the only phrase that exists in the whole world.

  What country, friends, is this.

  I am on a beach. My skin stings from sunburn – although it is evening. How long have I been here, lying, face-down, unconscious? Hours, at least. Long enough for the sun to do its searing work. Long enough for me to burn. My mouth is dry. My eyes are blurry. My clothes are torn and my mouth is full of salt; I can't breathe; my lips are so cracked from the sun that simply opening my mouth to breathe makes me hurt, makes me bleed.

  Where am I? How long have I been here?

  Who am I?

  What country, friends, is this.

  So many questions I do not have the answers to. So many things I do not know. My dress – my beautiful, lace white dress – is torn; I am almost naked beneath it. My head aches. My head throbs. The world before me shimmers, but it is not a beautiful shining. It is the shimmering of something that comes in and out of view.

  I put my hand to my head. I feel something: something wet and viscous, and although I cannot see my hands I know just from feeling what it is. Blood.

  But what I don't realize is how much blood there is. As I lower my hand and put it in front of my face, I notice with shock that my hand is covered – soaked in blood. Drowning in blood. Blood, everywhere...

  I swallow. Hard. I try to figure out what's happening, where I am, who I am. I feel like there's something I'm supposed to remember. Something at the back of my mind – at the back of the head of mine that is covered in blood. Faces. Syllables. Words. I see a man – a handsome man with starlight in his bright blue eyes – but somehow I cannot make out his features. He is a blur to me. A blur without a name – or rather, a name that I knew once, and which I no longer know.

  I must have hit my head, I tell myself. When I entered the water. What water? Where am I? What is this place?

  All around me, the horizon is empty. There is nobody there. This beach is abandoned – no, deserted. Who would abandon a beautiful beach like this, I wonder?

  I keep walking. I stumble with every step. I don't have my balance, yet, and I'm still bleeding so heavily from my head, and I'm still shaking and yet I know that I have to keep on going, keep on walking, keep on trying, because to stop is worse, because to stop means the end, the giving-up, the moment when this head wound takes over and becomes the greatest part of me and I die and surrender to this dark feeling that is lurking at the corners of my consciousness like a wolf in the shadows.

  I keep walking for what feels like miles. I walk until my legs ache and my muscles scream. I search on the horizon for something – some color that isn't the green of the trees and the white-gold of the sands and the deep blue of the sea beside me.

  Please, I whisper, although I don't even know who I'm talking to, or who is the one talking. Please, help me.

  I see it. At last, I see it, and my knees buckle under me with relief. At last, a place. A swath of red – neon lights – cutting through the green and the white-gold and the blue. It's a convenience store, in the process of closing up, a place full of water-bottles and blow-up beach rafts and towels and toy pails and shovels for sandcastles, and...

  I swoon, again. Everything starts to meld together – everything starts going black...

  “Miss?”

  I don't register that he's talking to me, at first. I don't register anything.

  “Miss, are you all right?”

  I turn to see an elderly man behind the register looking at me with an expression of concern.

  I think a lot of things. I think no, I'm not all right, I don't know who I am or what I'm doing here and I'm scared and hurt and bleeding and terrified out of my mind but all my mouth will do is form syllables without speech, syllables that are incoherent through my cracked and bleeding lips.

  I start to sway. Then I fall.

  He catches me. He is an old man, but he is strong, still, and he stops me from falling to the floor. He kneels with me in his arms and lays me down.

  “Leslie!” he cries. “Leslie – help! Get me some water.”

  A young woman appears from the back room. “What's going on?”

  “Water! Hurry!”

  She gets it swiftly and hands it to me, lifting it to my lips.

  “What happened to you...?”

  I shake my head. My eyes are wide, unblinking.

  “Are you okay?” the girl asks. “What happened? Did someone hurt you?”

  “I...” I finally get the words out. Salt tears squeeze from my eyes, tasting like the salt ocean on my tongue. “I don't...I don't know.”

  “Have you taken anything, dearie?” The old man is bending over me.

  “Taken...anything...?”

  “Nobody's judging,” the man says. His eyes are kind. “We just need to get you help.”

  “Taken anything?” I understand at last. “Like drugs? No...no drugs. I...I think there was an accident. I'm not sure.”

  “Do you have any family we can call?”

  The man with the starlight eyes flashes before me, then vanishes.

  “I...don't know...”

  “What do you remember?”

  “Falling...” I say. “That's all. I just remember falling. Falling from the sky. Then.so much water. Deep water. In my eyes, in my nose, in my mouth...everywhere.” I shiver, although it is not cold. “Where am I?”

  “Florida, Miss,” says the girl. “The Everglades.”

  “Florida?” I look around, wildly, as if the scenery holds the
answers. “What am I doing in Florida?”

  “I don't know, Miss,” says the girl. Then, more softly. “Do you remember you name?”

  “My name?”

  My mouth wants to form syllables. Ina. Nina? Irina? I don't know. The movement is so automatic. “I...I...don't know...” I say. “I'm sorry.”

  “Leslie – call Dr. Ford. And I'll get this poor child some food.”

  The girl vanishes in the back room again. The man goes over to one of the aisles and comes back with a plastic bag full of Twinkies. He opens the bag for me and hands me one. I devour it like an animal before I realize what I'm doing. I stuff the whole thing into my mouth at once, swallow, practically tear the bag out of his hands to get the next one.

  “That's the softest stuff I can find for you, dear,” he says – he speaks so gently. “Your lips are so cracked I fear you may injure yourself if you try to eat anything else.”

  Leslie reappears in the doorway. “Dr. Ford's on his way over,” she says.

  “This poor girl seems to be suffering from amnesia,” says the old man. “Look up what you can – reports of anyone missing, of any accidents, of any shipwrecks...”

  “Okay, Gramps. I'll borrow Jessi's computer.” She vanishes out the door.

  I'm not sure how much time passes. It feels like hours, but maybe it was only a few minutes. A doctor arrives – checks my vitals, feels my head. I remember him calling an ambulance; I remember him riding with me all the way to the hospital. I remember falling asleep in a comfortable hospital bed.

  I remember the next day, what they tell me. The physical damage isn't as bad as it could have been. A few broken ribs, severe dehydration, but I'm not going to die. The head wound, too, will heal. But the thing they can't fix is my memory. I've suffered a traumatic head injury – the kind that makes you forget everything.

  “I'm so sorry,” says the doctor. “I wish I could help you.”

  “But who am I?” It's a question I keep asking, over and over, like he can somehow put a band-aid on my broken brain and ask for it.

  “We're putting up flyers and posters all over town,” says the doctor, softly. So gently. Like he's afraid to break me. “But unfortunately we can't identify you until someone reports you missing.”

  “I don't even know my own name.” Not for the first time, salt tears streak down by my face.

  “Don't worry.” The doctor tries to smile. “Someone will come. Your memory will return. We'll figure out who you are – and we'll find your family, your friends. Nobody just disappears without someone reporting it.'

  “But if they don't?” I ask, tears streaming down my cheeks. “What happens if they don't?”

  Dr. Ford looks at me with kind eyes – eyes that are full of confusion, eyes that are full of pain. And for the first time, I realize that he is just as frightened as I am.

  “I'm so sorry,” he says. “I wish I knew.” He squeezes my hand. “Let's just keep hoping, okay?”

  “And what happens if I run out of hope? What then?”

  His expression is grave.

  “I wish I knew, my dear,” he sighs heavily. “Oh, my poor girl, I wish I knew.”

  Chapter 1

  I do run out of hope, in the end. Or maybe it's more accurate to say hope runs out on me. I wait for weeks in the hospital. Waiting for somebody to find me, somebody to claim me, somebody to make me theirs, to say “I care about you. You are not alone. You are special to me. You are loved.” But nobody does. Day after day, day after identical hospital day, I wait. I watch. I wonder. I look at the door the way a puppy does, waiting for his master to come home. Nothing happens. Nothing ever happens. I am completely and utterly alone. I eat my hospital breakfasts – Jell-O and UHT milk and sad little cereal that tastes like nothing so much as air – and my hospital lunches of stale salami and depressing cheese, all the while knowing I'm absolutely fucked. I can't pay for any of this care. I can't pay for anything. I have no money, no bank account, hell, no idea how to make money. Who knows – maybe in my old life I was a high-powered doctor, a brain-surgeon, a hotshot lawyer, a hedge fund manager. Maybe I have gazillions of dollars in a bank account that bears my name and I only have to remember who I am to access it.

  My old life – what a laugh! I'd miss it, I suppose, except that I'm convinced that it probably wasn't worth very much. I mean – what kind of girl doesn't have any family, any friends, anybody that loves her or even likes her enough to notice she's gone missing or check out the media reports of a woman washed ashore on a beach in the Everglades. I mean, how bad was I? Even if I was an enormous bitch, you'd think that somebody would care whether I lived or died, or at least notice?

  Sometimes I look down at my hands. There is a tan line on one of my fingers – a pale strip on my golden-brown skin. A wedding ring? That's the part that scares me most of all. The idea that out there, somewhere, there is somebody that I was married to – somebody I loved and cherished and promised to spend my whole life with till death do us part – who knew I was missing and didn't even care.

  Unless –

  Those fantasies are the worst ones. The ones where my imagination runs away with me – or else where the facts start to make a macabre and horrible kind of sense. The moments when I wonder whether the reason my long-gone mysterious husband, whoever he is, is the person who put me in this situation to begin with. Maybe he hit me over the head somewhere – a cliff, a boat on the water – threw me over, left me for dead. I mean – why else would a husband not claim his missing amnesiac wife? Unless he didn't want her to be found...

  Unless he was hoping that by making sure she never found out who she truly was, she would in some metaphorical sense at least be dead. And his wife, this wife, this woman that I may or may not be but I think I was once – she's more useful to him dead than alive.

  He doesn't love her. He doesn't care about her. Maybe he loved her, once, but now the love is gone. Or maybe he never loved her and he married her for some other reason – money (wouldn't it be nice if I had money?), sex (another thing I know about intellectually but don't remember), social status (unlikely: if I'm so well-connected, why does nobody know or care who I am?)

  If he comes for me, that's the scariest thing of all. How do I know he's not here to finish the job? To make sure that I'm out of his way, once and for all.

  I don't know him, but I am afraid of him. My maybe-husband. My shadowy love. The man with the starlight in his eyes. The man who gave me the ring I no longer have on my finger. A ring that might not have even been a wedding ring at all. Who knows? Certainly I don't.

  So – what next? I have to make a life some way or other. And when it comes time for the hospital to release me – I'm out of physical danger, after all, and they can't do anything else for me – I'm on the streets.

  “But where do I go?” I ask Dr. Ford. “What do I do?”

  “I wish I could help you,” he says. He takes out his wallet, gives me five crisp hundred-dollar bills. “I'm not supposed to do this for my patients,” he says. “But you – I can't let you go without at least some security.”

  “I don't even have a name.”

  “Maybe that's not a bad thing.” A faraway look comes into Dr. Ford's eyes. “You aren't weighed down by your baggage, your past. You can choose who you want to be.” He gives me a business card. “It's a home,” he says. “For women in...unorthodox circumstances. Domestic violence victims, mostly.”

  Am I a victim of domestic violence? The image of the man with starlight eyes flashes into my brain again.

  “But I'm not...”

  “Just to get back on your feet again,” he says. “You can find a job somewhere in this town, I'm sure of it.”

  “Thank you,” I say. My eyes brim with tears.

  “You're going to have to choose a new name, you know,” he says. “A name with significance to you.”

  “Nothing has any significance for me,” I say, sadly, on my way out the door.

  I go by Viola at first, at the shelt
er. Viola Sebastian. A reference nobody else gets, but I like it well enough. It's a name for a girl who comes confused from the sea.

  With Dr. Ford's recommendation and one of his hundred-dollar bills I get a place to stay for a month. It isn't much – just a bed in a room, a room full of other women, women who are like me, lost. Women who know their own names, but whose identities have become strangers to them after years of abuse and gaslighting. Kind, sweet women, women who couldn't protect themselves against men who were physically bigger and stronger than they were.

  Is that what happened to me? Did my husband try to kill me, too?

  As Viola, I start to develop something like a normal life. I get used to it. It's routine. I start by tidying up around the place – not because of any inherent neatness but just to have something to do, to feel useful, now that whatever skills I might have developed in my former life have been essentially deleted from the hard drive that is my brain.

  “You know,” the shelter manager says one day. “We could use someone like you to help us out.” I'm not sure if she means it or if she just pities me, uselessly trying to figure out if and where I belong in this world. But she offers me a part time gig at twelve bucks an hour – office admin, outreach work.

  I spend six months doing that. In the meantime, I take part in all the programs the shelter offers. I learn the trades through technical courses they offer – skills like cooking and mechanical work and IT that are meant to help these women transition into entry-level jobs with upward mobility in the workforce. I take self-defense classes along with the other women there – something I find to my surprise I'm naturally good at. My brain might not remember a lot, but my body does. My body knows everything. Right now, my body is what I am, who I am. My body is me in the way that the rest of me, and my poor broken brain, certainly is not. My body is free of the cloud of confusion that hang over me. And so, the day of my first defense class, I punch the punching bag in the gym over and over again. My arms and fists seem to fly of their own accord – like this is who I am. Like I'm being controlled by something outside myself – or by the girl I used to be. I'm covered in sweat, red, aching, sore, exhausted. But somehow, I'm happier than I've been in weeks.