Fiction: A woman wakes up confused in a hospital and realises that she has no idea who she is

In the beginning it was all slow and gentle. Sounds drifted into my awareness, gathering strength and definition: quick, light footsteps separated by the rustle of cloth, clicks and small thumps, and soft voices whispering in the dark. Then, as my vision improved, I began to see blurs in a light tinged with blue. As the darkness lifted, my vision grew sharper, and the white of a ceiling appeared, with a dusty yellow fan spinning directly above. There were smells, too, strong, some unfamiliar, but bringing disease and injury to mind.

And then came a rushing thirst, all-consuming, a force I couldn’t resist. When I tried to ask for water, I found I could only moan through a swollen, dry, painful throat. Someone must have heard my distress, for a dark face moved into my field of vision. Whoever it was seemed to understand, for I felt the cool rim of a glass at my lips, and I drank. A few grateful sips was all I could manage before my throat closed up. By then the fire had eased of and already the comfort of darkness was returning and I sank into it with relief.

I awoke quickly the next time, to the same thirst, to the same little clicks and the hum of the fan revolving above, the same unfamiliar smells, the same blurs that sharpened slowly into objects I knew. This awakening was somehow more complete, I knew, perhaps because there wasn’t that darkness to fall back into. Again, I moaned, and someone responded and came to my side: a nurse, I thought, from the cap above the face that responded so quickly. I drank more water with relief and became aware, suddenly, that I was in a place I’d never been to before. By now I thought I might be able to speak so I tried asking the nurse. A stranger’s voice emerged from my throat, hoarse and slurred, asking where I was.

“You’re in Malkangiri district hospital,” the nurse replied, smiling pleasantly. “In the post-operative ward.” By now I could see that she wore a white uniform, with a laminated identity card hanging around her neck from a blue tape.

Hospitals were for the sick, I knew. The unfamiliar smells suddenly made sense: they belonged with illness and death. But I had no memory of falling ill. I couldn’t feel any pain, either.

“Am I unwell?” I asked.

“Yes,” she told me softly. “You fell and hurt your head. You’ve had an operation, and you’re getting better.” Then, after a pause, “What’s your name?”

Until then I’d taken it for granted that I knew who I was. The possibility that I didn’t know hadn’t even occurred to me. Everyone has a name, I knew. I searched for it in my mind, but couldn’t find one. It’ll come, I thought, but instead came a wave of terror, black and heavy and bottomless. It weighed so heavily on my chest that I couldn’t breathe. What was my name? I didn’t know, and when I realised that I didn’t know I felt I was falling off a cliff into the darkness.

I must have slept after that, for the next thing I remember is waking up again. This time I woke in a soft pale light, with an aching head and back, and a soreness in the groin. The thirst still raged in my throat, but its earlier intensity was gone. I called, but no one came. As I grew used to the semi-darkness, I groped and found what seemed to be a bell on the table by my bed, and rang it. A whole age later, or perhaps a few minutes later, a nurse came, dragging her unwilling feet along the floor. Unsmiling, she gave me the water I needed, and then, like the one who came before, asked my name.

The terror returned, but now it was tempered by experience. That terror stayed with me over the days I spent in that grimy little hospital ward. Its grip loosened sometimes, but it never let go completely.

But this time I wasn’t quite as unprepared. By now I had understood that there was a lot I knew, about all kinds of things. I knew, for instance, that everyone has a name, usually one that their parents gave them when they were born, and a home, where they go to. A sadness caught in my throat when I realised that I didn’t know my name, or my parents, or anything at all about where I came from and where I could go when I didn’t need to stay in the hospital.

Thoughts that seemed familiar drifted in and out of my mind through the confusion. Stand firm, was one. Show no weakness, was another, and shed no tears. Speak as little as possible. Give nothing away. These thoughts were reassuring, like orders, remembered faintly, and I followed them because they offered a refuge of some kind, a hint that lost memories lurked just below some horizon, and would somehow emerge to save me. So I held my tongue, bit back my tears, and ignored the rising panic. I tried to collect my thoughts as best I could, and to learn from what I knew, what I could see, and what I felt.

I knew, without being told, that I was a woman. Was that because the nurses were women? I had no idea how hospitals were segregated, but I did know, though I’d no memory of having been in a hospital bed, that segregation was important. Obviously I knew about hospitals and nurses and the smell of medicine and the pain of an injection. I knew that there were many professions, and many things I was not. I was not a nurse or a doctor, or a soldier or a cook, or a clerk or a journalist. I knew I was not a saleswoman or a clerk, or a housewife or a teacher.

I even understood, from what the nurses told me, that I was in the post-operative ward, that I’d had surgery on my head, and would be released to a general ward in the next few days, but I hadn’t been in a hospital bed ever before.

I knew that we weren’t in the heat of the summer months. Mornings were faintly chill, and a slow fan was all that was needed for comfort. The summer, with its blinding sun, despite the forests and the reservoir nearby, would be much hotter. But then, at the peak of the gentle winter, it would be slightly cooler, so this was probably February or early March. So, I knew about seasons, and the year, and the calendar.

But I had no idea how I came to be in that hospital with a broken head and no memory of anything about myself. Not even my name, that simplest of pieces of myself, except that I was a woman. That was what brought the terror, and the question that lodged immovably in the back of my mind: Who am I?

I shook my head and swallowed. The nurse smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You hurt your head. You’ve forgotten some things, that’s all. It’ll all come back.”

“What’s today’s date?” I asked.

“Twentieth,” she said. “It’s the twentieth of February, 2020.” She smiled. “My daughter’s birthday. She says it’s 20-02-2020. A special number. Only zeroes and twos.” The smile widened. “She wrote the month first: 02-20- 2020. She says they write it like that in America.”

“How old is she?” I asked.

“Eight,” came the reply. “She made a birthday card with the date on it.”

So that was how I remembered the date on which I was born again, to replace the day I was born before. Like the nurse’s daughter’s eighth birthday, it had only zeroes and twos.

Excerpted with permission from My Name is Jasmine, Shashi Warrier, Simon and Schuster India.